NOVEL REVIEW: The Library Policeman by Stephen King (From his collection Four Past Midnight)

So we're once again back to Stephen King, the genius maniac masquerading as an author. I recently got for Christmas one of his novella collections called Four Past Midnight. The four novellas are: The Langoliers, Secret Window, Secret Garden, The Library Policeman, and The Sun Dog. This time, I'm going to be reviewing my favourite novella out of the four, The Library Policeman. I really liked this story because it reminded me very strongly of IT, one of my favourite King novels; just like how IT is about overcoming your fears to defeat a greater evil, The Library Policeman is about confronting and overcoming a childhood trauma to defeat the greater evil, and the two main antagonists of the novel, Pennywise the Clown in IT and Ardelia Lortz in The Library Policeman, are also very similar types of Lovecraftian horrors, Pennywise and Ardelia both feeding off of fear from the children.

The overall theme of the story was great, and I really liked the idea of the "Library Policeman" being used as a monstrous villain and a personification of Sam Peebles' (the protagonist) childhood rapist coming back to haunt him. I'm not sure if the library policeman is a concept unique to the United States since I've never heard of it here in Canada, but it's really interesting how King used something from one's childhood memories that might have been just a little scary and turn it into a stuff of NIGHTMARES. I don't even know what about the Library Policeman scared me so much, but it terrified the hell out of me. It felt so real and the fact that it kept triggering something in Sam that he didn't know how to deal with.

Sam was terrified of this library policeman for some strange reason, and he didn't know why. The reader follows through Sam's journey of discovering himself and coming to terms with his childhood trauma, where we eventually learn that he was raped in front of the library by a man who called himself the library policeman. Sam had been repressing this memory in fear that the rapist would return for him if he ever let anyone knew, and the repressed trauma eventually took the form of the library policeman, who was the exact, terror-inducing incarnation of Sam's rapist. 

Ardelia Lortz, the main antagonist is a creature akin to Pennywise the Clown. Her MO is that during story time at the library when it was just her and the kids, she would put them into a trance of some sort, terrify them, and drink their tears/fears in form of tears, which was what she used to sustain herself. Even in her sweet, human form she's pretty terrifying. As a young woman she can seduce anyone she wants to essentially do her bidding; as an old woman, she's supposed to be this kind, friendly woman, but is so oddly terrifying in everything she says and does. One of the things that King knows how to do best is writing compelling characters, SPECIFICALLY terrifying villains. It was a pretty cool concept and she bears a striking resemblance to IT: they both are shape-shifting demons posing as a friendly figure to children so that they could feed off of childrens' tears; they even share the same silver eyes and the characteristic of using puppets to do their bidding! Combining this with the the sorrow-feeding Outsider (from The Outsider) and Dandelo the emotion-feeder (from The Dark Tower series), it seems as though Stephen King was really keen on these types of Lovecraftian monsters.

The most scary part of the novel was definitely right at the end when Sam is confronting his childhood traumatic memory of being raped. King describes the scene in such horrific and graphic detail and yet keeps it as suspenseful as possible so when the rape is described, you do a big double take of horror. When he comes to face with the trauma and announces out loud that he WAS raped, he is able to confront the monster in the form of his rapist and defeat it, which I think is a really good message by King for victims of abuse: you shouldn't be suppressing your trauma, but be confronting it, and that's how you can start the healing process. I went into this story expecting a really good horror story; I got exactly that, but I also got a story that is essentially the MeToo movement before MeToo was even a thing. Stephen King is so great at weaving the theme of the MeToo movement into the story in a way that you don't even realize it's actually about confronting and defeating your rapist until you think about the story after it's over. It is absolutely brilliant/

I know I usually do a summery and a rating out of five here, but I don't think I'll be doing that anymore. I don't want my number rating to affect someone's views on a novel or a film, and honestly it is getting hard to give ratings lower than four out of five since all the stuff I'm reviewing are usually stuff that I really like. But overall, The Library Policeman is a great story. It's reminiscent of IT and The Outsider, and the overall theme of overcoming your childhood trauma and facing your fears is a really great message. Stephen King is VERY good at making his novels revolve around very real-life themes such as childhood fears or the death of a loved one, and these stories I think can really help people actually deal with these issues because of the focus King puts on these themes. 

My next two reviews are two films that are the recipients of Academy Awards in 2020. The first film is a Korean one which has received FOUR Academy Awards (including Best Picture). The second one is a film set in Nazi Germany and is the recipient of Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award. I think you can guess which movies they are, so keep your eyes peeled for them! As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!

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The Connoisseur