Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780451096685
ISBN number: 0451096681
Label: Signet
Manufacturer: Signet
Printing Date: March 03, 1981
Publishing house: Signet
Sale Popularity Level: 2452227
Studio: Signet
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Product Description:
#1 bestselling master of suspense...
They're tearing down Bart Dawes's home, leveling his memories, and destroying his past, all for a new highway extension. Funny what that kind of progress can do to a man. Scary, too.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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There are four books inside the Bachman Books; Roadwork is the weakest of the four. That being said, early Stephen King is good Stephen King. It's lean and mean, written with a tone that isn't so much trying to scare you as it is trying to hurt you. And I love that about King. It's the--screw you reader, take it and shut up--that I love about early King. It might not be the best work he has done, but it's still better than 99% of everyone else. If you love early King, read it.
James Roy Daley, author of The Dead Parade
The Dead Parade
Rated by buyers 
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Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) tackles the anti-hero with Bart Dawes, who paves a path to self-destruction through a series of deviant actions that - in his mind - may prevent a highway from paving over his home.
The psychology of Dawes is painted by King in rich colors that become more and more smeared as his goal becomes more focused, yet more ridiculously unobtainable.
That Dawes is driving himself down a dead-end road - with the guidance of several others - ultimately makes the mind games quite silly. But the novel keeps a decent pace for 307 pages and is a nice detour from the typical terrain traversed by King.
Rated by buyers 
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Story:
Barton Dawes was a normal man working in his laundry mat. He had a loving wife and a life he was happy with. Until the day came that he found that his house and his business was going to be demolished in the name of progress. His home was to become the site of a new interstate. On that day Bart snapped. This is the story of how Bart falls and what he finds out about himself, his life, and his world on the way down...
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To start off this book is *dark* it almost reminded me of another book called "The edge of human" by K.W.Jeeter. When you glance up from reading the sun doesn't seem quite as bright as it was before you started. This does as some of the other reviews on this page seem to be more of a main stream book than other King books,no supernatural forces or evil beings just one man self destructing. In between bouts of multiple personality arguements, dark depression and drug/alchol binges dawes finds his self looking at his life clearly for the very first time. Most of the book deals with his discovery that he never dealt with the death of his son, he just went on auto-piolt for x amount of years and its not really the road work that set him on his path its that he was desperatly/painfully angry that his son was taken away from him and with the coming of the road he could no longer coast along in his own little world. Even as Dawes takes the final steps the man that he was still emerges here and there as with Olivia and the Arms dealer, a little light in the overwhelming darkness. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes thier horror set in the real world, with nary a boogeyman insight and also of course anyone who likes Steven King no matter what name he is writing under. m.a.c
Rated by buyers 
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Barton George Dawes has sunk deep roots. He's worked at the same commercial laundry plant for 20 years, and lived in the same house for nearly as long. But the city has plans to extend a highway that will force the destruction of both places. Dawes has apparently been losing his grip on sanity for the past three years when his young son died of brain cancer. George buys a high-powered rifle as well as a .44 magnum handgun. He manipulates things at work so that the company ends up with nowhere to relocate to when the plant is demolished and gets fired. He starts thinking about buying explosives to destroy the highway and the equipment used to build it. I'm not going to give away any more of the plot, but when a story begins with a man purchasing guns while having two separate voices holding an argument in his head, you might guess that it doesn't end with him sipping Mai Tais on the patio of a beachfront condo in Florida.
Roadwork may be narrated in the third person, but the perspective is solely from Dawes. Readers must endure his rambling rants about virtually every aspect of life and soliloquies covering all manner of topics. If Dawes were eloquent or funny, this might be entertaining. But he's a confused, lonely, hurt man who doesn't understand why he is doing what he's doing and offers no real insight on anything. The only thing you learn from Dawes is that he's angry, and it didn't take 300 pages for that point to hit home. It's surprising that Stephen King, the master of creating compelling characters has managed to write a novel built around a single character that is neither likeable nor interesting.
Alienation from modern society is felt by many of us to varying degrees, and a book showing these feelings taken to the extreme has the potential to entertain and enlighten. Unfortunately, Roadwork has missed the mark badly on both counts. My suspicion is that this might have made a great novella of 100 pages or so but there are too many scenes of Dawes yelling at people and then saying "I don't know" when they ask him what's wrong or what he wants to do. There's no sense of tension building as his march to the inevitable occurs, just one more day of confusion and despair in what feels like an endless series of them.
Roadwork has a few strong moments such as the last ten pages. But this is not a book that could remotely be described as a page-turner or compelling. King wrote some great novels at this point in his career, but he missed the mark with this one. I wouldn't recommend it to most readers. King fans will do better to look at almost any of his other books before trying this one. Perhaps people who loved the movie Falling Down will find something worthwhile here, since it has similar themes and might entertain similar audiences.
Rated by buyers -
It's hard for me to give any King book less than 4 stars, but this just wasn't my kind of novel. I think he was trying to show us the inner battle inside this troubled character, but it just wasn't something I could get into. I just couldn't wait to hurry up and finish it. It's not poor writing (again, LOVE STEPHEN KING) but I would recommend dozens of his other books before I would recommend this one.
If you're looking for a phenomenal Stephen King novel, I would strongly recommend "IT."
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