You guys will never guess where Stephen King is taking us next, folks. That’s right, Maine! Specifically, in the deep woods of our only single-syllable state, there’s a mysterious compound where children with special powers are imprisoned and used for their talents in nefarious ways. The Institute is a dark subversion of the magic school trope set in our world, and it’s a compelling but harrowing romp.
The Institute opens with Tim Jamieson, a former police officer, at the airport. The gate agent offers progressively larger rewards for someone to sit out the coming flight. Once the reward reaches its peak, Tim feels the need to pounce. He takes the money and starts hitchhiking up the coast. He lands in a small Georgia town, where he snags a night knocker job and begins to live a simple life. King spends a surprising amount of time letting Tim settle into this quiet rhythm, building a sense that we’re about to read a very different kind of novel. Our story shifts focus to Luke Ellis, a brilliant kid who sometimes moves small objects when he gets excited or emotional. He has far outpaced his classmates and is already considering college as a pre-teen. One night, Luke is viciously kidnapped, and his parents are killed. He is taken to a complex in the forests of Maine, where other gifted kids are held and experimented on. Imprisoned and scared, Luke befriends the other kids and endures the experiments while scheming to escape. Tim re-enters the picture later, but I won’t spoil that here.
Like most Stephen King stories, The Institute hinges on its characters. Tim feels like a classic King lead: a white dude who escapes the turmoil of his life into a simpler space. The setup is so detailed that I initially assumed Tim would be our primary protagonist, and I rolled my eyes during the lengthy prologue. But then, King introduced the plucky and clever Luke Ellis, who anchored the remainder of the novel. Luke is a kid. He talks like a kid, albeit a crazily smart one. His genius allows him to carry the brunt of the book because he has sharp ideas and interesting things to say. His tenure at the titular institute is an interesting thematic parallel to his early childhood smarts. He is trapped, in a way, by his own abilities. Luke managed a normal-ish life with his parents, but he was always burdened by his intelligence. Even so, he was happy. The institute removes him from his happy world and plops Luke into a roiling and malevolent space where his abilities are used for nefarious purposes. King subtly suggests that Luke has always been expected to behave like a miniature adult because of his intelligence, and the Institute takes that expectation to its most horrifying extreme.
Through Luke, we experience the institute and its strange goings-on. The children earn tokens for good behavior, which they can redeem for snacks, alcohol, and cigarettes. They are in “front half,” where the experiments are run until they have nothing left to give. Then, they move to “back half,” a much more mysterious sector of the palace. The staff promise them the kids will have their memories wiped and return to their parents after a stint in back half, but Luke and his comrades have an inkling that’s not the case. The system is brutally bureaucratic, with rewards, punishments, and procedures designed to make cruelty feel routine.
The institute is a sterile and foreboding place. Staff treat the children like guinea pigs, and anything nice they say is often thinly veiled behind the promise of violence by taser (or worse). King doesn’t dwell on how the institute operates (though we get some answers later in the novel). Instead, he puts the children and staff in the environment and lets them breathe. Relationships are the heart of the book. Luke’s friendships with Kalisha, Avery, and other imprisoned kids bring heart into the darkness of the premise. The looming presence of the detached staff feels like a shadowy beast lurking in a corner. This forms a suspenseful tension King is famous for, but without the outright horror elements you might expect.
My only issue with The Institute is King’s weird pacing choices on the macro level. Tim’s prologue is interesting, but he takes a backseat with nary a mention until much later in the novel. When he returned, I legitimately questioned whether I accidentally started a different book. It all gels eventually, but it’s a jarring transition that might’ve benefitted from a more piecemeal touch.
That said, after a short adjustment period, King melded the stories together quite well. The Institute careened toward a thoughtful conclusion, and I soon forgot my issue with the jarring transition between sections of the story.
The Institute isn’t really about kids with psychic powers. It’s about kids trying to hold their own in a world conspiring against them. They have to find their humanity even as villainous adults try to strip it from them. Luke Ellis anchors the book as a real kid caught in an unimaginable nightmare. Conspiracy and violence and horror hide behind every corner, but The Institute shines brightest when it makes you care about the people within its pages.
Rating: The Institute – 9.0/10
-Cole
