New Collection

[HoopyFrood]

I bring news of a new Stephen King book (always makes me happy to hear of new books from the guy). A collection of short stories, brought together under the title of Just After Sunset, will be released in November of this year. Wikipedia has the list of the titles that will be appearing in it:

Just After Sunset - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Woo!

[Barney]

Woo indeed.

There is no one better than King at writing horror shorts. A very few at the same level, but no one better.

[Nesacat]

Ah thank you indeed Hoopy. I love his short stories and I agree with Barney that he is very good at them. While I do like his novels as well, the short stories tend to win the day in an argument.

[HoopyFrood]

Oh, my.

Firstly, I have to say if anyone has been contemplating reading this collection, I say do it, if only for a couple of stories therein. I'm about two thirds of the way through it now, and although some of the stories aren't brilliant (Willa and Graduation Afternoon didn't do much for me) others are just...whoa.

Possible spoilers ahead, but I'll try not to go into too much detail.

The Things They Left Behind -- King's dip into the events of 9/11 and the aftermath. One thing I love about King is his ability to create such rounded characters; even if they appear for half a paragraph, there are brief snatches of description that make them just...well, human. The thing with large scale events like 9/11 is that you hear the number of deaths in them and your mind can't quite turn such large figures into real, human beings. Here it is brought to a much more personal level, and the imprint left behind by those who died in a few simple but memory-laden items. A very poignant story.

N. -- Blimey. Blimey! Just...bli-mey.

OK, now I've got that out of my system, I'll try to be a bit more articulate. It's like Lovecraft in the twenty-first century (although the story was actually inspired by "The Great God Pan") -- by which I mean, after witnessing unspeakable horror, the person goes to therapy for a while before opting for suicide. The structure of the story is very good, too, using a mixture of textual media (I always like when stories mix it up and try to do similar with my own). Starting with a letter, then moving on recordings of said therapy sessions. This latter was particularly effective. It then moves on to the recordings of the therapist himself, which is amazing -- it's almost diary-esque and gives such an insight into his spiraling decline. It reminded me of the M.R James story, with the wooden statues, and the especially firm diary entry of "I must be firm". It is bookended by another letter, a newspaper clipping and an email. And the horror of how it'll just keep...well, read it. Read it! The...things in it. And the idea of how thin everything was...and the use of OCD in it, too...

I started this story and realised I was still adding numbers together, to see if they were equalling 19 (see the "King's Universe" thread to see why I'm doing this). When you read this story you'll see this was rather ironic, and also why I stopped after a few pages into it...