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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some parts are autobiographical, February 3, 2007
"The Body" is a novella (shorter than a novel and longer than a short story), and was originally published as one of four novellas in the collection "Different Seasons" (1982). The book "Different Seasons" contains one story for each season, and "The Body" is subtitled "Fall from Innocence".
In "The Body" we are in the company of four 12-year-old boys who are very good friends. The leader of the group is Chris, a tough but smart guy from a down-and-out family with a drunken father. Chris is trying to break out of the destiny his background is forcing him into, and he's the real hero of the story.
Gordie is more the intellectual and sensitive type and is second in command in the group. Gordie tells the story in the first person and sounds very much like Stephen King's alter ego. (The adult Gordie, in writing the story, tells briefly how he has become a successful writer of horror books.)
The last two members of the group are Teddy, the wild one, and Vern, the cautious one. Neither Vern nor Teddy are leaders but they are each very unique and real boys, and almost as important to the story as Chris and Gordie.
Chris, Gordie, Teddy and Vern set out on an adventure, a "pilgrimage" to see the dead body of a boy from another town. Their trek stretches out over two days, much longer than they expected, and involves several unexpected encounters and dangerous situations.
What makes "The Body" such a wonderful story is the way we can relate to these four boys and their lives and the way they interact with each other. Stephen King does a fantastic job of writing about people in a way that makes them seem completely real and authentic. We think back to our own childhood and the struggles and the friendships and the pain of growing up. We nod in agreement to many of the things Stephen King tells us about what he has discovered as being the important things in life.
It is this honesty and insight into human nature that makes "The Body" such a good story.
The audio version of "The Body" lasts almost six hours and is read by Frank Muller, who does a great job. If you're not into audio books then it might be a better idea to buy "Different Seasons" as a printed book instead of "The Body", and get an additional three Stephen King novellas.
The movie "Stand By Me" (1986) is based on "The Body" and was directed by Rob Reiner. The movie follows the novella quite closely, although many minor things are changed / omitted / added as is always the case when a book is turned into a movie. The most important difference is that Gordie becomes the main character instead of Chris.
Included in the DVD version of "Stand By Me" is a 37-minute "featurette" with interviews with Stephen King, Rob Reiner and several of the actors (now all adult). Stephen King mentions that he thinks it's interesting that Rob Reiner made Gordie the main character, and that he had no objection to this change in emphasis between Gordie and Chris. Stephen King also confirms that much of "The Body" is autobiographical, in that he used several experiences from his own childhood in the story.
Highly recommended, both "The Body" and "Stand By Me".
Rennie Petersen
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
good book, July 13, 2004
By A Customer
it was a pretty good book. and unlike that person who wrote that other review, i had no problem with the language. i did however have a problem with the language in his review, cause i have no clue what any of that meant, because "that isn't how most people talk" and i had no problem with the adjectives, because stephen king used adjectives normal, everyday people who aren't teachers, actually understand, unlike the ones used in the other review for this book.
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63 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A matter of taste but quite enthralling once it gets going, January 4, 2000
No great fan of King, I honestly felt like abandoning this taped reading of <The Body> after the first of the 8 sides; but I decided to stick with it and was glad I did. What turned me off right off the bat was the scatology that so many writers deem absolutely necessary to succeed in a novel or script today. Having been a teacher for too many years and having grown quite fed up with language pollution in the young and the mis-called "mature adult," I find myself avoiding like the plague all company--in real life or on the printed page--that has an arsenal of adjectives limited to variations on two or three words. And I do not buy the argument that asserts "but that's the way people really talk." Now for what I like very much about this novella. It is a combination of the ancient epic of "Gilgamesh" (why must men die?), the "Odyssey" (a series of harrowing adventures leading to self-awareness), "Huckleberry Finn" (male bonding), and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (incipient author learns about life). Add to that list any of the thousands that fit the bill, and you have a very derivative work. But so is "Hamlet" and therefore the derivations are not necessarily a Bad Thing. The youngsters who take the Great Journey to find the corpse that gives this work its title are not particularly desirable beings; but King is careful to show how little choice they had in their development up to that point in their lives. On the other hand, they are utterly believable, which puts them many notches above characters in other King novels, let alone most novels by any author. Some of the incidents--the one with Chopper the dog who does not live up to his myth and the one with Lardass who deliberately loses a pie-eating contest in a very Monty Pythonesque way--are hysterically funny, almost in a Jean Shepherd vein. Frank Muller gives a very sympathetic reading. If you are not put off by the language and do not think that a plot is utterly necessary for novella, you might very well enjoy this mid-20th Century epic prose poem of youth, life, and death.
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