Re: Books by Stephen King
Very true especially when writing horror fiction.
Well I have done a few more stories, actually only two more to go.
first off is the milkman parts one and two.
Part one was rather fun in a macabre, surreal way though very short.
Beware! here comes some spoiled milk .
This one really qualifies as black humour and though short and a bit aimless, I took it more as a or portrait of a psycho than anything else, actually form if not in style it reminded me some of Angela Carter's writing (I finished a complete collection of her short fiction recently). Plus it lead me to make some wonderfully grim jokes while making coco for my lady.
Sadly, the milkman part two, big wheels was not half as good. The portrait of three not particularly pleasant guys getting roundly drunk together was sort of entertaining in a gross way, but I didn't really see the point of the story beware! spoilers ahoy.
The idea Rocky, the laundry worker's wife had run away with the psycho milkman from the previous story was sort of odd, and I didn't really get why the mechanics murder of his wife was only mentioned in a very casual in passing. Likewise, I'm really not sure on the ending or what I'm supposed to think since while the implication is that the psycho milkman caused the guys to have a car crash, since they were planning to kill him anyway this wasn't such a bad thing, and given that Rocky came across as a total Douchebag anyway, I can't really blame his wife for wanting to leave him even if he wasn't as murderous as his mechanic pal.
All the stuff about the third guy's "hole in the back" also seemed to go no where, though whether it was just drunk talk I'm not sure. all in all a roundly pointless story.
The third story on the other hand
Grandma was absolutely awesome! Not only does King an eleven year old protagonist very well, but I also loves how he plays with you in this one. There are times you think the boys old sick grandma is just normal senile old lady, and the protagonist George's struggle with himself felt very real.
The conclusion was an absolute gut punch!
it is odd, if you'd told me the premise of this story I really wouldn't have thought much to it, since after all corpses and witchy old ladies are rather flat horror wise, but King does such an amazing job with this one (the description of the old lady actually reminded me of the Hansel and Grettle scene from It). The ending is completely a gut punch!
What is doubly amazing is since currently my lady's own father is extremely ill, living with her sister and proving difficult to look after , I did wonder if I'd find the subject a wee bit close to home, particularly since as a child I did occasion ally look after my own extremely disabled sister while my parents were out. But King is a far better author than I thought here and he had more up his sleeve in this story than just "ooooh! sick people are sooooo gross"
So there we are, the good, the bad and the rather pointless .
I actually sharing my thoughts as I read stories.
Though I do write book reviews fairly seriously, I don't review short story collections since even in a collection by the same author stories can be of radically different qualities and the only way to be fair would be to review each and every story individually, which manifestly is usually impractically, but just informally saying what I thought here is I like to do, and it'll stand me in good stead when I read more King shorts in the future.
of course, probably tomorrow my lady and I will also be starting The Green Mile, which I'll likely a formal review for, though I might come back here do some casual chatting about it too.
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