Blurbos Rating (4)
Overall, I liked Holly. To note, this one got review bombed by people who subscribe to right-wing politics. Was it heavy handed on COVID? Maybe. Is it just too soon for a book like this? Also maybe. Are people just overly sensitive when it comes to their politics? Probably.
But at the same time, Holly is a present day story with a main character who is a hypochondriac whose mother just died from COVID, so it fits. The “bad guys” in Holly were absolutely juicy, and it was a slight deviation from King’s norm in that there was nothing supernatural about them. They were just straight up horrifying and real.
I loved the allusions littered throughout – I’m sure I missed some, but I caught a lot of them.
If you don’t mind seeing a COVID mention every other chapter in a novel, this another good chapter in the Holly saga.
Highlights
Forty is when you have to stop kidding yourself that you’re still a young anything. If you don’t—if you subscribe to such self-actualizing bullshit as “forty is the new twenty-five”—you’re going to find yourself starting to slide.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 2 | Location 42-44 2023-11-21 22:57:56
At twenty, the body forgives. At forty, forgiveness is provisional at best.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 2 | Location 45-45 2023-11-21 22:58:13
You have to start taking care of yourself when you’re forty. You have to maintain the machinery, because there’s no trade-in option.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 2 | Location 46-47 2023-11-21 22:58:26
Jorge wants to look and feel forty when he gets to fifty, but fate is a joker. Jorge Castro isn’t even going to see forty-one.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 2 | Location 50-51 2023-11-21 22:58:56
Holly knows this is how addicts think and behave: they rearrange the furniture of their lives to make room for their bad habits.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 30 | Location 473-474 2023-11-26 23:44:10
“I saw the pictures of Bonnie on your car, by the way. She’s very attractive.” Penny’s eyes crinkle as she smiles behind her mask. “I think so. Of course I’m her mother, so what else would I say? No Miss America, but she was a prom queen back in high school. And nobody dumped a bucket of blood on her, either.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 37 | Location 567-569 2023-11-27 23:49:06
Here is another relationship chilled by the fast-talking man in the red tie. It’s not fate and not coincidence.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 38 | Location 577-578 2023-11-27 23:49:50
You know, Trumper see, Trumper do.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 38 | Location 584-584 2023-11-27 23:50:20
“I’m curious about your daughter’s helmet. Was it with her bike when it was found?” Penny’s mouth falls open. “No, just the bike. You know what, Detective Jaynes never asked about that and I never thought of it.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 41 | Location 625-627 2023-11-27 23:53:20
“Who was there first? Brown or the real estate agent?” “I don’t know. It didn’t seem important.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 44 | Location 674-675 2023-11-27 23:56:32
When this is over, Holly thinks, no one will believe it really happened. Or if they do, they won’t understand how it happened.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 44 | Location 689-690 2023-11-27 23:57:34
“What’s the name of the loser boyfriend?” “Tom Higgins.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 45 | Location 699-699 2023-11-27 23:58:12
Holly, a fan of the hunks on Bachelor in Paradise, has a good idea what Bonnie might have seen in him.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 45 | Location 705-706 2023-11-27 23:58:47
She must not show emotion. Like Castro and Dressler, this is a caged animal. Livestock. Poking livestock is childish. Being angry with it is childish. What you do with an animal is train it.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 50 | Location 763-764 2023-11-28 23:33:01
She told Em she would gladly eat a salad, but that is out of the question. Salads, whether dressed or undressed, are not sacrament. Meat is sacrament. Liver is sacrament.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 52 | Location 799-801 2023-11-28 23:35:37
Holly thinks that anyone sitting up here after dark could watch the show for free, albeit soundlessly.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 66 | Location 1006-1007 2023-11-29 23:05:33
“Different ages and different sexes, over two years apart, so probably not. But what do I always say about probably, Jerome?” “It’s a lazy word.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 77 | Location 1139-1140 2023-11-29 23:13:23
She’s had no appetite, the constant pain has taken that, but the aroma coming from the oven causes the smallest pang of hunger in her stomach. It’s wonderful to feel that. Hunger is a sign of health.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 88 | Location 1277-1278 2023-11-30 23:58:29
They watch TV and have their dessert, spooning up a mixture of raspberry sorbet and Peter Steinman’s brains.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 91 | Location 1326-1328 2023-12-01 00:01:39
Why would Bonnie leave her bike on what’s probably the most deserted stretch of Red Bank Avenue? Answer: she wouldn’t. Why would she leave the note but take her bike helmet? Answer: she wouldn’t.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 99 | Location 1437-1439 2023-12-01 23:35:38
“I pay no attention to what writers say about their work. It’s what the work says about the writer that matters.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 106 | Location 1544-1545 2023-12-03 00:25:29
According to the box you can microwave it, which is quicker, but Holly never does it that way. Her mother always said that microwaves were first-class food ruiners, and like so many of her mother’s teachings, it has stuck with her only child. Oranges are gold in the morning and lead at night. Sleeping on your left side wears out your heart. Only sluts wear half-slips.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 125 | Location 1796-1799 2023-12-04 00:08:14
You believe it to your very soul, because you’re a holder-onner, and holder-onners are never able to understand let-goers. They are tribes that just can’t understand each other. Sort of like vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, Trumpers and Never Trumpers.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 141 | Location 2036-2037 2023-12-05 23:37:23
What cannot be cured must be endured: the gospel according to Charlotte Gibney.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 145 | Location 2100-2102 2023-12-05 23:41:54
“Yes. Take the word Erie, for instance. That’s a category, but it can refer to the lake, the county, or to the Erie Native American tribe. Which would have to be cross-referenced with Cat Nation, of course, and Iroquois. Even more! I’d have to go over the material again to get a handle on that, but you see the way it works, right? Or wait, take Plymouth, that’s a really interesting one—
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 147 | Location 2127-2130 2023-12-05 23:44:29
When she was working, she felt bright and aware. When she wasn’t, that sense of living in a cellophane bag returned.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 147 | Location 2133-2133 2023-12-05 23:44:51
If I had investigated my own family instead of hunting for lost dogs and chasing bail-jumpers, things might have been different.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 150 | Location 2178-2179 2023-12-06 23:44:00
“Long poems can provoke deep feelings, but a short one must stab and stab and be done! Pound, Williams, Walcott! You agree?”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 158 | Location 2296-2297 2023-12-07 23:43:26
She thinks of Bill Hodges, sitting with her one day on the steps of his little house. Bill saying Sometimes the universe throws you a rope. If it does, climb it. See what’s at the top.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 171 | Location 2474-2475 2023-12-09 00:26:56
She stops channel surfing long enough to watch some of an old musical on TCM, then turns it off.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 176 | Location 2567-2567 2023-12-10 23:58:41
does anyone ever get complete closure? Especially from a parent?
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 177 | Location 2573-2574 2023-12-10 23:59:18
She thinks, location, location, location. And she thinks that none of them had a car. Well, Bonnie did, but she didn’t use it for going back and forth to work. She rode her bike. Ellen also rode a bike when she didn’t take the bus. And Pete Steinman had his skateboard.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 178 | Location 2594-2596 2023-12-11 00:01:03
“They don’t teach that at the college, do they? No. The idea that the creative impulse is a way to get rid of poison… or a kind of creative defecation… no. They don’t teach that. They don’t dare. It’s too earthy. Too common. Tell me a line you wrote that you still like. That gave you that feeling of finally relieving the itch.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 183 | Location 2673-2675 2023-12-11 00:06:22
“Gifts are fragile. You must never entrust yours to people who might break it.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 187 | Location 2743-2744 2023-12-11 00:10:47
“That girl is dead,” Holly whispers. “Oh God, she’s dead.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 191 | Location 2777-2777 2023-12-11 23:51:55
Holly frowns. “Lost wages?” “Slang, my sister. For Las Vegas. A town made for such as Monsewer Higgins.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 194 | Location 2838-2839 2023-12-11 23:56:12
“Holly?” “I’m still here.” Now heading for the elevator. “I think it’s a serial. I really do.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 198 | Location 2898-2899 2023-12-12 00:00:20
Says the important thing is to keep the channel open and the words flowing. “If you don’t,” she says, “your channel may silt up. And then dry up.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 204 | Location 2970-2971 2023-12-12 22:49:52
Once she tells Barbara that she is only allowed to admire what she writes a single time: during the act of composition. “After that, Barbara, you must be ruthless.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 205 | Location 2986-2987 2023-12-12 22:50:54
Fifty-two years is a hell of a long walk from the altar, let me tell you. And some of it’s stony.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 216 | Location 3156-3156 2023-12-13 23:37:53
“Good times only,” Olivia says. “Leave the future out of it. The only person unhappier than a writer whose expectations aren’t fulfilled is one whose dreams come true.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 226 | Location 3312-3314 2023-12-14 23:24:04
She wishes her friend—who once saved her life and Bill’s life in a snowstorm—could always be this happy, and knows that’s not the way life works. Maybe just as well. If it did, happiness wouldn’t mean anything.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 231 | Location 3385-3387 2023-12-14 23:28:53
I write poetry because without it I am a dead engine. She pauses only for a moment, then adds: That I should be asked to write an essay about my poetry after sending so much of it to you is idiotic. My poetry is my essay.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 273 | Location 3998-4000 2023-12-15 23:26:59
Barbara says she feels the same and ends the call. Then she cries. She can’t remember ever being quite this happy. Olivia has told her happy poets are usually bad poets, but right now Barbara doesn’t care.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 287 | Location 4170-4172 2023-12-16 22:44:13
Human flesh that’s been frozen and thawed seems to have little efficacy, and what Em really needs is fresh liver. But the Steinman boy’s was harvested long since. Supplies always run out, and the benefits they get from their livestock simply don’t last as long as they used to.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 292 | Location 4229-4231 2023-12-16 22:49:41
Hanging like trophies on the pegboard next to the rolls of tape are her bike helmet and backpack.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 294 | Location 4256-4257 2023-12-16 22:51:30
Holly laughs politely. She touches one of the gloves in her pocket and wishes again she could put them on. She doesn’t want Professor Harris to think she’s Howard Hughes, but the idea that everything she touches could be crawling with Covid-19 or the new Delta variant won’t go away.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 301 | Location 4358-4360 2023-12-16 22:58:31
It’s not fair that their special meals, so loaded with life-extending goodness, should wear off so quickly. It was three years between Castro and Dressler, and three years (give or take) between Dressler and the Steinman boy. Now they have Bonnie Dahl, and it’s not only been less than three years but the symptoms of old age (he thinks of them as symptoms) have been creeping up for months.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 307 | Location 4421-4424 2023-12-16 23:02:43
pretty obvious Harris has got his own problems. Onguarding for regarding, Clover for Covid, temperature lobe for temporal lobe, forgetting her name.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 311 | Location 4485-4486 2023-12-17 20:02:17
Bill Hodges told Holly once that a case was like an egg.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 319 | Location 4600-4600 2023-12-17 20:49:34
“Are you going to rape me after all?” Her mouth is dry. The words are husky. “No, dear,” Emily says. Her hair hangs in clumps around a face so pale and hollow-cheeked that it’s little more than a skull. Her eyes glitter. Her mouth is a crimped line of pain. “We’re going to eat you.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 333 | Location 4789-4791 2023-12-17 22:20:17
She remembers Althea Haverty at the bowling alley talking about fake flu and looking at Holly’s offered elbow with mild contempt. Saying no offense, but I don’t do that. Holly doesn’t wish her in the hospital with an oxygen mask clamped over her fat Covid-denying
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 336 | Location 4820-4822 2023-12-17 22:28:22
She remembers Althea Haverty at the bowling alley talking about fake flu and looking at Holly’s offered elbow with mild contempt. Saying no offense, but I don’t do that. Holly doesn’t wish her in the hospital with an oxygen mask clamped over her fat Covid-denying face, but— Actually she does.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 336 | Location 4820-4823 2023-12-17 22:29:50
“Holly,” he says. “Yes,” she says, surprised, and looks into his face. His eyes are clear. As clear as they ever get these days, anyway. “Nobody could stand against Charlie. She always got her way.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 346 | Location 4973-4975 2023-12-18 09:32:00
Marie stands on one side of her bed, Barbara on the other. They each hold one of the old poet’s hands. There are no last words. Olivia looks at Marie. She looks at Barbara. She smiles. She dies. A world of words dies with her.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 347 | Location 4984-4986 2023-12-18 09:35:21
Olivia Kingsbury must have told her about him. And it fits, doesn’t it? Even the notes fit. Castro: “I’ve had all I can take.” Bonnie Dahl: “I’ve had enough.” If those two disappearances weren’t nine years apart…
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 349 | Location 5026-5028 2023-12-18 09:38:23
Jorge Castro in 2012, Cary Dressler in 2015, Ellen Craslow and Peter Steinman in 2018, Bonnie Dahl in 2021.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 350 | Location 5031-5031 2023-12-18 09:38:36
Barbara feels the almost indescribable comfort of like minds and wishes she were one of these people who think stories and poems are as important as stocks and bonds. Then she thinks, But I am. She thinks, Thank God for you, Olivia.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 351 | Location 5059-5061 2023-12-18 09:41:34
As Tattoo Girl gives way to a skinny bespectacled guy who looks like a grad student, she remembers that she’s left her cell phone at Olivia’s house. Ordinarily she goes nowhere without it, but tonight she doesn’t want it. What she wants is a hotdog with lots of mustard. And poetry. She wants to fill herself up with it.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 358 | Location 5166-5169 2023-12-18 09:48:42
While Holly is discovering that she’s been locked in a cage by a pair of elderly cannibals, Penny Dahl is in the shower with her hair full of shampoo.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 379 | Location 5494-5495 2023-12-18 10:13:52
The thing about human flesh, she’s discovered, is that you start off curious. Then you get to liking it. Eventually you get to love it, and one day you can’t get enough.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 387 | Location 5625-5626 2023-12-18 10:22:35
Holly thinks, I am speaking to an authentic mad scientist. Only of course she’s not speaking; she’s listening. Nor is Rodney Harris lecturing. Not anymore. He’s hollering at an invisible audience of unbelievers.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 393 | Location 5717-5718 2023-12-18 10:28:19
Holly remembers what she has in her left hand. What she’s been squeezing so tightly it’s cut into her palm. It’s a triangular earring, the mate of the one she found in the weeds next to the abandoned auto body shop. She shoves that hand through the bars and, holding the earring tightly between her thumb and forefinger, runs one of its three golden points across Harris’s scrawny throat in a semicircle from one jaw to the other.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 397 | Location 5783-5786 2023-12-18 10:35:09
At first the only thought in her mind is Lady Macbeth’s question: who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 397 | Location 5797-5798 2023-12-18 10:34:46
“He’s down here, Professor, and I think he’s given his last lecture.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 400 | Location 5840-5841 2023-12-18 10:37:19
At least I got one of them, she thinks, and then flashes on Bogie saying We’ll always have Paris.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 402 | Location 5877-5878 2023-12-18 10:39:15
Holly wonders if everyone, at least those who see death coming for them, experiences this divinely sharp focus, the brain’s last attempt to take in everything before everything is taken away.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 405 | Location 5925-5927 2023-12-18 10:44:01
Emily is looking down at her husband. “Alas, poor Roddy,” she says. “I knew him well.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 405 | Location 5927-5927 2023-12-18 10:44:11
She walks to the front of the cell and pushes her face into one of the squares. Bars press against her cheeks and the bars are cold. “So this other voice says, ‘You’re looking especially pretty tonight, Holly.’ But when she looks, still no one there! The bartender comes back with the drink, and—”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 407 | Location 5956-5959 2023-12-18 10:46:59
I killed them both from inside this cage. That should go in the Guinness Book of World Records.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 409 | Location 5982-5983 2023-12-18 10:48:05
Holly thinks, I would sell my soul for a glass of beer… and I don’t even like beer.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 411 | Location 6026-6026 2023-12-18 10:51:58
She looks like she’s wearing warpaint, Barbara thinks. And I guess that’s okay, because she’s been in a war.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 423 | Location 6224-6225 2023-12-18 11:15:28
“He says ‘We charge for the drinks, but the nuts are complimentary.’ ”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 424 | Location 6239-6240 2023-12-18 11:16:16
In truth, Holly’s not sure Finders Keepers will ever re-open.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 441 | Location 6440-6441 2023-12-18 11:26:23
There’s no end to evil. Holly supposes she already knew that, and better than Izzy. The outsider masquerading as Terry Maitland was evil. So was the one masquerading as Chet Ondowsky. The same was true of Brady Hartsfield, who found a way to go on doing dirt (Bill’s phrase) even after he should have been rendered harmless.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 442 | Location 6451-6454 2023-12-18 11:27:30
But Roddy and Emily Harris were worse. Why? Because there was nothing supernatural about them.
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 442 | Location 6454-6455 2023-12-18 11:27:48
Let’s just say all’s well that ends well… as well as could be, maybe.”
<Holly>(King, Stephen) Highlight on page 445 | Location 6498-6499 2023-12-18 11:30:51