In this case, it begins in Lisbon Falls, Maine (of course), in a diner whose proprietor, Al Templeton, summons Jake Epping for an urgent meeting. The suspension of disbelief required here happens almost before the book begins. He is, instead, offering a tale richly layered with the pleasures we’ve come to expect: characters of good heart and wounded lives, whose adventures into the fantastic are made plausible because they are anchored in reality, in the conversations and sense of place that take us effortlessly into the story. Dick (“ The Man in the High Castle”), or the Charles Lindbergh presidency of Philip Roth (“ The Plot Against America”). This does not belong on the What If? shelf that has given us the Nazis-win works of Robert Harris (“ Fatherland”) and Philip K. Not until 800 pages have gone by in “ 11/22/63” does King offer up an account of the world as it might have been, and even then it has a cursory, I’m-doing-this-because-I have-to feel to it. Kennedy not been assassinated in Dallas, put those expectations aside. First, the (possibly) bad news: If you’re expecting Stephen King to provide an alternative history of what America would have been like had John F.
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