You should read Misery, if you haven't already
I know I've said before that Stephen Kind was kind of my stepping stone from The Uncanny X-Men to Kurt Vonnegut. I've been giving genre authors some time, lately. I select an author known for contributions to one particular genre, and then track down something the author wrote outside of that genre. *Hearts in Atlantis* is basically two novellas and a few short stories, all inter-related.
Seven hundred pages, it took me less than a week to read. The only line that's stayed with me is "If you touch her again, I'll kill you. If you touch me again, I'll burn your house down."
"Chaos is a word we've invented for an order that remains to be understood."
I'd like to say the above is a Henry Miller quote, verbatim, but I can't and looking it up would kind of be like cheating. But that's a line I think I remember out of Tropic of Capricorn. It makes a bit sad, knowing I can quote Stephen King, but not Miller.
What makes me even sadder is the movie adaptation of Hearts in Atlantis. Here's the story to both the book and the movie: Some dadless kid gets a psychic dad. The psychic dad gets hauled away by thugs. At this point, the two forms of the story diverge. In the book, the kid turns into a strutting badass. He stalks down an enemy and beats him the fuck down with a baseball bat. At which point, he says "If you touch her again, I'll kill you. If you touch me again, I'll burn your house down."
Which wasn't in the movie.
Damn them.
They killed ANY merit that story had.