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I'm completely enamored with Haven, a new show on the network formerly known as SciFi. It's set in a small Maine town where Very Strange Things have started happening, again. From about the first five minutes, I started shipping the two (very pretty) main characters, Audrey and Nathan, and that always gets me into a show quickly, but really, I love everything about it. Especially the amazingly gorgeous scenery; it's filmed in Nova Scotia, which I now want to revisit even more than I did before (which was really a lot).
The show's website says it's based on Stephen King's novella The Colorado Kid, though the stories mostly aren't that similar; the show is more inspired by the book than based on it. And when I found out that the book wouldn't have spoilers, I decided to read it.
The Colorado Kid begins with Stephanie McCann, a recent college graduate from the Midwest doing an internship with the local paper on Moose-Lookit Island, Maine. The paper's elderly editors, Vince and Dave, bring her to lunch with a reporter from the Boston Globe who's looking for stories of strange and mysterious happenings. Vince and Dave share a few well-told local legends, but Stephanie can tell they're holding back. When the reporter leaves and they return to their office, she voices her suspicion, and they agree to tell her the story they didn't tell the reporter from "away," the unsolved and largely unexplained death of the Colorado Kid.
Though I'm not generally a huge fan of Stephen King, I loved this book. And although I most likely wouldn't have read it otherwise, my enjoyment of the book didn't even have that much to do with the show. As I said, there's not a lot of overlap besides the characters Vince and Dave - who are so awesome in both - and the death of the Colorado Kid. No, what I love about the book is that it's the tale of an unsolved mystery that doesn't get solved during the course of the story. Vince and Dave tell Stephanie from the beginning that the Colorado Kid story has "nothing but unknown factors," even 25 years later. Stephanie, and I, the reader, know that we won't get the answers we want at the end, but it doesn't stop us from wanting them, hoping that there'll be one more clue before it's over. I'm not sure I've ever read a mystery - and I've read a lot of them - where there's no solution at the end, and I so admire King for writing this, for leaving it where he did. It makes the story all the more fascinating.
The show's website says it's based on Stephen King's novella The Colorado Kid, though the stories mostly aren't that similar; the show is more inspired by the book than based on it. And when I found out that the book wouldn't have spoilers, I decided to read it.
The Colorado Kid begins with Stephanie McCann, a recent college graduate from the Midwest doing an internship with the local paper on Moose-Lookit Island, Maine. The paper's elderly editors, Vince and Dave, bring her to lunch with a reporter from the Boston Globe who's looking for stories of strange and mysterious happenings. Vince and Dave share a few well-told local legends, but Stephanie can tell they're holding back. When the reporter leaves and they return to their office, she voices her suspicion, and they agree to tell her the story they didn't tell the reporter from "away," the unsolved and largely unexplained death of the Colorado Kid.
Though I'm not generally a huge fan of Stephen King, I loved this book. And although I most likely wouldn't have read it otherwise, my enjoyment of the book didn't even have that much to do with the show. As I said, there's not a lot of overlap besides the characters Vince and Dave - who are so awesome in both - and the death of the Colorado Kid. No, what I love about the book is that it's the tale of an unsolved mystery that doesn't get solved during the course of the story. Vince and Dave tell Stephanie from the beginning that the Colorado Kid story has "nothing but unknown factors," even 25 years later. Stephanie, and I, the reader, know that we won't get the answers we want at the end, but it doesn't stop us from wanting them, hoping that there'll be one more clue before it's over. I'm not sure I've ever read a mystery - and I've read a lot of them - where there's no solution at the end, and I so admire King for writing this, for leaving it where he did. It makes the story all the more fascinating.