Amber (The Literary Phoenix)
Written on Jan 16, 2020
Full Dark, No Stars is a collection of four short stories. And this is King, so “short” is a relative term. King’s short stories tend to blow up into successful films (see: The Shawshank Redemption, Christine, and Secret Window for instance) and they’re worth reading. Also, I’ve never read any of his short story collections before, but Full Dark, No Stars has been in my Audible collection for 5 years collecting dust ever since it was a $4.95 Daily Deal back in 2015, so it seemed about time to listen to it. Nothing like listening to a creepy story in pitch black while driving to work in the morning, am I right?
The first story in the collection is “1922”. Coming in at five hours long, this is the longest “short” story here. Immediately, I was turned off by the characters’ behavior, racist comments, sexist comments… historical fiction, particularly raw unapologetic historical fiction like King writes, gets like that sometimes. As always, these comments felt purely like the very incorrect assessments of the characters and not part of King’s agenda (King is notoriously good about this – if anyone wants to call him out on racism or sexism we can have a nice long chat about Susannah Dean) but man they do make me uncomfortable. Which is good, I guess, because he’s not sugarcoating. Stephen King does not sugarcoat, which is one of the things I like about his writing.
Which brings me to how deeply disturbing “1922” is. I don’t read a lot of horror on purpose. I get nightmares. I’m a child – I get it. But there is absolutely NO doubt in my mind that Stephen King is the King of Horror and if you’re going to have nightmares… you may as well get them from the King. Descriptions here are bloody and gruesome and haunting. And so, so well-written. “1922” has a lot of elements of interest – greed, murder, romance, suspense, bank robberies, friends to enemies, a haunting… it’s really well-done. I’m also glad I’m done reading it because now I worry about two-foot-long killer rats. So that’s nice.
The second story, ‘The Big Driver’, is about a woman who is raped, and then her murder attempted, but failed. This one was very difficult for me to read, but at the same time, I was ready to jump on King for writing in the voice of a victim of the opposite sex, but honestly, I thought his narrative was respectful, considering the situation. I appreciate King giving the issue a headline, because I believe that folks with a platform should use it for good and spread awareness. Regardless, it was hard to listen to this one.
And here, again, is one of the times where I would like to remind you, dear readers, that Stephen King is a horror writer and these stories are unsettling.
Okay, story #3 is ‘A Fair Extension’, and it’s the shortest of the bunch, coming in at just over an hour. Stephen King readers know that is really short for him. This is the type of story that felt like it really could have been extended, as it’s a typical ‘deal with the devil‘ story. I enjoy those, but this wasn’t the best one that I have read.
Finally, ‘A Good Marriage’ deals with something I think about a lot – the secrets people close to us keep that we couldn’t guess. I think everyone has secrets, right? It’s little horror and a little thriller and it was a good story to leave this collection on, because I keep thinking about it after the fact.
All in all, this is an incredibly well-written collection of stories with a lot of the deep, darker side of human nature. Also, it prompted me to repeatedly ask my husband to please not kill me because that was getting to be a theme in the stories so YAY (don’t worry, he promises, lol). It is very dark. King himself admits it after the collection is finished, so you really have to be careful treading into these tales. They are graphic and disturbing, but well-scribed and excellent examples of the genre.
Honestly, I expect no less from King.
