Nothing new under the dome

Rarely has one read a novel in which words are spent so freely to so little effect. King prefers to tell rather than show, ceaselessly explaining this and that as if addressing a class of infants prior to a trip to the zoo. It is like being buttonholed by a bar-room bore about his stamp collection. Wherever possible King puts into parentheses all manner of stuff we don’t need to know. Nothing is left undescribed, uncommented upon or unanalysed. If his characters need to travel A to B, every turn on the road is noted. It is like having the satnav on constantly. Nor are any of the characters’ thoughts left in their heads. We learn what everyone’s thinking and hear every banal word they utter. The babel is incessant and indiscriminate, a form of verbal torture.

The setting for Under The Dome is Chester’s Mill, which is purportedly in the state of Maine. If such a place exists, and if it is populated by the kind of people King has stuffed it with, one can’t help but feel they deserve everything that happens to them in the novel. The epigraph is taken from Talkin’ At The Texaco, a song by the country singer James McMurtry, in which he hymns small-town values: “It’s a small town, son,” sings McMurtry, “and we all support the team.” McMurtry is sincere; King, surely, is being ironic. Even before Chester’s Mill becomes the site of a national disaster, it is the kind of malevolent, parochial acre where bad things inevitably happen.

On what comes to be known as Dome Day, however, “bad” is a magnificent understatement. First an invisible dome covers the town, preventing anyone from going out or in. There is a scientific explanation for this, but unless you possess a PhD in Hokum Studies it does not bear explaining. Suffice it to say that while the dome seals in Chester Mill’s population, they are still able to breathe. Even more importantly, their mobiles work, allowing them to communicate with the outside world which, of course, is deeply concerned about their plight. We know this because CNN is soon on the scene. But how long they have before things become life-threatening is anyone’s guess.

In the meantime the fatalities pile up like grouse on the Glorious Twelfth. King’s attitude to death is odd. Words such as jaunty, flippant and childish spring to mind. This is death as seen through the eyes of Bruce Willis or Matt Damon. A plane crashes into the dome, killing all on board. When a boy is inspired to fire a bullet at the dome, hoping it will explode and disintegrate, it pings back into his eye. In a scene borrowed from M*A*S*H, he is given a transfusion of blood that is not his type. The manual which the retired doctor uses as an aide-memoire as he operates is about as much use as How To Cook In A Bedsit. King, though, revels in the gore: a saw whines through a limb, bone dust clogs the air, a clot of jellied blood oozes out of the patient’s eye. After the boy dies the doctor turns to his assistant and says: “If this were an ordinary situation, I’d maintain life support and ask the parents about organ donation. But of course, if this were an ordinary situation, he wouldn’t be here.” Half an hour later the doctor himself is dead from a heart attack. Flies drop with more fanfare.

You may say that this is a bit excessive and I would not disagree. King, though, does not exercise restraint, except when it comes to Chester Mill’s inhabitants’ reaction to their plight. Imagine you were locked inside a dome with no immediate prospect of release and the very real prospect of expiring. Would you be dropping by Sweetbriar Rose, the local diner, for supper as usual, miffed only because there were no hot dishes on offer? The degree to which complacency grips the tiny Maine town is remarkable and – if one stretches credulity to breaking point, like a dry strip of gum – admirable in its way. Except that’s not how it reads. One expects a novel such as this to take liberties, but instead of being swept up in the plot, the overwhelming sensation is of being taken for a mug.

Under the Dome’s hero is Dale Barbara, nicknamed Barbie, a veteran of the war in Iraq. He is now a hamburger flipper and about to leave Chester’s Mill because of an altercation with a gang of bampots who are out to get him. The dome, alas, puts paid to that idea and, thanks to a word in the president’s ear from his former commander, Barbie is bumped up to colonel and given the role of white knight. His chief adversaries are Jim Rennie, a corrupt big cheese, and his son, Junior, who, when not abusing his position as a temporary lawman, is murdering women and dumping them in a cupboard, where he can grope them without a murmur of dissent.

Jim and Junior provide some of Under The Dome’s best moments, which is to say its worst. One incident among many stands out, when Jim bashes to death the local preacher and Junior, timing his arrival to perfection, volunteers to dispose of the body. Comic it certainly is but not, one suspects, intentionally. A bloodied rug must be got rid of, which Junior says must be buried. “Thank God it’s not the wall-to-wall carpet you used to have in here,” is his bright-eyed take on proceedings.

While all of this is going on it’s easy to forget that Chester’s Mill is in a situation “that’s unprecedented in the history of the world”. If many of the town’s citizens seem somewhat unfazed by this, one shares their sang froid. As Under The Dome grinds on, the carnage intensifies, cliché is layered upon cliché and the pseudo-science does your head in, you begin to lose the ability to snap the book closed. I’m not sure if it’s possible to be suffocated by bad writing, but I came very close. In that respect – and in that respect only – Stephen King does a marvellous job of putting you firmly in the shoes of his hapless characters.

Under The Dome by Stephen King is published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £19.99.