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Hearts in Atlantis | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books
Category: Book
List Price: £29.99
Buy New: £8.99
You Save: £21.00 (70%)
New (6) Used (6) from £4.00
Rating:  48 reviews
Sales Rank: 1217935
Format: Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged edition
Number Of Items: 4
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 5.3 x 4.3 x 4.1
ISBN: 1840321725
EAN: 9781840321722
ASIN: 1840321725
Publication Date: September 14, 1999
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: outerbox wripped last of stock
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Stephen King's collection of five stories about '60s kids reads like a novel. The best is "Low Men in Yellow Coats," about Bobby Garfield of Harwich, Connecticut, who craves a Schwinn for his 11th birthday. But his widowed mum is impoverished and so bitter that she barely loves him. King is as good as Spielberg or Steven Millhauser at depicting an enchanted kid's-eye view of the world, and his Harwich is realistically luminous to the tiniest detail: kids bashing caps with a smoke-blackened rock; a car grille "like the sneery mouth of a chrome catfish"; a Wild Mouse carnival ride that makes kids "simultaneously sure they were going to live forever and die immediately." Bobby's mum takes in a lodger, Ted Brautigan, who turns the boy on to great books such as Lord of the Flies. Unfortunately, Ted is being hunted by yellow-jacketed men--monsters from King's Dark Tower novels who take over the shady part of town. They close in on Ted and Bobby, just as a gang of older kids menace Bobby and his girlfriend, Carol. This pointedly echoes the theme of Lord of the Flies (the one book King says he wishes he'd written): war is the human condition. Ted's mind-reading powers rub off a bit on Bobby, granting nightmare glimpses of his mum's assault by her rich, vile, jaunty boss. King packs plenty into 250 pages, using the same trick Bobby discerns in the film Village of the Damned: "The people seemed like real people, which made the make-believe parts scarier." Vietnam is the otherworldly horror that haunts the remaining four stories. In the title tale, set in 1966, University of Maine college kids play the card game Hearts so obsessively they risk flunking out and getting drafted. The kids discover sex, rock and politics, become war heroes and victims, and spend the '80s and '90s shell-shocked by change. The characters and stories are criss-crossed with connections that sometimes click and sometimes clunk. The most intense Hearts player, Ronnie Malenfant ("evil infant"), perpetrates a My Lai-like atrocity; a nice Harwich girl becomes a radical bomber. King's metaphor for lost '60s innocence is inspired by Donovan's "sweet and stupid" song about the sunken continent, and his stories hail the vanished Atlantis of his youth with deep sweetness and melancholy intelligence. --Tim Appelo
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| Customer Reviews: Read 43 more reviews...
 `60s catharsis October 7, 2008
salopian (shropshire,england)
this is stephen king explaining the `60s, without the usual cliches,to those who weren`t there. this is what it felt like living at a time of momentous change in america when the whole world, it seemed, could choose in which direction to go. this it what these stories are about,the choices we make and the consequences thereafter. as a bitter vietnam vet sums up in the latter part of the book "we had an opportunity to change everything.we actually did.instead we settled for designer jeans,two ticket`s to maria carey,frequent flier miles, james cameron`s "titanic" and retirement portfolios". awesome. read it,enjoy it and marvel at what might have been if we hadn`t sunk atlantis.
My favourite King novel... September 6, 2007
Ms. C. A. Lever (england)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love this book and it's my favourite King novel, although there are others (ofcourse) that come a very very close second. In response to what another reviewer said about having to read The Dark Tower to understand about the Low Men, I haven't read TDT series yet but I didn't get confused by the Low Men at all, you just have to go with it when it's King and accept that you wont always understand everything or have everything spelled out for you. And of course the idea is that anybody can be a Low Man depending on how they choose to live their lives, the idea works on two levels- fantastical and moral. There is so much heart in this book on King's part and that's what I feel from it more than anything, they're aren't just stories, the characters feel so real, for the few days or weeks (depending on how you read) that they spend with you you enjoy their presence in your life and you mourn their passing when the book is finished. It's just a beautiful book.
Uncanny parallel to his real life October 24, 2006
B. Chandler (Arlington, Texas)
If you have read his book "On Writing" he has a small biography that parallels this book in nature. The story line and the details were intriguing. The only distraction from this was his constant potty mouth. He must have needed filler to flush (not flesh) out the book. I do not know if that is a recent phenomenon of they all are that way. The movies are not that way.
This is one story with a few rest spots that make some think it is a series of shorts. Do not attempt to read this out of order as each relies on knowledge of the former. The first phase, about the "Low Men", is the only real supernatural section. And as he points out it is the moral environment around the story that makes the supernatural scary. In this phase he also does a dissertation books including "The Lord of the Flies." There are real close corollaries to "The Day the Earth Stood Still" single mother, kid named Bobbie, and a mysterious border. The second phase Deals with a collage life environment, which is a background for molding character and characters. I do not want to tell too much detail, as that is why you read the book. The third phase is broken into two parts, one a story of Willie during and after Nam, then the whole set of previous characters surround by death and near death experiences.
The not so loose stories ingeniously ties together by a certain object that travels throughout the times to add as a catalyst and a conclusion.
Liked it but didn't get the Low Men part March 25, 2006
AKC (England)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Only now after reading reviews of this book, do I understand that the Low Men come from King's Dark Tower books. I really don't want to be expected to have read that series to get the best of another of his books. A long time ago I used to read all of King's books, but "From a Buick 8" was so awful that I left them for a long time. I thought this book was very good except for the parts that I now know I could only understand if I've read another set of King's books. King must be very full of himself to expect all of his readers to have read The Dark Tower.But I really did like most of the book, hence the 4 stars. It could have been 5 if it weren't for what I've said in the previous paragraph.
King at his best. January 17, 2005
Cathal (Ireland)
Quite simply the best King has to offer. He truely is a master storyteller. Heart's In Atlantis is a brake from his usual deep horror and a offers a light hearted tale of friendship, lost souls, addiction and love.
The book is seperated into five different interlinked stories. The main story takes place in a decade that King refers to as fictional, the sixties. 'Low Men In Yellow Coats'
It's this first part of the book that sets the mood. It tells the story of Bobby Garfield and his encounter with a mysterious lodger that moves in with him and his work aholic mother.
They become friendly and develop an unforgetfull relationship that puts 'Shawshank Redemption' to shame.
Simply, King at his best.
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