Review: Gwendy's Button Box (The Button Box, #1)

What more can be said about Stephen King that hasn’t already been said?
He is the master of the short story/novella and Gwendy’s Button Box does not disappoint.
Gwendy is 12 years old. It’s 1974, and she lives in Castle Rock. So you know something bad is going to happen!
She has all the usual issues that 12 year old girls have, particularly when it comes to her appearance. So she’s running up the Suicide Stairs to loose some puppy fat. As she’s catching her breath one summer’s day, a gentleman sitting nearby says “Hey girl. Come on over here for a bit. We ought to palaver, you and me.” (I haven’t heard the word palaver for years!) And Gwendy’s world will never be the same again.
At first I thought this might enter into an unpleasant child abuse scenario, but, thank goodness, that is not where King takes us. This trip is much more interesting, and unsettling.
This is a story about the choices we make, and why we make them, and the impact that those choices have.
Like many of King’s novels set in the 1970s, there is a sense of nostalgia and melancholy. And a sense that the world can be a much stranger place than we could every imagine.
Highly recommended

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