The Tommyknockers – Who’s There?

King-a-ding-ding! Hear that bell? It’s the sound of a brand-new Stephen King review from The Quill To Live’s only resident King reader—me! One of my goals this year was to listen to five Stephen King audiobooks. The Tommyknockers was my first of the year, and it was decidedly okay. 

The town of Haven, Maine is not okay. Or, rather, it’s kinda fine…but soon it’s going to be supremely un-okay. Such is the way of many a Stephen King book: a small Maine town is terrorized by unthinkable horrors. The Tommyknockers focuses on Bobbi Anderson—a writer who lives in a secluded grove and uncovers a mysterious craft buried in the woods behind her house. Along for the ride is Jim Gardener aka “Gard,” Bobbi’s longtime friend and sometimes lover and a recovering alcoholic. He helps Bobbi uncover the ship but soon realizes things are off about it and the happenings surrounding its discovery. As they unearth the ship, Haven’s residents fall under the influence of alien power and begin to subsume into a hivemind while undergoing drastic physical changes. What do the unseen aliens want, and what will happen to the humans undergoing this change?

The tried-and-true Stephen King formula is alive and well in The Tommyknockers. A change begins—not necessarily threatening at first but eventually terrifying and dangerous—to take hold of a town or region. King then zooms in on the lives of those impacted by or adjacent to the change. It’s how the formula succeeds so often, in my opinion. I rarely care more about the supernatural (and/or monstrously human) elements of his stories than I do about the people subjected to them. King prefers to keep many of his monstrosities in the dark cowl of ambiguity without giving us too much. It’s a classic approach; what could be scarier than the thing you are prodded to imagine as the reader? The Tommyknockers does this to middling effect, eventually showing us an underwhelming origin point of the book’s mysterious threat. I didn’t mind it that much, probably because I wasn’t invested in the story surrounding the aliens in the room. 

Bobbi Anderson and Jim Gardener have a unique friendship that spans many years and occasionally includes stints beneath the sheets. Gard’s life as a poet and alcoholic is hyperbolic in a way I haven’t always seen King attempt. There’s one scene in which Gard goes off on a nuclear executive about the dangers of his work at a party, then goes on a bender and nearly commits suicide before getting an intuition that Bobbi is in trouble. The broad strokes of Gard make it hard to understand what makes him tick, a problem I so rarely have with King’s characters. 

Bobbi suffers from a similar ailment. She’s a writer (King loves writing writers) with a reclusive life, and her obsession with the alien craft soon overtakes her. Bobbi becomes our “patient zero,” as it were, and we soon lose a lot of her to the growing influence of the “Tommyknockers” (so named for a remembered cautionary tale for children). 

I enjoy King’s work most when it relishes in the day-to-day life of its protagonist for the first third of the book before truly diving into its horror/supernatural elements. The slow burn may deter some, but it works when King gives himself the time to set the stage in verbose detail before introducing something to upend it all. I wish The Tommyknockers had that time for Bobbi and Gard. 

A few of the side stories in The Tommyknockers do this quite well. Ruth Merrill’s turn as Haven’s constable and subsequent resistance to the alien change overtaking her home is a delight. The Hillman family’s struggle to come to terms with the loss of their son when he disappears during his brother’s “magic” trick is another highlight. These stories, in a microcosm, flourish when they spend a decent amount of time on the day-to-day, proportional to the “holy shit” moments that follow. 

The novel is like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering the residents of Haven into its cascading mass of Tommyknocker influence. The ending explodes it into snowy chunks and leaves many questions unanswered while others are tied up neatly. It’s a serviceable ending, if similar to many of King’s others and slightly less poignant. 

The Tommyknockers was middle-of-the-road Stephen King for me. It struggled to balance its disparate elements with grace, and the result was a muddled story without as much momentum as his other work. It was fine and perfectly listenable, but it lacked the punch I’ve come to know and love from King. 

Rating: The Tommyknockers – 6.0/10

-Cole

The Old (Stephen) King Cole Tracker

I’m just a merry old soul who wants to read all of Stephen King’s work, mainly to impress my notoriously easy-to-impress friend Dylan. Here’s a full King tracker with links to my reviews. 

• Pet Sematary: 9.0/10
• The Shining: 9.5/10
• The Body: 9.0/10
• The Green Mile: 9.0/10
• Misery: 8.5/10
• It: 8.0/10
• 11/22/63: 9.5/10
• Night Shift: 8.0/10
• Doctor Sleep: 7.5/10
• Christine: 7.0/10