The Outsider: Review

I just finished reading The Outsider, by Stephen King. This is a novel about a gruesome child rape. The evidence points to a completely unassuming man whose record is cleaner than you could imagine. The man claims to be innocent, and eventually he manages to put forward an alibi that can't be ignored. This antinomy lies at the heart of this story, confounding the minds of the characters, particularly Ralph Anderson, the lead detective on the case.

Overall, I thought this novel was meh. It was not amazing, nor was it horrible.

Strides (Spoilers)

The first half of the novel is much better than the second half of the novel. The story was set up in such a way that the plot of the story picked up quick, and I was able to get engaged from the outset. The reason I feel the need to bring this up is because of two interconnected reasons: (1) the story somewhat reminds me of BoneMan's Daughters. I won't go into what I think are the similarities; the overall point is that BoneMan's Daughters was so slow in getting the plot moving. Almost half of the novel had passed before the major inciting incident happens, and that was just frustrating. In contrast, King's The Outsider sets things in motion within the first pages, with much of the plot happening before the actual text begins. I'm thinking of the initial phase of the investigation. These scenes were either cut out or shown after the actual arrest of Terry Maitland. (2) When you combine this first point with the fact that we are talking about Stephen King, a writer notorious for having long winded intros, which he uses to build character, this was definitely surprising and refreshing.

I especially enjoyed the central premise of the novel. The book explores how people like you and I would react to a horrific crime being committed by a man that you knew personally. It also explores how people rationalize things in the face of evidence that conflicts with their worldview, highlighting how they have their prejudices which they are unwilling to throw out. Most of all, the prospect of a monster like this actually existing is one of the more terrifying things that could happen. Child molestation is probably the most disgust inducing thing a person could do, and prospect of being framed and having your DNA all over the crime scene is sickening.

There is one good plot twist in the story, which is the death of Terry Maitland. I personally was not expecting Maitland to go out like this, so this really had me excited to continue reading.

I also liked how King portrayed some of the darker parts of his story. One scene in particular that comes to mind is the scene where Fred Peterson attempts suicide. The scene is not clean or straight forward. The scene doesn't just happen, nor does the attempt even succeed, the result, instead, being much worse than he even intended. There were parts where Fred realized that he was doing it wrong and was miscalculating the effectiveness of hanging oneself. He even tries to reverse the attempt and fails, which is true to life. I appreciate the sequence primarily because of King's refusal to not romanticize the act, instead making suicide as realistic as possible.

Suicide in real life is ugly and messy. The Golden Gate Bridge is a location where one person commits suicide by jumping every 16 days. While death is 98% certain, the manner in which one dies is not just the impact with the water below, but also through drowning, as the jumper will shatter their bones and be unable to swim or even tread water; maybe the fall drives  one into unconscious and maybe it won't. When you combine this with the fact that, some of the people who have survived report having regretted the act the second they jumped, you understand that suicide is, and can only ever be understood as, cruel and messy.

Missteps (Spoilers)

I mentioned above that I thought the first half of the novel was better than the second half. This is primarily because of the ending the novel. I did not think that the ending was awful, though I was definitely left less than satisfied. What I wanted was more of the villain of the story. Much of the climax of the story is built around the actions of the outsider's puppet, who open fires on the crew with a sniper rifle before being killed. While I rather liked the exchange, in its own right, I wanted something more tense involving the outsider, itself. Instead, we received a fairly simple confrontation in the end, where they talk to the outsider before insta-killing it with a weighted sock. There are number of more specific problems that I had with regards to this ending.

The first is that the outsider was taken out too quickly. I don't expect a fight of anime proportions—the outsider was simply a shape shifter, after all—but the outsider was dying after the first hit. Worse yet, there was no surrounding context to the fight to make the outsider more intimidating. At the very least, there should have been a tense build up to the scene other than a simple approaching of his layer. The characters could have lost their lights, being forced to in inch their way around the tunnels without sight, they could have had companions picked off in the process, rather than through the sniper, but none of this happened. This is particularly frustrating given how good King is at creating suspense and tension in a scene. Why isn't it here? Much of the weight seemed to be on the pseudo-profundity of the talk in the end. This leads to the second problem.

Personally, I find the moralizing at the end to be incredibly cheesy. This is primarily because King seems to have a very different vision of morality than I do. I don't know the extent to which his books actually reflect his views, but he presents the belief that good and evil are transcendent forces in life. The "epic" scene at the end where Holly declares the outsider to be evil to provoke a reaction follows from this view. Apparently, the outsider was aware of, but was in denial of, his vile nature as a child molester. In my view, morality is rooted in a perspective, and is meaningless without, so this rang hollow and is especially implausible. Now, obviously, my view is my own, so I don't expect this to mean anything to King, himself, but I still seriously question the extent to which the outsider would actually care about our morals.

The third problem with the outsider's death is the fact that we barely know anything about him. I don't expect stories to be fully informative about their lore—the gaps left to be filled with speculation are what make lore so fun—but I finished the novel thinking that literally nothing was explained. Maybe this is a nugget for the multiverse, something that is only explained by reading most of King's catalogue; either way, I wanted more than what we got. If there was some horrifying revelation at the end about the outsider's nature, or its lore (like the subjectivity of morality), then I might have been able to let the other problems past, but there was nothing.

Another critique has to do with some of the themes presented in the book. I really did not see the point of this book, in some respects. There was a point in the novel where King pointed out that there were some conveniences in favor of the heroes of the story, and explicitly tell the audience that there is a force for good in the world, which I suppose is meant to make me have hope, I guess. This is something that was done in IT, as well. This time around, I thought he was just recycling the point. And really, I still don't understand why these forces ought to care about us, anyway.

There were other smaller issues, as well. The portrayal of Holly's character was kind of odd. It had nothing to do with her character, but with how the other characters reacted to her. There were constant comments by characters, primarily men, marveling at what an amazing woman she was, even if she was weird. I'm not sure if this is tied to her gender, or perhaps to the fact that she is so quirky, but the comments were ham-fisted and almost tongue-in-cheek, as if King was doing it on purpose. I lean towards the gender explanation, however. A pattern that I have recognized in male-written fiction is the ham-fisted attempts to let the reader know that this female character is badass. They communicate this by having their male characters marvel at how strong the woman is, and it really just comes across as trying too hard and even patronizing. King is notably "woke," as the terminology goes, so I guess it's no surprise.

Another small issue was with Bill Samuels. This character taps out of the action for the climax, due to the unbelievability of their conclusions, which is understandable, but then he is back on board at the end, after the outsider has been killed. There is no explanation for this. The implication seemed to be that Bill now believes that some shady shit happened, as he helps come up with a cover story, but there is no reason why he would believe it. It's absurd.

Finally, something that I only thought in passing, but I saw repeated in a goodreads review was that much of the dialogue was indistinguishable. There were the parts in the beginning with the interviews where a little girl being interviewed was talking like an adult. I just got the impression that she was not talking like she would if she were the age she was supposed to be.

Conclusion

Overall, I thought the book was okay. I will give it a 5/10.