Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

[lemming]

this story collection is pretty shocking I guess. For me the common interest point in his different levels of horror and experimentation with genre and style is the characters and how they react to extraordinary situations, which is what he mentions trying to capture in the afterword, along with a comment that the stories in the book are "harsh". I guess he figured it would be gimmicky for a horror writer to warn in a foreword about how horrifying the contents are, but it's up to each reader to decide whether good writing and character development is worth enduring lengthy descriptions of a murdered wife's rotting corpse in the first story or a rape in the next, the same way it's up to you to decide whether a darkly comic (though less graphic) tale that features cancer as a plot device is your cup of tea.

While it feels a bit odd to write this sentence, I liked the rape story ("Big Driver") the best. It put me in mind of Gerald's Game which I think is quite underrated King. The focus on one character with a rich inner dialogue (this time cleverly done via the protagonist's habit of speaking in the voice of pets, inanimate objects, and later even corpses, as a way to reason through problems) is what I liked most about both Big Driver and Gerald's Game along with the mix of emotional and logical plotlines, but the other thing they have in common is the female protagonist having to stand up for herself in the face of evil bastards. Some people read this as feminist, but I think everyone can relate to having to deal with someone who has tried to dominate, ruin and use them, which is why King is able to convey the struggle so effectively. Truthfully despite the title for me it wasn't quite as bleak as "full dark, no stars". The first two stories show that the darkness can triumph, but the second two show that it doesn't always.

[Fran]

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