Full Dark, No Stars- Stephen King

Purchase:  Amazon | Chapters

Published:  2010
Pages:  368
ISBN:  9781439192566
Genre:  Short Stories, Horror

Start & Finished Dates:  Jan. 1-4, 2011

1922- Jan. 1, 2011
Big Driver- Jan. 1, 2011
Fair Extension- Jan. 2, 2011
A Good Marriage- Jan. 3-4, 2011

Where Found:  Xmas 2010 gift from mom & dad (off my wish list)
Why Read:  Long-awaited & latest set of short stories by Stephen King!

Read For:  Stephen King Challenge (1/6)

Summary:  A collection of 4 short stories:

1922- A rural farmer & his teenage son attempt to hide behind the murder of his wife to keep their farm.

Big Driver- After a popular mystery novelist is raped & left for dead, she seeks revenge on the truck driver that assaulted her.

Fair Extension- A man dying of cancer makes a deal with a shady street character to extend his life while slowly disintegrating another.

A Good Marriage- A long-married woman discovers a hideous secret her husband has been keeping & must decide what, if anything she will do about it.

Review:

1922- This was creepy good reading!  How far the characters try to cover up a murder and eerie, beyond-the-grave attempts to thwart them make it your hairs stand on end (cliched but true).  The ending was the most brutal of all four stories.  Overall, it was a strong plot and a great start to the book.

Big Driver- This took the rape revenge story, a reworking of The Dirty Dozen and The Brave One (which King explicitly references in the story) and made it more original.  Tess was my favourite character of all four stories.  I loved the unique take on her behaviour post-rape--equals parts tortured, angered, humiliated, and trying to plot her next move.  The only downside was the ending seemed a bit long, especially the second half of it that tended to go off in a weird direction.  I also a bit put off by the Dr. Doolittle meets Joan of Arc voices she attributes to animals and her Tomtom (that's right, her GPS device).  A bit too odd.

Fair Extension- A short, quick read with an interesting take on the old "making a deal with the devil" yarn.  I have to admit that the amount of bad luck this deal created provided some comic relief, and some ailments were quite creative.  With the tight page count, the story's ending was too inconclusive for me--there seemed to be no end in sight and no consequences to this deal that I felt Dave didn't have any regret or even a hint of conscientious thought about the deal.  It was a good story but far from the best.

A Good Marriage- The most realistic horror story in the bunch, which struck an even scarier tone simply because of that.  It turned out to be a tad predictable but was well written and had an interesting moral twist to the story.

Rank:

1922- (A)- Excellent

Big Driver- (A)- My favourite of the 4 stories

Fair Extension- (B)- Good

A Good Marriage- (A)- Excellent

Overall:  (A)- Excellent, Highly recommend