Scribner
Jan. 24, 2006
384 Pages
The first 30 pages of Stephen King's Cell read like the screen direction of a George Romero film, to whom the book is dedicated. If I had picked it up for my own enjoyment, I would have put it right back down. Yet I soldiered on.
It was a good thing I did, because Cell got much, much better. The premise is simple -- Clayton Riddell, a thirty-something illustrator with an estranged wife and a young son, is in Boston after selling his comic book to a publisher. That's when The Pulse hits: a mysterious signal transmitted across cell phones that turns normal people into homicidal phone-crazies. Clay, as well as others who weren't affected, must do what they can to survive as the world goes to Hell.
As with most of King's books, there is nothing spectacular about the writing style -- it's good, make no mistake, but it has a filmic quality, the bulk of his language literal and concrete so the reader clearly sees what he's talking about but has to bring his or her own emotions and associations to the table. Where he really shines is instead with his characters. In this sudden savage post-apocalyptic world, no one is a hero, and everyone is believable. Clay is driven by his desire to get to Kent Pond to meet up with his wife and son, even while he is plagued by the knowledge that they are probably already dead -- or worse. Even as he tries to be the rock, panic looms at the edges of Tom's calm and caring demeanor. And Alice Maxwell? A 15-year-old girl from the suburbs who watched her mother bite through a cab driver's neck, she has moments of strength and resolve greater than the male protagonist. But she is still a 15-year-old girl. When she teeters over that razor's edge of sanity, her gripping terror is believable, too. She isn't a badass, but she isn't the stereotypical helpless hysterical little girl, either. She is refreshingly competent.
Perhaps the greatest strength of Cell is that King knows how to tell a story. One might wonder how zombie people can drive a story for so long -- I certainly did -- but trust me when I say that it gets more complicated and more interesting. The Pulse that created the phone-crazies is only the beginning of the mayhem, and the characters, as well as the reader, are presented with escalating, incremental horrors. By the last 50 pages, you can't help wonder, "How is anyone going to escape a horrible, horrible death?" But you can hope.
Considering the premise of the book involves people turning into zombies because of cell phones and only gets stranger from that point on, I rarely found myself in a state of disbelief. Everything that happened was in keeping with the world King had constructed. In fact, amid the zombie people, psychic powers and spooky mix CDs, the only thing that gave me skeptic pause was when Alice not only said she loved cyberpunk, but was able to name an author of the genre.
Cell is an enjoyable escape. Even if you don't toss your cell phone and live without, as King does, you are going to feel a little twinge the next time someone says, "Can you hear me now? Good."
