The Old Man has lost a little speed off his fastball but when you are as good of a writer as King is, it doesn't make all that much difference. There are certain repeated themes, phrases and subplots that are recognizable in The Institute from several of King's other works as well as a few deliberate callbacks to creations or adaptations that King liked, or in the case of Kubrick's The Shining, did not like at all. King remains a master at quickly creating realistic characters with minimal description who nonetheless feel as if you've known them for years. So you care when good or more often, bad things happen to them. At a little over 500 pages in hardcover this is not a short time investment but because King is such a compelling storyteller I think most readers will feel that time flies past while reading.
Well, what's it about? I don't want to talk too much about that. In some respects it's a mashup of King's previous novels Firestarter and Dead Zone, with a little Dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort thrown in with a hefty base of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series--that is Harry Potter if an even more sadistic Dolores Umbridge was in charge of everything. Might be some Nurse Ratched elements as well. Twelve year old Luke Ellis is a certifiable genius whose intelligence is off the charts. Even by gifted standards, he's an anomaly. But that's not his most unusual trait. No, Luke has telekinesis. His telekinesis is weak but it's noticeable. When Luke concentrates or is under severe emotional strain, he can move things with his mind. His parents know about this but just accept it as part of his gifts. They are more surprised to learn just how smart their son is.
In the same week that they discover that Luke at twelve, is ready to simultaneously attend MIT and Harvard, Luke's parents are murdered. Luke is kidnapped and taken to an unnamed remote facility in Maine. There, doctors and guards watch over a number of preteen and young teen boys and girls, all of whom, like Luke, have either psychic powers or potential.
The Institute's staff ruthlessly train, torture, and brainwash the children to get them to express this power. This is all done in the Front Half of the facility. Once they either show potential or show that they are incapable of certain actions, the children are moved to the Back Half. Nobody ever comes back from Back Half. The facility's boss is the dour and quiet Mrs. Sigsby, who has the same sympathy for children that a lab scientist has for her rats or monkeys.
They are quite deliberate allusions to Abu Gharib, Mengele, and Guantamano. The real question though is the same one King posed at the end of The Stand, --Do we think people ever learn anything?
Although King dedicated this book to his grandsons there is , as with many of his recent works, an elegiac sensitivity that suffuses the entire narrative. In the afterword I wasn't too surprised to discover that in part the book was also dedicated to one of King's best friends of forty years and the only person besides King's wife who read and vetted King's original manuscripts. That fellow just recently passed away.
This was a worthwhile read.
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
