This book is a challenge to all those literary snobs who say King can't write. None amongst the literary glitterati could beat the opening hundred or so pages of this constrained, intense novel for sheer page-turning thrust. The 'action' itself is very slow, but it is written in such a way as to be an edge-of-the-seat, page turning roller coaster. You'll never listen to a dog walking across a hard floor in quite the same way again! Forget everything you thought you knew about King, and try this book. Neither horror nor fantasy, it delves into the human psyche in a way few authors can even attempt.