Bag of Bones: Chapters 13 &14 (pages 210-238)

I won't go into too much detail about Chapter 13, it consists of a long (and vile) dream-sleepwalking-ghost groping section where Mike Noonan has dream/ghost-sex with his dead wife Jo, the dead blues singer Sara Tidwell and the still alive Mattie. It's kind of disgusting to read and to be honest, I skipped a large part of it. The only thing of note is that the dream also features Jo's old typewriter she kept in her studio in the barn next door. At the end of Chapter 13 Mike wakes up in the morning from his ghost wet dream and decides to grab the typewriter. Magically he feels none of the panic and anxiety he did when he tried to type on his computer and is able to write eight pages for his next novel.
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Chapter 14 opens with Mike getting a phone call from Mattie and she's excited and sooo happy about the lawyer Mike got for her. She's thanking him profusely and the only thoughts he has are that those thank-you's are invitations to have sex. He's knows they're not but can't help thinking otherwise. Then Mike thinks about an Atlantic Monthly article he read by "some feminist" where she argues that men fantasize about women only as sexual objects not human beings with their own needs and feelings. The article argued that the ultimate male sexual fantasy was to have sex with "this shadow, this fantasy, this ghost." (page 238). King intends this passage to give some kind of greater psychological weight to the preceding chapter. I'm not buying it. It sounds like King wrote a chapter where his character has sex with a couple of ghosts and then looked for a way to rationalize it into greater meaning. Nice try.
Mike's lawyer then calls and updates him on the child-custody case. Things are looking better because the lawyer did some research and discovered that since Max Devore is not married there are only a few options as to who to leave Kyra to in the (likely) event that Max dies before the child is eighteen.
Max's own daughter is in an institution. His only living son is a gay middle-aged man with a "husband." Mike almost does a spit-take when the lawyer tells him the gay man is married...to a man. The book is only ten years old but I guess things have changed in a big way since then. I hear that Maine is now looking to legalize same-sex marriage. So these two factors leave no one really to leave the child with if Max dies (the conservative Maine judge would not give custody to a gay couple). The lawyer brings up the point that Max might marry Rogette Whitmore and then she could take custody of the child but Mike thinks that it would make little difference considering her advanced age.
A main theme of this chapter is that Mike now is able to write again. The phone calls keep interrupting his thought process. Mike is elated at his regained ability to write and feels that he has "lived more in the past five days than in the previous four years." He walks down to the lake and by the shore he starts to sob with relief because he feel he has been "reborn."
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Analysis:
Chapter 13 was not really creepy or scary, just weird and not very readable unless you like ghost-porn.
Chapter 14 was much better but it really served only to advance the plot points. The dialogue was nice and sharp and not too corny. The end of the chapter after Mike describes the plot of his new book, (something about a man accused of being a serial rapist who may or may not be innocent) is actually pretty moving. In two pages King makes us feel Mike's relief at being able to write again and how bad things must have been for him during those four years where he could not. Him breaking down and crying by the lake in relief and thanks was very effective. Nice job.

Bag of Bones: Chapter 12 (pages 176-209)

A nice long chapter describing Mattie and Mike burgeoning relationship. Mike calls Mattie to discuss the lawyer situation but incredibly he picks it up and, without dialing, Mattie is on the other end calling him. The phone never rang at all! That's how connected they are. She invites him over for dinner and he accepts. After dinner he goes into her trailer (even Mattie comments how they should only be seen in public. How having a relationship with a successful, millionaire author who cares enough about her to hire a lawyer for her custody battle makes her a bad mother, I'm not sure. The age difference?) Mike reads Kyra a bed time story and after Mike puts her to be, he and Mattie have a nice, long talk.
Mattie tells Mike all about Max. Max never wanted her to marry Lance and offered to pay her to go away and never see her again. Once she became pregnant Max offered to buy her child for a few million dollars. Mattie told Lance and Lance broke off all communication with his father. (He did this through email because Lance stutters. An unusual plot point considering he's dead. I hope his ghost stutters.) Mattie lets Max see Kyra a couple times a month. But Max is portrayed as a blood thirsty monster throughout. King references him as a villain from The Brothers Grimm over and over. Drilling it into the readers head that he is evil, even though nothing in his actions described has suggested a level of abnormality bordering on the supernatural. There's one scene where Max picks Kyra up and Mattie says he looked at her like he wanted to eat her. I hope that there's going to be some kind of soul-transference type deal where Max wants Kyra so he can transfer his evil and immortal soul into her. That would be really cool.
Kyra has stopped liking going over to Max's but still like Rogette whom Mattie calls "white nana." Does she also have a black nana? An Asian nana? When some one's white they usually don't go around describing other people as white. "My white uncle is awesome!" Aren't all you're uncles white?
Mattie agrees to let Mike help her with the lawyer as long as he really cares about her and it's not a game to him. Mike replies that he's doing this because he's really done nothing of value in the last four years. Four years with nothing to show for it he thinks. There's one little moment when Mike claims that they were both thinking about kissing but Mike lets the moment pass. Mattie says thanks again "and if there is anything I can do to return the favor let me know." Mike immediately envisions sexual favors and chastises the girl in his mind for giving him a virtual invitation to swap sex for law services. Nice.
An important plot point brought up is that Mattie saw Mike's wife in the summer of 1994 at a softball game with another man. They were hugging each other and looking a little bit cuddly. It's not too unusual for someone to remember they saw someone briefly four years ago, if it's a person of note. But Mattie has an unusual memory for something that happened for thirty seconds four years ago. Of course Mike didn't know Jo had come up to Sara Laughs in the summer of 1994 and Mike of course needs to know who this guy was and if the pregnancy test she bought the days she died (and didn't tell Mike about) was for this guy's baby. We get a little soap opera mixed in with our horror.
The chapter ends with the ghost spelling out on the refrigerator that Mike's wife is a liar and saying "ha ha." The ghost might be Nelson from the Simpson's.

Bag of Bones: Chapter 11 (pages 159-175)

The chapter opens with Mike waking up in the morning thinking there is someone in the bedroom with him, but surprise-it's just an old jacket he hung up and had forgotten about. Then King adds a neat little saying I had never heard before and (hopefully) has never been said in real life, Mike's so relieved that it's just a jacket he says, "Oh shit. Fuck me til I cry." Classy King, keep it up -the dialogue crackles.
Mike gets served with papers to come testify at a deposition concerning the upcoming custody trial. The person serving the papers is another cliche and the thing I like about King throughout this book is that he keeps saying his characters are cliche but they're not too cliche. George Footman, the process server, says "Don't fuck with Max Devore." Then Mike comes up with another line that would make it more cliche. Sorry King, your character is either a cliche or not a cliche. There's no such thing as "more" cliche, just as there is no such thing as being "more" unique. George Footman's cliche is that he's an alcoholic cop out on the take and will do anything for money. He'll beat you up or threaten you because he's getting paid by Max Devore.
Mike is upset about being served so he calls up a lawyer to see what can be done. Mike's talk with the lawyer is rather well done. King talks about the line that's crossed when a lawyer becomes your lawyer. It's a comforting feeling to know that someone has your back and that no matter what (as long as you pay) they will defend you and your actions. Unconditional love.
The bottom line is that the lawyer needs to represent Mattie. Mike agrees to talk to her about him paying for this high-priced lawyer and wonders if she will agree to let him help her. The lawyer tells Mike to only be seen with Mattie in public so that the townspeople will think they're not having sex. This doesn't make much sense. Unless Mattie or Mike are available for twenty-four viewing, there's no way to know if they are or not having sex. But whatever.
At the end of the chapter we get a brief history of Sara Laughs and the area around the lake. In the 1890's a group of forty or so "pretty special black people" settled the area and they were all in some kind of musical troupe with Sara Tidwell as the leader. They were well received around the area after initial hesitation by the whites and enjoyed a nice career in New England until they packed up in 1901. I really, really hope that this will be the ultimate "King magical black person" novel. Not just one magical black person but an entire settlement of special, magical black ghosts. That would be truly incredible and I do think that we are going to get it later on in the novel. I can't wait.

Bag of Bones: Chapter 10 (pages 135-158)

This chapter will be known as the "exposition chapter." Bill Dean, the local caretaker, visits Mike at Sara Laughs and gives him an exhaustive history of Max Devore, Lance Devore and Mattie Devore. This chapter reminded me of the scene in Wayne's World, where Chris Farley plays a security guard and gives Wayne all the information he needs to track down the record executive he seeks. ("That guy seemed to have an awful lot of information for a security guard.")
Mike has an hour and a half long conversation with Mike (King gives a specific time frame for this conversation. Bill arrives at 9 am and has to leave to get to his next appointment at 11 am).
Mattie came from a poor family from the area and Lance, the son of the wealthy Max Devore, developed a passion for forestry. Max hired Lance to explore the vast forests he owned in this part of Maine. He also played in the local softball games held every week. The locals played the out- of -towners and Lance would play for either team. He met little Mattie then who was only seventeen and they fell in love.
King describes all of this exposition as coming from the mouth of Bill Dean, or as if the reader should understand that it's coming from Bill Dean but he also adds an odd little paragraph in the middle that gave me pause as to where the information was coming from. Bill's describing how Mattie met Lance and then Mike's narration takes over, " Mattie never said much about it, so I don't know much. Except I do...some of the details might be wrong [but] I got most of them right. That was my summer for knowing things I had no business knowing." So is King saying that Mike is becoming psychic as to the history of the people around him and is the story we're hearing coming from Bill, Mattie or the voice in Mike's head? Later on, Mattie tells her story herself, going into greater detail so we should then assume that the version in this chapter is Bill Dean's alone. But that paragraph throws some of this into confusion.
We find that Lance died retrieving a wrench from the top of his trailer during a thunderstorm. Lightening struck near him and he fell off the ladder. After Lance died, Max came into town and has been there ever since trying to get custody of Kyra.
The plot development in this chapter is that Bill tells Mike about some plastic owls that Jo had ordered in the fall of 1993 and that she came up to Sara Laughs by herself to retrieve them when they were delivered to the house. Mike has no memory of Jo going to Sara Laughs by herself and tries to dig around in his records to account for Jo's actions.
We also get more details about the woman with the face from "The Scream." (I'm not going to call it "The Cry" even though King does throughout the book. I want people to know what I'm talking about.) Her name is Rogette Whitmore, she's Max Devore's personal assistant and the locals think she's a witch. Only in New England do people go around thinking other people are witches.
The chapter ends with Mike making contact with the ghosts that inhabits Sara Laughs. He goes into the dark basement to look for the owls and he starts to hear thudding and Mike starts to talk to the noises. He asks Yes or No questions while instructing the ghost to thud once for "yes" two for "no." It starts off kind of silly but in King's defense, it does get a little creepy after half a page. Mike asks the ghost if it is Sara and the ghosts says "yes and no." At the end of the chapter the ghost has rearranged the magnets on the fridge to spell "hello."

Bag of Bones: Chapter 9 (pages 120-134)

Nothing much happens in this chapter, just King laying the groundwork for later events. Mike Noonan goes to take a walk near the Warrington ( a compound of restaurant-hotel-golf course) and sees an old woman he takes for a ghost standing outside the deck of the bar. The woman is described (to me at least) in a very confusing way. First, King brings up the Munch drawing "The Cry," not "The Scream" as most people in the English speaking world know it as but "The Cry." Wikipedia says that a more direct translation is shriek rather than scream, but it is occasionally referred to as "The Cry."
"Imagine that face at rest." King asks the reader. Then imagine that figure wearing black shorts over a black tank bathing suit. Huh? OK. King says that combination is "strangely formal, like a cocktail dress." I give up Mr. King, I'm not sure what you're talking about...Anyway he waves at the woman, she doesn't wave back Mike turns away for a minute and she's gone. He thinks it's a ghost but "Jo" tells him it's not. Thanks Jo, a ghost telling him it's not a ghost.
Then Mike wonders why he and Jo didn't go to Sara Laughs the previous summer. Mike declares that it was always Jo who brought up the idea of going and she never brought it up this year and he had "forgotten" they had a summer place upstate apparently.
Mike now remembers an old blues song that "Sara Tidwell" a black blues singer from the twenties and for whom Sara Laughs is named after. I think this is the first mention of her in the book and I was a little confused about it, at first I didn't know why she was being brought up. Or who she was. King explains it in the next chapter but for this brief appearance (unless I missed something earlier) the reader is lost.
Mike then goes about cleaning up his offices and Joann's office (it is never made clear what, if anything Joann did as far as an occupation, she seemed to be a full-time volunteer and hobbyist). He finds a dictating machine from his writing days, and instead of thinking about trying to write with it he will use to record the sounds the ghosts in house make during the night. Earlier in the book when Mike's writer's block is described in some detail King tells us how Mike tried to write longhand and even how he tried to write using the Notepad program. But he never even brought up the subject of dictating. But if Mike never dictated before, he might not have thought of it as a viable option. It's just funny how the first thing I thought of when the dictating machine made an appearance was, "Mike's going to try writing with it," and the first thing Mike thought of was, "now I can record those ghosts!"
He sets the tape recorder up and in the morning plays it back and hears a ghostly whisper, "Oh Mike."