Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Scribner
Disappointed doesn't even begin to cover how I felt when reading this book. I'm a huge Stephen King fan and I (usually) love his short story collections so I went into this with high expectations (that King had never failed to meet so far). This was the weakest King collection I’ve read so far and I found most of the stories underwhelming at best and deathly boring at worst.
(For those wondering, my current short story collections ranking is: The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, If It Bleeds, Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Everything’s Eventual, and Nightmares and Dreamscapes).
Thankfully, it being a book by King, even the stories I disliked were written in a style that I do like. Also, I adored four of the stories featured and they’re the sole reason I’m keeping the book on my shelf. Here are some brief thoughts on them:
Gingerbread Girl - A tense story that brings to mind the classic slasher movie scenario of an innocent woman versus an experienced serial killer.
Stationary Bike - Although I didn’t love how fatphobic this one was (especially at the beginning), the plot was gripping, the characters were interesting and the ending was weirdly sweet.
N - Hands down the best story in the collection and one of my favorite King’s shorts of all time. Think epistolary meets found footage meets eldritch horror, absolute perfection.
Mute - I had no idea where this story was going but it had me gripped from start to finish, even though the middle dragged on a little too much for my taste.
Now that I’ve talked about the ones I enjoyed, let’s take a look at those I didn't:
Willa - The concept was great and I do love ghost stories but the execution was just okay, a very ‘meh’ experience.
Harvey's Dream - This has to be one of the most boring King stories I’ve ever read. The plot was barely there, the characters were cardboard, and the ending had no payoff.
Rest Stop: Another ‘meh’ experience, it wasn’t the best but it also wasn’t the worst. Could’ve been better if he’d cut the protagonist's internal monologues in half.
The Things They Left Behind: A pretty sweet story that can be viewed as a metaphor for how grief works and presents itself in non-linear ways. But again, it wasn’t anything exceptional.
Graduation Afternoon: The only thing going through my mind while reading this was ‘oh wow this is boring.’ Thankfully, it was also really short.
The Cat From Hell: The plot was ridiculous and even though King can make ridiculous work on occasion, this was not one of them.
The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates: Look, two stories about a tragic plane crash in the same collection is a bit much. Plus, this one wasn’t as compelling or as well-written as The Things They Left Behind.
Ayana: This would make for a great holiday movie about miracles and how precious life is. As a short story, it was simply too cheesy.
A Very Tight Place: It went on for way too long, especially seeing as I couldn’t bring myself to care about the protagonist and wished he’d just die already so that the story could be over.
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