Book Review: “Holly” by Stephen King
From Carrie to Holly
Stephen King stated in an interview he gave that I read some time ago that there would be reckoning in fiction when it came to COVID-19. Writers of novels would have to find a way to account for it in their works. With his latest thriller, Holly, he does. Admitting in his Author’s Note at the end of this book that he would have to rewrite the short novel If It Bleeds because it is set in December 2020 during the apex of the pandemic in real life (but things in that book just go on as though the virus wasn’t threatening anyone, only supernatural monsters were), Holly just goes full bore into COVID life in the summer of 2021, when it is set. There was an easier way for King to not get too into the “continuity lapse” (his words) of If It Bleeds that he didn’t try: pretend that COVID only started happening in March 2021, not March 2020. However, he hopes instead that readers will have forgotten the timeline of If It Bleeds and just take the COVID setting for granted in his most recent book.
Holly, for the first time in the Bill Hodges/Holly Gibney trilogies (save perhaps for Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers), deals with a series of crimes that are not supernatural. According to this book, that makes them even more evil and terrifying, even if the conceit is a little off-putting and unbelievable. And here’s where I’ll have to start spoiling things to talk critically about this book, so if you plan on reading Holly, stop here, bookmark this page, and come back to read this review when you’re done with the book. With that preamble out of the way, I can say that Holly deals with a concept so out in left-field that only Stephen King could have come up with it: a respected retired elderly couple who are serial killing cannibals on the side. It’s more sinister than it sounds on a computer screen as I write this here, and only someone of King’s pedigree could make it so. Essentially, then, Holly is about the lead character — who is largely on her own here as her business partners are either sick with COVID or writing a book in lockdown — as she goes about solving a missing persons case that suddenly upends and becomes a serial killer investigation. The killers, who are octogenarians with various ailments, kill people to eat their organs in the belief that doing so will rejuvenate them and help them lead a prolonged, pain-free life. King, who is getting up there in age himself, is probably peering into his mortality with this novel — at least you could say, sort of, that he’s writing what he knows (about being a senior citizen with all its aches and pains, and probably not as a cannibal.)
I want to be careful in my assessment of this book, not only because I respect King (he’s a big reason why I turned out to be a writer) but also because the book is a Christmas gift given to me by my sister — whom I don’t want to tick off with a negative review. However, sadly, Holly is a weaker entry into the Bill Hodges canon. Don’t get me wrong: the beginning and ending are dynamite, even if King does sort of paint himself into a corner a few times and needs to have ropes thrown by the universe (as he puts it) to get the characters protagging. I also found that a subplot about Ms. Gibney’s Black teenage friend, Barbara, becoming a successful poet who is being mentored by a facility member in the same area of study as one of the killers goes nowhere fast. I put the book down for a couple of days when I was midway through it because I did find the padding to get a little tedious. In all honesty, this book could have had about 200 pages pruned from it for the better. Still, having said all of that, I will say that even a mediocre or bad Stephen King book is more enjoyable than about 90 percent of the popular fiction that is out there.
It struck me as I read Holly that King is the 21st-century version of Charles Dickens. Though King has riffed on Dickens in the past (Black House, anyone?), I imagined reading Holly 100 years from now in an annotated edition that would explain all the pop culture references in footnotes. That probably says something about what I think will happen surrounding the popularity of Stephen King novels lasting well after his death (according to Edelweiss, this book is already popular as it went to №1 on the New York Times Bestseller List.) To that end, I’m in awe of King: the guy can crank out one major novel a year (sometimes two) and still have quality things to say, even if — in this case — it felt like King was repeating himself somewhat. (The kill to rejuvenate angle was already covered in Doctor Sleep for one thing.) And it was neat to see King handle the whole COVID angle in the writing of this book: Holly’s overbearing mother dies from the virus and he goes off on the odd tangent about the irresponsibility of the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. Though the odd plot point does hinge on COVID, you could, in theory, take the pandemic away from this book and it would still work. So some of this plot is mere window dressing. But I’m probably saying too much that is far too critical. Saggy midsection aside, Holly is an entertaining book and is just the sort of thing you might want to read over the Christmas holidays. If you’re a fan of Stephen King’s work, you’ve probably already read this, and, if you haven’t, I’m happy to see you come back to this review after bookmarking it. I owe a lot to this man, and I bet you can say that of a lot of writers, too. Here’s to another book from Stephen King in 2024.
Stephen King’s Holly was published by Scribner on September 5, 2023.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
