The Regulators
1 journaler for this copy...
"Wentworth, Ohio: a small friendly town where the Carver children bicker over sweets in the E-Z shop and writer Johnny Marinville is the only resident who minds his own business. And on Poplar Street, apart from the impending storm, it's just a normal summer's day - with frisbees flying, lawns being mown, barbeques prepared and the paperboy making his rounds.
Oblivious of the chrome red van idling up the hill that marks the start of the surreal nightmare. Soon the residents will be caught up in a game of wills as the regulators arrive in force to face a child whose powers of expression are just awakening, waiting for them..."
I have read this book in the past, but I can't remember how I'd rate it because it was too many years ago that I read it! Stephen King (and this book is Stephen King writing under his pseudonym of Richard Bachman) is one of my favourite authors, but I simply don't have the storage space to keep all of my books any more! So I'm planning to re-read them all, and to share with others all but my very most favourites by releasing them through bookcrossing.
I rescued this particular book from an exstock library sale in Loughborough in 2000. I don't remember how much I paid for it exactly, but I know it wasn't expensive!
Oblivious of the chrome red van idling up the hill that marks the start of the surreal nightmare. Soon the residents will be caught up in a game of wills as the regulators arrive in force to face a child whose powers of expression are just awakening, waiting for them..."
I have read this book in the past, but I can't remember how I'd rate it because it was too many years ago that I read it! Stephen King (and this book is Stephen King writing under his pseudonym of Richard Bachman) is one of my favourite authors, but I simply don't have the storage space to keep all of my books any more! So I'm planning to re-read them all, and to share with others all but my very most favourites by releasing them through bookcrossing.
I rescued this particular book from an exstock library sale in Loughborough in 2000. I don't remember how much I paid for it exactly, but I know it wasn't expensive!
I really enjoyed this book. There are some awful bits, some awfully sad bits, and then just some bits (of bodies, of history, of trivia) but it is a really good read. I will be highly unlikely to read the book again, though, so I will take it into the office and see if there are any takers for it. If not, I will move it and re-release it somewhere else after a while, I expect. I hope it finds an appreciative reader, though, as it really is a good story.
Here are a few of my favourite bits:
p97:
"It wasn't Seth, though, not really; not the Seth who had sometimes (in the early days) hugged them and given them brief open-mouthed kisses that felt like bursting soap-bubbles. 'I 'owboy,' he would occasionally say while sitting in the special chair, words rising out of his usual unintelligible babble and making them feel, however fleetingly, that they were getting somewhere: I'm a cowboy. That Seth had been sweet; lovable not just in spite of his autism but partly because of it. That Seth had also been a medium, however, like contaminated blood which simultaneously nourishes a virus and transports it."
p303:
" 'Be still,' she said, not looking at him. Dave was half a foot taller than his mother and had to outweigh her by seventy pounds, but she rocked him as easily now as she must have done when he was eight months old and colicky. 'I don't want to hear what happened. I don't care what happened. Let's just go back. Do you want to go back, David?'
Weeping, not looking, he nodded against her shoulder.
She turned her terrible dry eyes toward Brad. 'Bring my other boy. We're not leaving him out here with that thing.' She looked briefly at the fuming, stinking carcass of the mountain lion, then back at Brad. 'Bring him, do you understand?'
'Yes, ma'am,' Brad said. 'I absolutely do.' "
p306:
"Peter reached the fork in the path and looked into the desert, bone-white in the glare of a rising moon, beyond it. Then he looked down and saw the man in the patched khaki pants pinned to the cactus.
'Hello . . . friend,' he said. He moved the bum's shopping cart so he could sit down beside him. As he settled against the cactus spines, feeling them slide into his back, he heard a cry and an agonized howl. All from far away. Not important. He put his hand on the dead bum's shoulder. Their grins were identical. 'Hello . . . friend,' the erstwhile James Dickey scholar said again.
He looked south. His remaining sight was almost gone, but there was enough left for him to see the perfectly round moon rising between the fangs of the black Crayola mountains. It was as silver as the back of an old-time pocket watch, and upon it was the smiling, one-eye-winked face of Mr Moon from a child's book of Mother Goose rhymes.
Only this version of Mr Moon appeared to be wearing a cowboy hat.
'Hello . . . friend,' Peter said to it, and settled back further against the cactus. He did not feel the exaggerated spins that punctured his lungs, or the first trickles of blood that seeped out of his grinning mouth. He was with his friend. He was with his friend and now everything was all right, they were looking at Mr Cowpoke Moon and everything was all right."
p422:
(From Audrey Wyler's journal) "Seth came to me this morning & managed to ask, with a combination of words & grunts, if he could go out trick or treating, like the other kids in the neighbourhood. There was no sign of Tak, and when he is just Seth, I find him all but impossible to refuse. It isn't hard for me to remember that Seth's not the one responsible for everything that's happened; it's quite easy, in fact. In a way, that's what makes it all so horrible. It seals off all my exits. I don't suppose anyone else could understand what I mean. I'm not sure I understand it myself. But I feel it. Oh God, do I.
I told him okay, I'd take him trick or treating, it would be fun. I said I could probably put together a little cowboy outfit for him, if he'd like that, but if he wanted to go as a MotoKop, we'd have to go out to Payless and buy a store outfit.
He was shaking his head before I'd even finished, big back-and-forth shakes. He didn't want to go as a cowboy, and not as a MotoKop either. There was something in the violence of his headshaking that was close to horror. He might be getting tired of cowboys and police from the future, I think.
I wonder if the other one knows?
Anyway, I asked him what he did want to dress as, if not a cowboy or Snake Hunter or Major Pike. He waved one arm & jumped around the room. After a little bit of this pantomime, I realized he was pretending to be in a swordfight.
'A pirate?' I asked, & his whole face lit up in his sweet Seth Garin smile.
'Pi-ut!' he said, then tried harder and said it right: 'Pi-rate!'
So I found an old silk kerchief to tie over his head, and gave him a clip-on gold hoop to put in his ear, and unearthed an old pair of Herb's pj's for pantaloons. I used elastic bands on the bottoms & they belled out just right. With a mascara beard, an eyeliner scar, and an old toy sword (borrowed from Cammie Reed next door, a golden oldie from her twins' younger years), he looked quite fierce. And, when I took him out around four o'clock to 'do' our block of Poplar Street and two blocks of Hyacinth, he looked no different than all the other goblins and witches and Barneys and pirates. When we got back he spread out all his candy on the living-room floor (he hasn't been in the den to watch TV all day, Tak must be sleeping deeply, I wish the bastard was dead but that's too much to hope for) & gloated over it as if it really were a pirate's treasure. Then he hugged me and kissed my neck. So happy"
Here are a few of my favourite bits:
p97:
"It wasn't Seth, though, not really; not the Seth who had sometimes (in the early days) hugged them and given them brief open-mouthed kisses that felt like bursting soap-bubbles. 'I 'owboy,' he would occasionally say while sitting in the special chair, words rising out of his usual unintelligible babble and making them feel, however fleetingly, that they were getting somewhere: I'm a cowboy. That Seth had been sweet; lovable not just in spite of his autism but partly because of it. That Seth had also been a medium, however, like contaminated blood which simultaneously nourishes a virus and transports it."
p303:
" 'Be still,' she said, not looking at him. Dave was half a foot taller than his mother and had to outweigh her by seventy pounds, but she rocked him as easily now as she must have done when he was eight months old and colicky. 'I don't want to hear what happened. I don't care what happened. Let's just go back. Do you want to go back, David?'
Weeping, not looking, he nodded against her shoulder.
She turned her terrible dry eyes toward Brad. 'Bring my other boy. We're not leaving him out here with that thing.' She looked briefly at the fuming, stinking carcass of the mountain lion, then back at Brad. 'Bring him, do you understand?'
'Yes, ma'am,' Brad said. 'I absolutely do.' "
p306:
"Peter reached the fork in the path and looked into the desert, bone-white in the glare of a rising moon, beyond it. Then he looked down and saw the man in the patched khaki pants pinned to the cactus.
'Hello . . . friend,' he said. He moved the bum's shopping cart so he could sit down beside him. As he settled against the cactus spines, feeling them slide into his back, he heard a cry and an agonized howl. All from far away. Not important. He put his hand on the dead bum's shoulder. Their grins were identical. 'Hello . . . friend,' the erstwhile James Dickey scholar said again.
He looked south. His remaining sight was almost gone, but there was enough left for him to see the perfectly round moon rising between the fangs of the black Crayola mountains. It was as silver as the back of an old-time pocket watch, and upon it was the smiling, one-eye-winked face of Mr Moon from a child's book of Mother Goose rhymes.
Only this version of Mr Moon appeared to be wearing a cowboy hat.
'Hello . . . friend,' Peter said to it, and settled back further against the cactus. He did not feel the exaggerated spins that punctured his lungs, or the first trickles of blood that seeped out of his grinning mouth. He was with his friend. He was with his friend and now everything was all right, they were looking at Mr Cowpoke Moon and everything was all right."
p422:
(From Audrey Wyler's journal) "Seth came to me this morning & managed to ask, with a combination of words & grunts, if he could go out trick or treating, like the other kids in the neighbourhood. There was no sign of Tak, and when he is just Seth, I find him all but impossible to refuse. It isn't hard for me to remember that Seth's not the one responsible for everything that's happened; it's quite easy, in fact. In a way, that's what makes it all so horrible. It seals off all my exits. I don't suppose anyone else could understand what I mean. I'm not sure I understand it myself. But I feel it. Oh God, do I.
I told him okay, I'd take him trick or treating, it would be fun. I said I could probably put together a little cowboy outfit for him, if he'd like that, but if he wanted to go as a MotoKop, we'd have to go out to Payless and buy a store outfit.
He was shaking his head before I'd even finished, big back-and-forth shakes. He didn't want to go as a cowboy, and not as a MotoKop either. There was something in the violence of his headshaking that was close to horror. He might be getting tired of cowboys and police from the future, I think.
I wonder if the other one knows?
Anyway, I asked him what he did want to dress as, if not a cowboy or Snake Hunter or Major Pike. He waved one arm & jumped around the room. After a little bit of this pantomime, I realized he was pretending to be in a swordfight.
'A pirate?' I asked, & his whole face lit up in his sweet Seth Garin smile.
'Pi-ut!' he said, then tried harder and said it right: 'Pi-rate!'
So I found an old silk kerchief to tie over his head, and gave him a clip-on gold hoop to put in his ear, and unearthed an old pair of Herb's pj's for pantaloons. I used elastic bands on the bottoms & they belled out just right. With a mascara beard, an eyeliner scar, and an old toy sword (borrowed from Cammie Reed next door, a golden oldie from her twins' younger years), he looked quite fierce. And, when I took him out around four o'clock to 'do' our block of Poplar Street and two blocks of Hyacinth, he looked no different than all the other goblins and witches and Barneys and pirates. When we got back he spread out all his candy on the living-room floor (he hasn't been in the den to watch TV all day, Tak must be sleeping deeply, I wish the bastard was dead but that's too much to hope for) & gloated over it as if it really were a pirate's treasure. Then he hugged me and kissed my neck. So happy"
