Jedna z najlepszych książek Króla, do której wracam systematycznie.
Są fragmenty, które mogę czytać bez przerwy, jak na przykład ten:
"It's a bool, Lisey!" he shouts as the light springs on, and could he have planned it better if he had stage-managed it? She thinks not. In his voice she hears mad jubilant relief, as if he has fixed everything. "And not just any bool, it's a blood-bool!"
She has never heard the word before, but she doesn't mistake it for anything else, for boo or book or anything else. It's bool, another Scott-word, and not just any bool but a bloodbool.
The kitchen light leaps down the lawn to meet him and he's holding out his left hand to her like a gift, she's sure he means it as a gift, just as she's pretty sure there's still a hand under there someplace, oh pray to Jesus Mary and JoJo the everloving Carpenter there's still a hand under there someplace or he's going to be finishing the book he's working on plus any that might come later typing one-handed.
Because where his left hand was there's now just a red and dripping mass. Blood goes slipping between spread starfish things that she supposes are his fingers, and even as she flies to meet him, her feet stuttering down the back porch steps, she's counting those spread red shapes, one two three four and oh thank God, that fifth one's the thumb. Everything's still there, but his jeans are splattered red and still he holds his bloody lacerated hand out to her, the one he plunged through a pane of thick greenhouse glass, shouldering his way through the hedge at the foot of the lawn in order to get to it.
Now he's holding out his gift to her, his act of atonement for being late, his blood-bool. "It's for you," he says as she yanks off her blouse and drapes it around the red and dripping mass, feeling it soak through the cloth at once, feeling the crazy heat of it and knowing—of course!—why that small voice was in such terror of the things she was saying to him, what it knew all along: not only is this man in love with her, he's half in love with death and more than ready to agree with every mean and hurtful thing anyone says about him."