Book Review - Cell

Stephen King is really the writer of my youth,  he is one of the authors that whet my appetite for the written word, I started reading King novels in my early teens and when I say early  I mean 11.  I was happily working my way through Jubilee Gardens Library and had long grown out of the children's section and the librarians seeing my love of the written word very kindly allowed me into the adult section and I read voraciously.  I took home my quota of 10 books every 3 or 4 days and I read them all.  No wonder my eyesight is shot!

I think "The Stand" was my first King novel and I just fell in love, I fell in love with his writing style, with the depth of his ideas and found through his writing a love of the science fiction and horror genre's.  When asked what it is about King's work that I love so much I have to say it's the fact that what he writes about in books like The Stand and in this one Cell is the possibility that it could happen... and that in itself is the most terrifying idea of all.

The Cell is based on the premise that a virus could be transmitted by cell phone... Think about it... just for a moment, how many people have a mobile phone?  Millions? Billions?  What if an event happened that every one of those phones rang at the same moment and transmitted a virus and within hours everyone who received those calls either becomes insane or just dies?

Can you imagine that?  Can you conceive of such a thing?  

Well Stephen King does and he does it so well, so believably that it scared the living daylights out of me.   I read this book cover to cover in a matter of about 3 days and at nigh on 400 pages that's no small feat. I mean one does have to eat and feed other people.

But to me the overriding element I took away from this story was "love", the love of a man for his child, what he would go through, how far he would travel how hard he would search to find and save his son. 

This book is a must read although having said that you may never feel as comfortable answering your mobile phone again if you do read it.