Roadwork

On the face of things, Dawes doesn't have it that bad. He has a good wife, a good job, and friends. Inside, though, he is suffering miserably - and has been since his little boy died of a brain tumor three years earlier. Having never allowed himself to grieve properly, his mind proves unable to bear the disruptions caused by a new local road construction project. He's worked for the same laundry since he got out of school, and it will have to relocate elsewhere because of the roadwork - and he is the one responsible for finding a new site. He's lived in the same house since he got married, and it too has a fateful date with a wrecking ball - and he has to find a new home for him and his wife. It's just too much for him, and he can't do it. He lets the deal fall through on the new laundry site, which costs him his job, and he doesn't even go looking for a new house. Haunted by dreams of his dead son, he's already a broken man - even before he loses his wife and basically his whole life.

We the readers basically watch Bart Dawes go insane as the days pass. We watch him lie to his wife and to himself, drink himself into nightly stupors, procure destructive objects from dangerous men, and plot revenge on those who have taken away the few things in life he could cling to. At the center of his problem is Charlie; George can't understand why his son had to die, and he can't bear the thought of his home, Charlie's home, being destroyed. The plot is somewhat analogous to that of the film Falling Down. Even as we watch Dawes do some terrible things, we can't help but sympathize with a man so beaten down by the cruel vagaries of life.

King has said that Roadwork was in some ways a product of the death of his mother. After working hard to raise King and his brother single-handedly, she died just as King's material success as a writer was beginning. The book served as a vehicle to let him work through his own emotional issues over his loss. Why does a loved one have to die? That question permeates this novel. It's a very personal story, but it is one almost any adult reader can relate to very well. King fans who have passed this novel by would do well to go back and give it a chance - it's much different from King's other novels, but it is a surprisingly impressive exploration of emotional disintegration.


One of the Batchman books   October 6, 2000
52 out of 63 found this review helpful

I first read this as part of the Bachman quartet and found it the most satisfying of the four. King states in his introduction that he thinks that it is probably the worst, because he tried so hard to make it good and serious. He wrote it in 1976, and it contains no supernatural elements at all, instead focussing on real life terror. It reminded me of Black Sunday. The mind of the protaganist disintergrates when the council plan to build a road through the house that he has lived in for the last twenty years ... Moving in a way that I cannot describe, it is quite slow as it details his plan, and the ending where he finally carries it out seems sightly rushed, but it is a journey that is nessacary to take because it shows how society can inadvetantly exclude people. The action-packed ending contrasts well with the slow build up, and it isn't half as bad King would lead you to believe.