entertainment section 1st graders_2017 Entertainment section | Page 10

Stephen King’s enthralling “Under the Dome”
(2009) dreamed up a small Maine town thrown into
a surreal situation: The place was suddenly covered
by an invisible, impermeable dome. It’s a sprawling
book with a big cast of characters, but the drama of
this crisis brings every one of them into sharp focus.
It’s one of his best books, drawing its terror from
human nature, not from a voyage into fearsome
fantasyland.
Now he and his son Owen King have attempted
something similar in “Sleeping Beauties.” The small
town is Dooling, somewhere in Appalachia within
reach of Wheeling, W. Va.’s television and radio
signals. The strange situation is this: Women who
fall asleep don’t wake up, and they begin growing
tendrils that are big trouble. The tendrils turn into cocoons, and it’s tempting to brush
those cocoons away. This is ill-advised. The sleeping angel who looks so peaceful
may gouge out an eye if her floss is mussed.
Like “Under the Dome,” “Sleeping Beauties” is straightforwardly written. There are
no long, dreamy passages in italics here. That’s the good news; the less happy
news is that this co-authored book is sleepy in its own right. It too has a lot of
characters, but very few of them spring to life, and many of them seem repetitive.
Without speculating on what the father-son writing process was like, it feels as
though some kind of politesse kept this 700-page book from being usefully
tightened.