An episode from 9/7/22: Tonight I spend an hour talking about Stephen King’s 1983 novel, ⁠Pet Sematary⁠. The anxieties attached to being a parent have rarely book put this memorably, cloaked as it is in the kind foreordained doom we expect from Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Does the book also succeed so well because King’s usual strengths—gore and horror, sure, but also sheer entertainment, sentimentality, and suspense—have no place here, next to simple devastation? Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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