I've been delving into King's shorter works lately, and this collection of novellas (and maybe one novelette or short story) is great stuff. Full Dark, No Stars is maybe not quite up there with Four Seasons, but it's definitely in that direction.
1922 is the story of a Nebraska farmer near Hemingford Home (later featured in The Stand) in, you guessed it, 1922 (although he tells the story several years later). He and his son hatch a plot to deal with his wife, who wants to sell the farm and move to the big city. You might not think a story about land and marital disputes 100 years ago would be so engaging, but of course this is Stephen King we're talking about. The story explores the dualities within us. The main character refers to "the Conniving Man" as one part of himself. Can we or our loved ones survive the battles between these parts of ourselves? Are the rats more than they seem? (I also recommend the 2017 film version starring Thomas Jane as a good adaptation. But read the novella first.)
Big Driver brings us to more-or-less the present day with a mystery writer going on tour to promote her books. On the way home she has car trouble and meets a nefarious stranger. What follows is a particularly gnarly tale of revenge that kept me intrigued even though I normally don't find revenge a very interesting plot device (it just gets overdone in my opinion). Like 1922, this story also explores the effects of misogyny on individuals and the larger culture. Women put up with a lot of shit in our culture (an understatement!), and this story explores one kind of response to that. (There is apparently a film version of this one, too, but I haven't gotten around to watching it yet.)
"Fair Extension" is the shortest, maybe a short story or novelette rather than a full novella. It's also one of the more explicitly philosophical stories. A man in Derry (yes, that Derry) with a terminal illness meets a mysterious roadside salesman who offers him a chance to extend his life. But (with a heavy nod toward Needful Things), there's a catch, of course. Is a longer life necessarily a better or more meaningful life? How far can you go to extend your life? Is the universe a just or fair place? Does it matter whether it is? Heavy stuff for a mere 44 pages! I also loved how unsettling the ending is, but in a deeper and stranger way than the other stories are disturbing.
Lastly, we have A Good Marriage, which starts off with the very un-Stephen King like title and premise of a woman in a, well, good marriage. Things are going great. She and her husband are happy together after 27 years and run a coin collecting business. The kids are out of the house headed toward full, independent lives. But... as if King wants to remind us who he is, all is not well. She finds a disturbing secret about her husband, and has to figure out whether to confront him and how to proceed.
I recently read and watched the TV adaptation of Lisey's Story, and I found some odd parallels here. Do you ever really know someone, even in a long, close marriage? And like in 1922, are there sides of ourselves that we keep away from even our dearest loved ones? It's also interesting that A Good Marriage is from the wife's point of view rather than the husband of 1922. It makes for a different kind of story. (It might be interesting to read a version of A Good Marriage from the husband's point of view or a version of 1922 from the wife's). King discusses a specific inspiration for this one in the Afterword, but I won't say what it is lest I spoil the story. This one also has a 2014 film adaptation starring Jane Allen that was pretty good, but it of course lacks the nuance of the novella. Fun fact: I read this novella on my anniversary this year, which I thought was funny.
As King says in the Afterword, these stories are not always easy to read (or, he says, to write). But that's what you need to do if you're going to explore the more troubling aspects of human nature, of the duality within all of us. And nobody does that exploration better than Stephen King.
PS: Yes, the title of this review is a nod to King's The Dark Half.
See my Goodreads review.
No comments:
Post a Comment