Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It is the right of the author to touch upon subjects, even openly discuss them in depth, that will cause distress, consternation, and even anger, and this is absolute in works of fiction, this is imperative to further the discourse of events in the world that have strode alongside us like a demon, a dark shadow whispering to us that we are not in control, we are just forces of agency in a world of darkness.
The use of Covid as a device is understandable in a time where the psychological effects of the disease are still being spoken of, still finding ways to destroy lives, of punishing us for our collective hubris in our sense of being the only creatures on the planet who can shape the world. What must be maintained and focused upon is the reason behind the terror, the mental dissociation between emotional acceptance and forced reality, for true terror is not in ghosts, ghouls, and events containing scary monsters, but in the sheer evil found in the minds of humanity; whether through the actions of those who deny illness, or the insipid actions which take root in fundamental belief, of using another human being to progress a theory as one would see a rat in a maze and claim it to benefit the greater good.
Stephen King’s Holly is an exclamation, an interjection against the will of those who seek an address of disregarding scientific boundaries, and with the admirable character of Holly Gibney not only marking her return as a favourite of the latter novels by the master of Horror, but being part of an elite group to actually have her name adorn the title, a character of huge significance in the vein of Delores Claibourne, Carrie, and Rose Madder, a woman to carry an entire emotion, an entire book.
Covid is in the background of the novel; after all it is a reflection of our times, our mindset, and should have a place in a novel who frames such things with great clarity…and yet the idea behind the tale, the tense descriptions of human depravity in the face of evidence contrary to the position held is filled with its own horrors, with its disgrace of Time, of the predator fuelled by insanity and not cold sexual desire. The juxtaposition of the two elements that circle the hero’s investigation, the weight of examination, the loss of her mother, the state of division between people dealing with the possibility of a death that isn’t of natural causes…Holly could be seen as perhaps Stephen King’s most human experience in literature form.
A novel of scrutiny, one that deals with human behaviour in a way that mirrors our own sense of reality in these days of dark misunderstandings, Holly is a natural read, a convincing tale in a world of modern cynicism.
Ian D. Hall