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Finished Stephen King's "Full Dark, No Stars" a few days ago. This was a collection of 4 novellas, a la Four Past Midnight. As he says in the afterward, these are dark, nasty stories. Violent and horrific subject matter abounds, but only one, Fair Extension, had anything supernatural going on. Well, maybe the 1st one, 1922, could be construed as a ghost story, too. These were far from King's best. In places, it didn't even feel like him. I wondered, after reading some of these, if Joe Hill had actually written them. They kind of had his flavor.
Was this enjoyable? I'm a huge King apologist, and even I wasn't especially electrified by any of these stories. The best of them, and it literally took the last line of the story to make it that (the premise & execution being fairly pedestrian & predictable), was the aforementioned Fair Extension. The reason it worked, however, is the same reason these stories may have value apart from the enjoyment you may (or may not) have taken from reading them. As King explains in the afterword, he doesn't like to write highbrow fiction that makes the reader think WHILE he's reading it. But if, after the story's done you think on the subject matter a bit, that's another thing entirely, and the point behind these storiers, which seek to explore human nature. Ordinary people are placed in extraordinary circumstances (eg., a woman is raped & left for dead, but manages to survive & exact vengeance; a man w/ terminal cancer is offered a chance to extend & enrich his life, but only if he chooses someone to suffer in equal measure, a father & son murder their wife/mother & have to live w/ the guilt & maintain the cover story, and a woman discovers her seemingly perfect husband is actually a vicious serial killer). And they deal with those situations. We are left to wonder if they did the "right" thing, and how we may have acted in similar situations. Do we laud their actions or condemn them? Were the characters' reasons for doing what they did good enough to support their decisions? And what does how we come down on these issues say about us as individuals?
For a change (and surprisingly, to me) the message is maybe more important than the story in these tales. A rarity for King. Does it work? Well, I think it'd work better with better, more entertaining stories to get you to do the thinking. Almost totally absent is the character enhancing backstory and wry iconoclastic sense of humor we've come to love & expect from King. Dark, nasty tales indeed. Still, the fact that there is this food for thought presented elevates it from poor to fair status, at least. I'd recommend it for King completists, but if you're lukewarm on or hostile to him, skip it.
Was this enjoyable? I'm a huge King apologist, and even I wasn't especially electrified by any of these stories. The best of them, and it literally took the last line of the story to make it that (the premise & execution being fairly pedestrian & predictable), was the aforementioned Fair Extension. The reason it worked, however, is the same reason these stories may have value apart from the enjoyment you may (or may not) have taken from reading them. As King explains in the afterword, he doesn't like to write highbrow fiction that makes the reader think WHILE he's reading it. But if, after the story's done you think on the subject matter a bit, that's another thing entirely, and the point behind these storiers, which seek to explore human nature. Ordinary people are placed in extraordinary circumstances (eg., a woman is raped & left for dead, but manages to survive & exact vengeance; a man w/ terminal cancer is offered a chance to extend & enrich his life, but only if he chooses someone to suffer in equal measure, a father & son murder their wife/mother & have to live w/ the guilt & maintain the cover story, and a woman discovers her seemingly perfect husband is actually a vicious serial killer). And they deal with those situations. We are left to wonder if they did the "right" thing, and how we may have acted in similar situations. Do we laud their actions or condemn them? Were the characters' reasons for doing what they did good enough to support their decisions? And what does how we come down on these issues say about us as individuals?
For a change (and surprisingly, to me) the message is maybe more important than the story in these tales. A rarity for King. Does it work? Well, I think it'd work better with better, more entertaining stories to get you to do the thinking. Almost totally absent is the character enhancing backstory and wry iconoclastic sense of humor we've come to love & expect from King. Dark, nasty tales indeed. Still, the fact that there is this food for thought presented elevates it from poor to fair status, at least. I'd recommend it for King completists, but if you're lukewarm on or hostile to him, skip it.
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