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gategrrlKing's newest short story collection echoes back a lot of earlier themes and personal cliches that he's used throughout his career. That's not necessarily a bad thing: for his faithful Constant Readers, it means we get to see how his approach has changed over the years. Not all of the stories are brand new; one of them is 30 years old and this is the first short story collection he's included it in. All stories are talked about in the order they've been set in the book. Onward!
Willa: Sets the tone for most of the other stories in the collection. What happens after death? How do perceptions shape our world? What makes one able to move on? This story has features that reminded me of a certain movie starring Bruce Willis as a ghost who didn't know he was dead; but King puts his own spin on the angle, which isn't exclusive, after all, to M. Night Shamalyan. Not all questions are answered, but the ones important to the characters are. A nice mood piece.
Harvey's Dream: Partly about a frayed marriage, partly about the dream, and shaded gently with horror, this one reminded me most of a Twlight Zone episode (the one with the old woman who answers her phone and tells her dead fiance to go away!) but only in the sense that there's a phone call involved and a message imparted that's difficult to parse through. What happened if dreams came true? And not all dreams are good dreams.
Rest Stop: Harkens back to King's novel "The Dark Half". In this case, the writer (the main character, of course) also, like King and Thad Beaumont, has a pen name with which he publishes books that aren't "his" necessarily, but belong to his Other Writer personality. Unlike Bachman and Richard Stark, Beaumont's Dark Half, in this case, the writer wills his other self to the forefront, all the while in charge. What would a usually meek writer do if he ran across a nasty situation and let his wilder self out for a walk? King sticks with battered woman psychology. The woman the writer is trying to save also tries to protect her abuser from being abused himself! It's not as unusually as you'd think: but only King would use that hard reality against a play reality and make you wonder if helped at all.
Stationary Bike: Here, King uses a well-worn trope of a picture encapsulating the main character's life, or chasing him. He's used it in "The Sun Dog", and Rose Madder (about an abused woman and her stalker husband) and at least two other stories I can think of. But here, the artist paints a world he escapes into in order to get some exercise and live longer...and the imaginary (?) crew in his body aren't appreciating his efforts. Quirky, but with a upbeat King ending. I enjoyed this one in particular
The Things They Left Behind: A man who worked in an insurance company on the 110th floor of the World Trade Center is being haunted by his dead coworkers. A little voice in his head told him not to go to work that day, and he didn't. And now he's finding objects in his apartment that couldn't possibly be there, and there are voices whispering behind the objects. He must figure out what to do with them; in the process, he discovers that what he must do is the best thing for him to do. Sad and also clever. It's a testament to how the smallest of objects encapsulate memory and meaning.
Graduation Afternoon: More or less a viginette sketching out the graduation day of a rich boy through his townie girlfriend who has high hopes for herself (and not in connection with the boyfriend, refreshingly). The day is stopped short when, instead of airplanes flying into the WTC towers, something else even worse happens. Short.
N.: A lot's been written about this one. This is an old-style horror psychological thriller that goes right back to those wonderful old monsters from The Dunwhich Horror etc. It's also been made into a animatic movie on iTunes which is worth checking out. Suitably scary, and makes you hope no one goes back to the strange field where there are 7-no, 8-no, 7- large monolithic stones. Because only the sacrifice and death of the person who sees them truly seals the rift. The only problem is, there's always someone else who has to check it out, renewing the cycle.
The Cat From Hell: Oh yeah, vintage King, with visuals that really haven't changed much for him. Most of his mind-movies are based on those old horror comics from his child-hood, and it works here. A rich old man who built his wealth on the deaths of 15,000 cats (experiments for a death drug concoction at hospices) reluctantly allows his sister to bring an odd cat into the household. The story starts when he hires a professional hit man to kill the cat. Thing is? Don't mess with the cat. Fun!
The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates: Another ghost story, where the ghost calls his wife. It's from her point of view. It's a lot about what happens to the survivors of a loved one, what the communication between the life and death would mean, and again, how life moves on in some respects, but in others, never does. I liked this one, too.
Mute: Be very very careful who you vent to when you pick up a stranger. You never know if they're really listening or not. A variation of Strangers on a Train by Hitchcock, but where there's no agreement. When would a death be a good thing? Would you be damned for thinking it was a good thing, no matter how horrible the circumstances were? How much is one responsible for others' actions?
Ayana: A response, I guess, to the Green Mile, where King slyly acknowledges his use of the Magical Negro trope and mocks his own use of it. This time, it isn't the magical little black girl who is the focus, nor even the man who inherits her gift, but the strange system by which those granted with the ability to grant new life and vigor are taken to those who need it. It's never answered how or why this power exists or is passed from one person to another-and the guardians of the people who inherit it have no idea either. One of the guardians in the story is an atheist, and yet, somehow he knows his duty. It's enough to the main character that he can make a difference in random lives. Other than his temporary guardianship of the power of life, he's perfectly normal. A nice story to mull over.
A Very Tight Place: Sometimes it takes a really nasty experience to wake you up and make you realize that you ARE a better person than you thought you were, and what the prison of your own making was. Only with a King character, better watch out. Your neighbor may hate you more than you thought and to more deadly effect. Kinda gross (okay, yes, very gross) and perhaps the most pedestrian of all the stories in the collection. But the theme of the entire collection remains-rebirth, rethinking of one's role in life (and death) and what you can do about it once you've thought about it. What do you do with it?
One of King's more thoughful entries. The stories are less intensely full of horror and have much more to do with what I just wrote about above. There was one story I haven't read yet, Gingerbread Girl, because I don't think I'm ready for that one yet. This is a King who has been profoundly affected by his car accident experience in 1999, and is still processing it. These are the stories of a person who is moving, like everyone else, too, toward the grave, and *knows* it.
I know I liked most of the stories in the collection. They're more thought provoking than his straight-out horror stories. If you're not a huge King fan, get it out of the library. Really. I don't think you'd regret it.
Willa: Sets the tone for most of the other stories in the collection. What happens after death? How do perceptions shape our world? What makes one able to move on? This story has features that reminded me of a certain movie starring Bruce Willis as a ghost who didn't know he was dead; but King puts his own spin on the angle, which isn't exclusive, after all, to M. Night Shamalyan. Not all questions are answered, but the ones important to the characters are. A nice mood piece.
Harvey's Dream: Partly about a frayed marriage, partly about the dream, and shaded gently with horror, this one reminded me most of a Twlight Zone episode (the one with the old woman who answers her phone and tells her dead fiance to go away!) but only in the sense that there's a phone call involved and a message imparted that's difficult to parse through. What happened if dreams came true? And not all dreams are good dreams.
Rest Stop: Harkens back to King's novel "The Dark Half". In this case, the writer (the main character, of course) also, like King and Thad Beaumont, has a pen name with which he publishes books that aren't "his" necessarily, but belong to his Other Writer personality. Unlike Bachman and Richard Stark, Beaumont's Dark Half, in this case, the writer wills his other self to the forefront, all the while in charge. What would a usually meek writer do if he ran across a nasty situation and let his wilder self out for a walk? King sticks with battered woman psychology. The woman the writer is trying to save also tries to protect her abuser from being abused himself! It's not as unusually as you'd think: but only King would use that hard reality against a play reality and make you wonder if helped at all.
Stationary Bike: Here, King uses a well-worn trope of a picture encapsulating the main character's life, or chasing him. He's used it in "The Sun Dog", and Rose Madder (about an abused woman and her stalker husband) and at least two other stories I can think of. But here, the artist paints a world he escapes into in order to get some exercise and live longer...and the imaginary (?) crew in his body aren't appreciating his efforts. Quirky, but with a upbeat King ending. I enjoyed this one in particular
The Things They Left Behind: A man who worked in an insurance company on the 110th floor of the World Trade Center is being haunted by his dead coworkers. A little voice in his head told him not to go to work that day, and he didn't. And now he's finding objects in his apartment that couldn't possibly be there, and there are voices whispering behind the objects. He must figure out what to do with them; in the process, he discovers that what he must do is the best thing for him to do. Sad and also clever. It's a testament to how the smallest of objects encapsulate memory and meaning.
Graduation Afternoon: More or less a viginette sketching out the graduation day of a rich boy through his townie girlfriend who has high hopes for herself (and not in connection with the boyfriend, refreshingly). The day is stopped short when, instead of airplanes flying into the WTC towers, something else even worse happens. Short.
N.: A lot's been written about this one. This is an old-style horror psychological thriller that goes right back to those wonderful old monsters from The Dunwhich Horror etc. It's also been made into a animatic movie on iTunes which is worth checking out. Suitably scary, and makes you hope no one goes back to the strange field where there are 7-no, 8-no, 7- large monolithic stones. Because only the sacrifice and death of the person who sees them truly seals the rift. The only problem is, there's always someone else who has to check it out, renewing the cycle.
The Cat From Hell: Oh yeah, vintage King, with visuals that really haven't changed much for him. Most of his mind-movies are based on those old horror comics from his child-hood, and it works here. A rich old man who built his wealth on the deaths of 15,000 cats (experiments for a death drug concoction at hospices) reluctantly allows his sister to bring an odd cat into the household. The story starts when he hires a professional hit man to kill the cat. Thing is? Don't mess with the cat. Fun!
The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates: Another ghost story, where the ghost calls his wife. It's from her point of view. It's a lot about what happens to the survivors of a loved one, what the communication between the life and death would mean, and again, how life moves on in some respects, but in others, never does. I liked this one, too.
Mute: Be very very careful who you vent to when you pick up a stranger. You never know if they're really listening or not. A variation of Strangers on a Train by Hitchcock, but where there's no agreement. When would a death be a good thing? Would you be damned for thinking it was a good thing, no matter how horrible the circumstances were? How much is one responsible for others' actions?
Ayana: A response, I guess, to the Green Mile, where King slyly acknowledges his use of the Magical Negro trope and mocks his own use of it. This time, it isn't the magical little black girl who is the focus, nor even the man who inherits her gift, but the strange system by which those granted with the ability to grant new life and vigor are taken to those who need it. It's never answered how or why this power exists or is passed from one person to another-and the guardians of the people who inherit it have no idea either. One of the guardians in the story is an atheist, and yet, somehow he knows his duty. It's enough to the main character that he can make a difference in random lives. Other than his temporary guardianship of the power of life, he's perfectly normal. A nice story to mull over.
A Very Tight Place: Sometimes it takes a really nasty experience to wake you up and make you realize that you ARE a better person than you thought you were, and what the prison of your own making was. Only with a King character, better watch out. Your neighbor may hate you more than you thought and to more deadly effect. Kinda gross (okay, yes, very gross) and perhaps the most pedestrian of all the stories in the collection. But the theme of the entire collection remains-rebirth, rethinking of one's role in life (and death) and what you can do about it once you've thought about it. What do you do with it?
One of King's more thoughful entries. The stories are less intensely full of horror and have much more to do with what I just wrote about above. There was one story I haven't read yet, Gingerbread Girl, because I don't think I'm ready for that one yet. This is a King who has been profoundly affected by his car accident experience in 1999, and is still processing it. These are the stories of a person who is moving, like everyone else, too, toward the grave, and *knows* it.
I know I liked most of the stories in the collection. They're more thought provoking than his straight-out horror stories. If you're not a huge King fan, get it out of the library. Really. I don't think you'd regret it.
