I once mentioned to a friend that to my mind Stephen King had gotten worse and worse over the years. She replied that she didn't know much by him, but at least Dolores Claiborne was quite a good read. I told her, not having read this particular book, that maybe that was the case if you didn't know much King, but if you had read as many of his books as I had, it would almost certainly be the same stuff all over again.

A little later, she gave it to me as a present. Well, she was right. This is a more mature book than most of the recent ones by King, though there is at least one scene where he just has to insert a “thriller” scene where a straight-forward telling would have been much better. Then again, you can't have everything, right?