The Tommyknockers [Mass Market Paperback]

Stephen King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 7, 2012

Don't open the door...

Bobbi Anderson and the other good folks of Haven, Maine, have sold their souls to reap the rewards of the most deadly evil this side of hell.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

King's new novel, a numbing variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, offers its own best commentary on itself. Nearly one-third of the way through the 560-page book, protagonist Bobbi Anderson, a writer of westerns, describes what she has stumbled upon in her backyard to her friend Gardener, an alcoholic poet: "It was a flying saucer. No self-respecting science-fiction writer would put one in his story, and if he did, no self-respecting editor would touch it with a ten-foot pole.. . . It is the oldest wheeze in the book." After the vampirish Tommyknockers in the spaceship have wrought their evil magic upon the inhabitants of Haven (Tommyknockers live on the blood of comatose humans circulated through mind-reading PCs connected to VCRs), the unfortunate townspeople have, it seems, "become" (the word, over-used and never explained, is King's) "something else" (the vague words are also the author's). The "gadgets" of the town "become" living beings that kill (there are marauding hedge cutters and Coke machines, Electrolux vacuums, Yamaha motorcycles and flying smoke detectors ) and The Tommyknockers is consumed by the rambling prose of its author. Taking a whole town as his canvas, King uses too-broad strokes, adding cartoonlike characters and unlikely catastrophes like so many logs on a fire; ultimately he loses all semblance of style, carefully structured plot or resonant meaning, the hallmarks of his best writing. It is clear from this latest work that King himself has "become" a writing machinethis is his fourth novel since It was published 14 months ago; the faithful readers not overwhelmed by his latest fictional "gadget" are likely to wonder, as poet Gardener does near the novel's end: "What had it all been for? He realized miserably that he was never going to know."
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Yet another mammoth horror novel from King, this dark tale depicts a small town's fatal encounter with creatures from outer space. Events start with Roberta Anderson, a writer of Old West novels, unearthing a flying saucer on her remote wooded property. Five hundred pages later alcoholic poet Jim Gardener, Roberts's former English teacher, finds himself aboard the flying saucer in outer space. In the interval the creatures (Tommyknockers) destroy the citizenry of Haven, Maine. While this is not one of King's more original novels, it does have plenty of blood and guts, macabre humor, and a well-wrought realization of the New England countryside. No doubt King's legions of fans will demand it. BOMC main selection. James B. Hemesath, Adams State Coll. Lib., Alamosa, Col.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 752 pages
• Publisher: Signet (August 7, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451156609
• ISBN-13: 978-0451156600
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (199 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #241,680 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why the negativity? This is a gripping read, December 6, 1999

By 

Edward Aycock (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Tommyknockers (Mass Market Paperback)

Okay, to be honest, the book gets gripping after one slogs through the first 200 pages. Before that, we spend a looong time getting to know Bobbi Anderson and Jim Gardener. But once the book expands its narrative to include the members of the entire town of Haven, the book does not let up.

The first two hundred pages, and a bit too much techno jargon prevent me from fully bestowing this book with a full 5 stars. King has clearly done his homework on this book, but after a while, all the descriptions of the souped up gadgets made my eyes swim (much as Tolkien's endless landscape descriptions in "Lord of the Rings" made me wish good old John Ronald Reuel had pioneered the minimalist writing style.)

The Tommyknockers, while not my favorite King novel, is a great effort. people may complain about an anti-climactic ending (They must have read the ending to a different book, the climax I read was rather exciting)or the fact that the characters seem to stumble down a path of destruction. Well, that happens in life as well. I think King's writing is at the top of its form... I think the scene when Jim Gardener drunkenly ruins an all too polite cocktail party with a rant against the destructive powers of nuclear energy is one of the most powerful scenes in all of King's canon, and one of the most chilling without benefit of any super- or preter- natural interference. Despite all of the evil the characters in his novels have faced (indeed, Pennywise the clown makes a brief appearance in a city sewer, which is odd as this tale is to have taken place 3 years after the events in IT... one thinks King's editors add the dates of the events of his novels to coincide with the publication dates and not to correspond with when the novels were actually written. We also encounter a minor character from the Dead Zone, and "blink and you'll miss them" references to "Firestarter" and "Salem's Lot.") the novel makes it explicit that the things that men do in the name of scientific progress can be equally as terrifying as a young girl posessed of psionic abilities. True, the analogy between nuclear power and the Tommyknockers polluting the air is about as subtle as Annie Wilkes expressing discontent, but hey, it was written in the 80's, but it loses none of its power. (No pun intended).

This is a very good book, probably one of the most down to earth (again, no pun intended) science fiction/horror tales around. And that's the good thing about King... he writes wonderfully engrossing tales that are accessible to everyone. And that, to quote Martha, is a good thing.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book for people of a certain age., January 29, 2006

By 

Lavinia Whately (PA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tommyknockers (Mass Market Paperback)

I am about the same age as Stephen King and have read his works throughout my adult life. I think most readers are too young to appreciate this book.
Stephen King's early works, assembelled in chronological order, are all symbolic stories of stages in his own life. "Carrie" is about high school, "Salem's Lot" about love and loss in early adulthood, "The Shining" about the anxieties of fatherhood. "It" is about the reworking of childhood issues in mid-life. All great fiction talks to us on a subconcious level.

"Tommy Knockers" is about aging and death. Time possesses and mutates all of us, makes our teeth and hair fall out, truncates our dreams, makes us unrecognizable from our youthful selves. This is a sad book, and unlike King's earlier works the protagonists have no power to fight such an enemy. Affirming the value of love, however futile, in the face of death is the point of the book.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Meet the new boss...same as the old boss", January 12, 2006

By 

00 - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tommyknockers (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) (School & Library Binding)

The tommyknockers, by Stephen King clocks in at over 700 page's in paperback. It is a story that when broken down, looks like something we've seen before. However that is the gift Stephen brings us with his style of writing; The ability to make something ordinary extraordinary.

The Base: Tommyknockers is about a U.F.O. found buried in the woods of maine by an author named Bobbi. She starts digging at it, and keeps digging...and digging. Her friend Gard show's up, he's a poet, on his last dime, mile, and so forth. Together they continue to work to unearth the object they have found in the ground...

The Plot: Soon things start changing in Haven, the town nearby...people begin inventing things that require batteries...a little boy named Hilly disappears...and suddenly Gard realizes he really is all alone in the world...or at least in Haven.

Character Development: Superb. King's main character's in this lil adventure are Gard and Bobbi, however, we are virtually introduced to nearly the entire town of Haven! Each citizen play's a distinct role...and as the day's go by, the inventions get greater, the people get weirder, and more is unearthed of the ship in the woods...

Mood and Atmosphere: It's not hard to imagine yourself in the shoes of the characters in the book, including the Tommyknockers, which is the name from an old nursery ryhme given to the alien or aliens that crashed or planted the ship on Earth. Haven is all-town America, where apple pie, Chevy Pickup's, and the occasional U.F.O. sighting occurs.

Personal comments: I liked the book. At first you feel like you're slogging through a bit because you're saturated with different characters, like "The Stand", however something interesting is always taking place, and also taking you further into the meat of the story. What is in the woods? Who are the Tommyknockers? Why is everyone's teeth falling out? And where did Hilly Brown go? King's ability to take a basic plot of an alien spacecraft buried on earth and shower it with unique idea's, intricate dialogue, and fearsome, all out painful scenario's is superb. This is a large story, as it really does in a sense, deal with the entire earth (in broad perspective) and not just some town's in Maine like Haven. In the end you'll be on the edge of you're seat...you'll gain new friends back, and lose some old one's, all the while wondering...just where at underfoot the Tommyknockers might be.

NOTE: The title comes from of course, a song sang during an ironic scene in the book. King is able to take Epic, sweeping stories and entertwine them with the everyday thing's we see, hear, smell, taste, or touch in our live's. I also grinned when noticing some, oh, familiar ideas abound that reminded me of other King stories like "IT" and "Maximum Overdrive".

When rating a book like this, I take it for what it is, not for what I want it to be, which in some people's case is never what it is. Instead of comparing it to every other King story, I judged it solely as a book called the Tommyknockers...and as much as I enjoyed it, I'd say this book indeed stands alone.