Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
1922: A man coerces his son into helping him murder his wife. Can they keep their sanity in the aftermath?
1922 is a latter day retelling of A Telltale Heart, only with rats and a Bonnie and Clyde side-story. It's also damn good and a prime example of what Stephen King can do when he has a limited number of pages to work with instead of the entire paper output of a redwood forest.
Big Driver: After taking a shortcut down an unfamiliar road, a writer is raped and left in a culvert to die but her attacker made a mistake. He let her live...
Wow, this was a powerful, dark, unsettling tale of rape and revenge. Did I mention it was uncomfortable? A woman getting raped is much more horrifying than a nightmare clown lurking in the sewers. I kept having revenge fantasies of my own on behalf of the women in my life while reading this.
Fair Extension: When a mysterious stranger offers Harry Streeter 15-20 more years of life, he jumps at the chance. But with deals of this kind, there's always a catch...
This one kind of reminds me of The Monkey's Paw. For all the good luck the Streeter family has, shit rains down upon the man Streeter hates the most.
A Good Marriage: Darcy Anderson thought she had a good marriage until she found something her husband hid in their garage...
The point this story drives home is how little anyone really knows anyone else. Chilling and very effective.
Full Dark, No Stars isn't my favorite King book but it's chock full of Kingliness and is an excellent example of what sai King can do when he isn't allowed to write phonebook sized tomes. Four out of five stars.
View all my reviews
King has always been at his best with his short fiction. It's as if he's force to focus and stay with the story. Don't get me wrong, I love doorstoppers like The Stand and IT, but his novels over the last few years have felt bloated and seemed to wander. This was a great collection.
ReplyDelete