Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Work OutBy JANET MASLIN writing in the New York Times, November 4, 2008
Most people think of the roadside rest area as a functional place to stop during a long drive. Not Stephen King. Mr. King sees potential nightmares in even the most mundane experiences. And his new collection of short stories mines the rest-stop idea to the max. Of the 13 stories in “Just After Sunset,” one entirely revolves around a bathroom break. One uses a rest area as a crucial turning point in its suspense plot. And one is the retch-worthy tale of a man locked inside a tipped-over, heavily used Portosan.
JUST AFTER SUNSET
Stories
By Stephen King
367 pages. Scribner. $28.
Stories
By Stephen King
367 pages. Scribner. $28.
(NZ pub details below)
“I even grossed myself out,” Mr. King says of that last one in his notes about the book. Quite a feat. His gross-out threshold is a whole lot higher than yours.
“I even grossed myself out,” Mr. King says of that last one in his notes about the book. Quite a feat. His gross-out threshold is a whole lot higher than yours.
In any case, he is a tireless storyteller. One tale in this collection was written during a few hours’ lag time in a hotel room in Australia, just because he had time to kill. Mr. King’s introduction explains that his new surge of short-story writing was prompted by the job of editing the 2006 volume in the Best American Short Stories series . He wondered whether he still had the knack of miniaturization and decided to find out. And simple, everyday situations became his open portals to fantasy and horror.
Even a stationary exercise bicycle yields a richly scarifying tale.
There are specific fears that haunt this succinct, fast-moving collection. Two stories find Mr. King trying to convey the terrors of 9/11, one in a stark visual evocation (a sight that is “in very poor taste,” according to a Connecticut matron who witnesses it), and the other in a ghostly exploration of the event’s aftermath. Two others expand on the possibilities of obsessive-compulsive disorder by summoning it viscerally. You’ll know this book is having the desired effect when you can’t write down the numbers that the number-obsessed main character in “N.” deems terribly unlucky.
“For all I knew, that flattened snakehead with the pink eyes and what looked like great long quills growing out of its snout was only a baby,” writes Mr. King at his wicked best. The prospect of a sentence like that is what keeps his fans die-hard, even when a book is more of a quota-filler than a consistently top-flight collection.
There are specific fears that haunt this succinct, fast-moving collection. Two stories find Mr. King trying to convey the terrors of 9/11, one in a stark visual evocation (a sight that is “in very poor taste,” according to a Connecticut matron who witnesses it), and the other in a ghostly exploration of the event’s aftermath. Two others expand on the possibilities of obsessive-compulsive disorder by summoning it viscerally. You’ll know this book is having the desired effect when you can’t write down the numbers that the number-obsessed main character in “N.” deems terribly unlucky.
“For all I knew, that flattened snakehead with the pink eyes and what looked like great long quills growing out of its snout was only a baby,” writes Mr. King at his wicked best. The prospect of a sentence like that is what keeps his fans die-hard, even when a book is more of a quota-filler than a consistently top-flight collection.
Read Janet Maslin's full piece online.
New Zealand details for this title:
Just After Sunset NZ $38.99, Hodder & Stoughton - Available in NZ Nov 13.
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