Elevation is a sad book. It’s very well written and it’s a very good, quite short book but it’s a sad book. In it we get to meet Scott Carey who has a serious problem. He is getting lighter each day. It doesn’t show though. He still looks like his usual self. A big man with a belly hanging out above the waistline of his pants. And no matter how much clothes he wears the scale shows the same when he steps up on it. He even puts coins in the pockets of a heavy jacket to make himself even heavier but still, the scale shows the same numbers. And the numbers get lower every time he weighs himself. He seeks help from the retired doctor Bob Ellis but he has never heard of anyone having this problem…

This is the main plot of the book but we also get to see how Scott handles his neighbors, Deidre McComb and Missy Donaldson, and their dogs who have a habit of leaving their droppings on his lawn. When Scott confronts Deidre, she denies it but he proves her wrong and she has to admit to it. They are, to say the least, not good neighbors. But Deidre and Missy aren’t mad at Scott, at least not just at him. They are mad at the town of Castle Rock (yes this is a Castle Rock story) because they are hostile to them and their newly opened restaurant based the fact that they are lesbians AND married.

As so often in King’s work we here get a couple of characters that have no connection to each other but still ends up together, trying to fight an evil. In this case a town that’s prejudiced and a weight loss. We get to know them. We find out what motivates them and what hurts them. Elevation is a short book (I read it, start to finish, in one day) but it still tells the sad story of a man who’s running out of hope and a couple who might find theirs.

I like it, a lot. I, on one hand, wish it would have been longer but then on the other I don’t. It tells the story it’s supposed to tell and it does that very well. We get to meet Castle Rock again and there are references to Suicide stairs from Gwendy’s Button Box, Sheriff Bannerman, the number 19, The Nightflier and even Pennywise. Elevation is a great but, maybe one of King’s best.

I really like Elevation. It’s a sad book but to be honest, that is how I want my books, at least sometime. It makes them interesting when everything isn’t always fixed and put right. It’s the way life is. Sometime life hits you where it hurts and this time it happens in King’s story.


And the fact that King himself narrates the audio book is the icing on the cake.