Hazel
24th November 2008, 01:46 PM
Terribly lazy of me to stick Mr. King in the Horror section, but that's generally where you find the man. After a long King-hiatus, I couldn't resist the pull of good reviews for his new collection of short stories, Just After Sunset, and so I started it the other night. My plan here, is to write a little about each story as I read it, otherwise I'll have to do a lot of flicking through it at a later date, and I am far too lazy to do that. So first up -
Willa - It takes a while to realize why such a disparate cast of characters, who seem to know each other very well (to the point of being tirelessly irritated by each other) are collected together. And I am not about to spell it out as it's a nice little mystery and interesting to have the reader wonder why they are together at the same time as they try to figure out where, how and why they are...there. Anyway, one of the party, Willa (David's fiancee) wanders off, to the relief of the rest of the party as they found her very annoying. David debates whether he should go after her or not, finally deciding that he really should be a gentleman and not let his fiancee go wandering off in the dark, at night, near a forest with loud wolves...Right at the beginning Willa tells David that he doesn't always see what's right in front of him and that word of warning goes for the rest of the party.
I enjoyed this little tale, King seems to be as comfortable as always spinning a supernatural little nugget, and thankfully no alien machines spoil the show. It left me thinking at the end if the people are re-living the same night over and over and over...if they know they are but can't escape it, or if they start each night anew. Which wouldn't sit well with the level of familiarity they show at the beginning. So far so good.
The Gingerbread Girl - One of those tales that start one way and you think you know where it's going and before you know it, you're thrown a curveball, much like life. Emily and Henry's baby dies and to cope Emily takes up running. Steadily, she runs longer and longer and eventually, literally runs away from Henry. She moves down to her father's beach house to recover, where she can run as much as she wants. Passing by a concrete block of a beach mansion, she catches a glimpse of something she shouldn't and soon running takes on a whole new importance for her. I thoroughly enjoyed this tale, and while I am not quite finished the collection yet, I think this is the one that will stay with me. It is very reminiscent of King's Gerald's Game, one of my favourites of his work. King is very good at communicating personal horror and perception, not so at common villians - still, a great wee tale.
Harvey's Dream - Another tale that begins with domestic boredom/frustration and drudgery. But here, the husband Harvey experiences a dream, and in the telling of it, his wife Janet, slowly realizes how alive her husband appears. How unlike his usual self he is. He even calls her Jax, a nickname long since forgotten. He relates the dream of a seeing the neighbours car after a car accident and how his own daughter called him. Slowly everything becomes more alive. A good story with a traditional ta-dah moment at the end.
Rest Stop - A famous writer with a famous pseudonym and a less famous real name, (the opposite to King himself) has an identity crisis at a motorway rest stop. Unfortunately, the crisis plays itself out during a drama unfolding in the next cubicle, where a girl, a pregnant girl, is being beaten by her boyfriend. His authorly alter ego takes over. Interesting premise but it doesn't really go anywhere, and I wonder if this is King's warning to writers who believe their own hype or get themselves confused with their characters. Or maybe a warning to us readers who may confuse author with character. Why does Lee Child/Jack Reacher spring to my mind?!
Stationary Bike - Painter Richard Sifkitz gets a medical and finds that his weight and cholestoral levels are too high. So his doctor recommends he do something about it. To explain the cholestoral problems, he provides Richard with an analogy of little workmen in work clothes fighting in his arteries to keep back the fat. So back at his house Richard is struck doubly with inspiration. He paints the little workmen and he creates pictorial life for them. And he gets an exercise bike. As he peddles furiously daily, he simultaneously imagines a road where his cycling and workmen intertwine. As he loses weight, he loses his grip on reality. He literally peddles his way into a terrifying hallucination. What happens when the workmen have no more fat to shovel? Great and typically horrifying tale of King's when much of the horror is in the mind.
The Things They Left Behind - A 9-11 story, which begins, as most of the tales of this collection seem to, as one thing - a man chatting up a woman in his apartment block - and ends as something else entirely. Scott Staley was working in the World Trade Centre at the time of 9-11. However, that particular day he decided to take a sickie. Now, some time later, objects are appearing in his home. Objects that belonged to friends and colleagues of his that perished in the attack. Typically for King, one of the items is a baseball bat. Try as he might, he can't get rid of them. At first, you wonder if these hallucinations are caused by survivor guilt compounded by the fact that he took a sickie that day. But touchingly, he finds a way to clear his apartment of them. I think that this tale is one of the more successful of the collection so far. Through inanimate objects, we uncover the people, and the aftermath of such a disaster. Not how it affects the families, but how it affects those that should have been there, or survived when so many of their counterparts didn't. And the silly things that we remember people by.
Graduation Afternoon - Again, this tale begins as teenage couple, one wealthy boy and one girl from the wrong side of the tracks, deal with the imminent separation following graduation. Rich boy is off to an Ivy league school, and poor girl, though having worked hard and done well, is off to a less prestigious school. It is from the girl's point of view that the tale is told as she tries to convince herself, almost succeeding, that it is better this way. That they would have only broken up later when rich boy realised she wasn't that special after all. She contemplates how to break up with him even in the midst of the graduation celebrations. All very interesting, until a curve-ball is thrown. And really the future doesn't matter so much now. Hard to tell if this is another 9-11 comment, or just a rather simplistic peri-apocalyptic tale. Either way, it seemd like too easy a ta-dah ending.
Willa - It takes a while to realize why such a disparate cast of characters, who seem to know each other very well (to the point of being tirelessly irritated by each other) are collected together. And I am not about to spell it out as it's a nice little mystery and interesting to have the reader wonder why they are together at the same time as they try to figure out where, how and why they are...there. Anyway, one of the party, Willa (David's fiancee) wanders off, to the relief of the rest of the party as they found her very annoying. David debates whether he should go after her or not, finally deciding that he really should be a gentleman and not let his fiancee go wandering off in the dark, at night, near a forest with loud wolves...Right at the beginning Willa tells David that he doesn't always see what's right in front of him and that word of warning goes for the rest of the party.
I enjoyed this little tale, King seems to be as comfortable as always spinning a supernatural little nugget, and thankfully no alien machines spoil the show. It left me thinking at the end if the people are re-living the same night over and over and over...if they know they are but can't escape it, or if they start each night anew. Which wouldn't sit well with the level of familiarity they show at the beginning. So far so good.
The Gingerbread Girl - One of those tales that start one way and you think you know where it's going and before you know it, you're thrown a curveball, much like life. Emily and Henry's baby dies and to cope Emily takes up running. Steadily, she runs longer and longer and eventually, literally runs away from Henry. She moves down to her father's beach house to recover, where she can run as much as she wants. Passing by a concrete block of a beach mansion, she catches a glimpse of something she shouldn't and soon running takes on a whole new importance for her. I thoroughly enjoyed this tale, and while I am not quite finished the collection yet, I think this is the one that will stay with me. It is very reminiscent of King's Gerald's Game, one of my favourites of his work. King is very good at communicating personal horror and perception, not so at common villians - still, a great wee tale.
Harvey's Dream - Another tale that begins with domestic boredom/frustration and drudgery. But here, the husband Harvey experiences a dream, and in the telling of it, his wife Janet, slowly realizes how alive her husband appears. How unlike his usual self he is. He even calls her Jax, a nickname long since forgotten. He relates the dream of a seeing the neighbours car after a car accident and how his own daughter called him. Slowly everything becomes more alive. A good story with a traditional ta-dah moment at the end.
Rest Stop - A famous writer with a famous pseudonym and a less famous real name, (the opposite to King himself) has an identity crisis at a motorway rest stop. Unfortunately, the crisis plays itself out during a drama unfolding in the next cubicle, where a girl, a pregnant girl, is being beaten by her boyfriend. His authorly alter ego takes over. Interesting premise but it doesn't really go anywhere, and I wonder if this is King's warning to writers who believe their own hype or get themselves confused with their characters. Or maybe a warning to us readers who may confuse author with character. Why does Lee Child/Jack Reacher spring to my mind?!
Stationary Bike - Painter Richard Sifkitz gets a medical and finds that his weight and cholestoral levels are too high. So his doctor recommends he do something about it. To explain the cholestoral problems, he provides Richard with an analogy of little workmen in work clothes fighting in his arteries to keep back the fat. So back at his house Richard is struck doubly with inspiration. He paints the little workmen and he creates pictorial life for them. And he gets an exercise bike. As he peddles furiously daily, he simultaneously imagines a road where his cycling and workmen intertwine. As he loses weight, he loses his grip on reality. He literally peddles his way into a terrifying hallucination. What happens when the workmen have no more fat to shovel? Great and typically horrifying tale of King's when much of the horror is in the mind.
The Things They Left Behind - A 9-11 story, which begins, as most of the tales of this collection seem to, as one thing - a man chatting up a woman in his apartment block - and ends as something else entirely. Scott Staley was working in the World Trade Centre at the time of 9-11. However, that particular day he decided to take a sickie. Now, some time later, objects are appearing in his home. Objects that belonged to friends and colleagues of his that perished in the attack. Typically for King, one of the items is a baseball bat. Try as he might, he can't get rid of them. At first, you wonder if these hallucinations are caused by survivor guilt compounded by the fact that he took a sickie that day. But touchingly, he finds a way to clear his apartment of them. I think that this tale is one of the more successful of the collection so far. Through inanimate objects, we uncover the people, and the aftermath of such a disaster. Not how it affects the families, but how it affects those that should have been there, or survived when so many of their counterparts didn't. And the silly things that we remember people by.
Graduation Afternoon - Again, this tale begins as teenage couple, one wealthy boy and one girl from the wrong side of the tracks, deal with the imminent separation following graduation. Rich boy is off to an Ivy league school, and poor girl, though having worked hard and done well, is off to a less prestigious school. It is from the girl's point of view that the tale is told as she tries to convince herself, almost succeeding, that it is better this way. That they would have only broken up later when rich boy realised she wasn't that special after all. She contemplates how to break up with him even in the midst of the graduation celebrations. All very interesting, until a curve-ball is thrown. And really the future doesn't matter so much now. Hard to tell if this is another 9-11 comment, or just a rather simplistic peri-apocalyptic tale. Either way, it seemd like too easy a ta-dah ending.