Roadwork [Paperback]

Richard Bachman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1983

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. When a highway project leaves him unemployed and threatens to destroy his home, one man takes on the forces of progress as he embarks on a vengeful showdown of epic proportions. A novel originally written under the Richard Bachman pseudonym.

--This text refers to the School & Library Binding edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

King mesmerizes the reader. -- Chicago Sun-Times --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

About the Author

Stephen King, the world's bestselling novelist, was educated at the University of Maine at Orono. He lives with his wife, the novelist Tabitha King, and their children in Bangor, Maine.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: New English Library Ltd (June 1, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0450055663
• ISBN-13: 978-0450055669
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,496,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent are the Dark Tower novels, Cell, From a Buick 8, Everything's Eventual, Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and Bag of Bones. His acclaimed nonfiction book, On Writing, was also a bestseller. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

129 of 133 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars King's "mainstream" novel should not be overlooked, October 2, 2005

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Roadwork (Mass Market Paperback)

I think it's safe to say that Roadwork is King's least-read novel, largely because it represented an attempt on King's part to go straight, to prove he could write a mainstream novel. Written in between 'Salem's Lot and The Shining, Roadwork was released in 1981 as Richard Bachman's third novel. I first read it as a young teenager, and I no longer remembered a great deal about it - except that, at the time, I did find it somewhat boring. King himself has never gone so far as to call Roadwork a good novel. Reading it again now, though, I was surprised by the sophistication and emotional power of the story. You almost have to have experienced some of the pressures of adulthood to really relate to the protagonist, Barton George Dawes, and it really doesn't matter that the story is imbedded in the socioeconomic worries of the early 1970s. In its essence, Roadwork is the story of a man pushed beyond his means of coping with change.

On the face of things, Dawes doesn't have it that bad. He has a good wife, a good job, and friends. Inside, though, he is suffering miserably - and has been since his little boy died of a brain tumor three years earlier. Having never allowed himself to grieve properly, his mind proves unable to bear the disruptions caused by a new local road construction project. He's worked for the same laundry since he got out of school, and it will have to relocate elsewhere because of the roadwork - and he is the one responsible for finding a new site. He's lived in the same house since he got married, and it too has a fateful date with a wrecking ball - and he has to find a new home for him and his wife. It's just too much for him, and he can't do it. He lets the deal fall through on the new laundry site, which costs him his job, and he doesn't even go looking for a new house. Haunted by dreams of his dead son, he's already a broken man - even before he loses his wife and basically his whole life.

We the readers basically watch Bart Dawes go insane as the days pass. We watch him lie to his wife and to himself, drink himself into nightly stupors, procure destructive objects from dangerous men, and plot revenge on those who have taken away the few things in life he could cling to. At the center of his problem is Charlie; George can't understand why his son had to die, and he can't bear the thought of his home, Charlie's home, being destroyed. The plot is somewhat analogous to that of the film Falling Down. Even as we watch Dawes do some terrible things, we can't help but sympathize with a man so beaten down by the cruel vagaries of life.

King has said that Roadwork was in some ways a product of the death of his mother. After working hard to raise King and his brother single-handedly, she died just as King's material success as a writer was beginning. The book served as a vehicle to let him work through his own emotional issues over his loss. Why does a loved one have to die? That question permeates this novel. It's a very personal story, but it is one almost any adult reader can relate to very well. King fans who have passed this novel by would do well to go back and give it a chance - it's much different from King's other novels, but it is a surprisingly impressive exploration of emotional disintegration.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A tale of the first energy crisis..., December 20, 2002

By 

Joe Kenney "buttergun" (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roadwork (Mass Market Paperback)

Roadwork starts off suspensefully, as a crazed man with a knack for carrying on conversations with himself buys a high-caliber rifle and a .44 Magnum revolver. However, the explosive result of this purchase, which you might expect to be soon coming, doesn't arrive until the very end of the book. To get there, we must wade through some very dense, overly-detailed (but very well written) exposition.

Bart Dawes has finally been pushed too far; at age 40, he's lost his only son to a brain tumor, and now the public works commission has decided to build a new highway system, which will not only go through (and thereby erase) the building Bart's worked in for the past twenty years, but also his home. Bart must move, but he refuses to. In the process, Bart will lose his job, his friends, his wife, and his sanity, but he stands strong in his refusal to leave his home, reminiscent in a way of Hank Stamper in Ken Kesey's "Sometimes a Great Notion."

Roadwork is different than anything Stephen King (well, Richard Bachman, to be precise) has written; it's more a character study than anything else. As King himself wrote in his "Why I Was Bachman" introduction to the first edition of The Bachman Books, "Roadwork is probably the worst of the lot, because it tries so hard to be good." And that's the whole of it: Roadwork reads like it's been written by a young writer who's trying hard to appeal to the literary crowd. It's verbose, packed with introspection, and moves along at a snail's pace; the total opposite of the Bachman/King extravaganza The Running Man.

It's no surprise that King relates that Roadwork was written at a time when he was trying to impress those elitists whom would ask him at cocktail parties if he'd ever write "something important." (Interestingly, in the second edition of the Bachman Books, in a foreword titled "The Importance of Being Bachman," King states that Roadwork is now his favorite of the Bachman bunch.)

This is not to say Roadwork is a bad book, or even a boring book. It takes dedication to keep turning those pages when you begin reading it, but in time you adjust to the casual pace of the narrative, you begin to learn (and respect) who Bart Dawes is, and you root for him, no matter how nuts he's become.

The ending finally picks up the pace, as Dawes accepts his fate and brings those guns into play, as well as a generous supply of explosives. In that regard, Roadwork packs the suspenseful punch you'd normally associate with the books under Richard Bachman's name. But with its slow pace, grim view on the world (the Bachman view is generally that life sucks, and terrible things happen for no reason), combined with its firm rooting in the 1970s (which might make it inaccessible to those who weren't around in that decade), Roadwork might not appeal to the average King/Bachman fan. However, for those looking for an intense character study that slowly builds to an explosive climax, it comes recommended.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There was bound to be a split decision on this one, August 6, 2001

By 

Brian Seiler (Tomball, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Roadwork (Mass Market Paperback)

There are really two classes of King readers. The first are the early-career lovers. These are people who like suspense (though I have yet to learn how you get that from a forum where the subject controls the pace) and raw plot motion, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's definitely not a very rich or complete approach to take. The second group are the late-career fans of work like Hearts in Atlantis and Desperation, who generally give a more deep and introspective read to the work and aren't as concerned with things moving along at a brisk clip. For those who may be wondering, I am probably best classified as one of the latter.

The first group will hate this novel. Rather than being a continuously moving story about a collection of things happening to people, Roadwork is essentially an examination of the destruction of one man. And let me tell you, that character examination is SUBLIME. The only character that I have read in a King work who was clearly better defined was Johnny Smith from The Dead Zone, and this book would best be compared to that earlier work.

There is very little to be bored with in this book if you're not worried about things always happening. If you are, you might be better advised to move on and leave this one alone--there aren't a lot of bodies or explosions. The atmosphere and characterization, however, are superb. I read this as part of the Bachman Books, which have regrettably been taken off the market as a set, and I was impressed by the depth and expression that King managed in this side-project (not reflected in his other work under the pseudonym).

There are problems with this book, though. For one thing, it is absolutely mired in the seventies. Younger readers may get lost trying to relate to such a thing as an oil embargo. To some extent, that intrinsic association holds back the novel by keeping the contemporary reader from truly getting a feel for the environment, but it didn't hurt me too much (and I was born after the whole embargo thing was resolved).

I find nothing more refreshing than seeing an author liberating himself from a genre where he had previously been caged up, and King does that in this book. Instead of incorporating elements of fantasy, as he is so often wont to do, he stuck with reality in this story, and it pays off. You can see the faces of some characters you encounter further down the line, as well, particularly in the mobster (who later became a character in Thinner, after a name change and some tweaking, I imagine). This is a masterpiece of TRUE Stephen King writing, and I don't miss the usual fantastic elements at all. I'd recommend this for anybody looking for a good read.