Krishna
Stephen King is one of the most reviewed authors here – Just as a sample, see the reviews of Desperation or Just After Sunset.
As I had guessed, these are four novellas, one for each season. First comes the ‘Spring of Hope : Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’. The story is narrated by Red, who got multiple life sentences and bound in Shawshank for life. He becomes resourceful in getting anyone anything – within reason. He tells the story of Andy Dufresne, who got indicted for murdering his wife and her gym teacher lover. He got it mainly due to his cold demeanour in the court. Red believes that Andy is innocent and has been framed. One day Andy wants Red to smuggle Rita Hayworth into the prison!
Well, even the second time the story reads very well. For instance, how he wants a rock hammer which turns out to be too tiny to do any serious damage and how he fights the prison bullies who want to make him their bitch. How the Rita he wants is a large poster that many inmates smuggle in to put in their rooms. How he advises the prison chief about how to save on the taxes on his windfall. Amazingly told.
How he spends years managing the library and improving prison is told, almost as a misdirection to you, the reader. And you really fall for it, because you don’t see where it is heading. The temporary way he goes crazy when he realizes that another man had confessed to the murders he was accused of and that the warden deliberately does not want to investigate is brilliantly described, with King being at the top of the game, as he is when he really gets into a story.
And then he describes how Andy suddenly disappeared. It took them more than half a day even to figure out how he did it and it is brilliantly described, putting together all the clues – the posters, the rock polishing habit of Andy, everything. It is really a brilliant story. Andy tries to sound out Red if he would like to work for him before getting out, even going to the extent of telling him how he plans to live with a new identity. At that time Red thought that it was just wishful thinking. Brilliantly told, the ending is great. Small touches like how a man who is used to the prison for more than forty years gets the urge to ask for permission to go pee when he is working in the factory, how even the cheap motel beds seem enormous, how the urge to check the windows every fifteen minutes to confirm that there are no bars on it is overpowering. Nice indeed. The ending is great. Inconclusive, but that is exactly the way it must be.
In the next mini novella called the Apt Pupil, a boy delivers newspaper to an old man in a far away house. The boy, Todd Bowden is an all American average boy and the man who met him is an old retired officer called Arthur Denker. He confronts Denker and proves that this is a Nazi general in hiding and invites himself into Denker’s house. We learn that Todd, who is a good looking and sweet smiling boy is inordinately interested in torture chambers of Nazis. Having found Denker is a Nazi commandant in hiding, he forces (blackmails) Denker into revealing gruesome details of the concentration camp. Denker feels trapped as he knows he is done for if he disobeys Todd.
When he starts enjoying it, he seems to become an entirely different personalities. When Todd is in trouble with marks deteriorating, Denker agrees to be his ‘granddad’ in a parent interview, claiming that Todd’s parents have troubles that reflect on Todd’s grades.
When a parent teachers’ meeting is called, Todd panics but Dussander pretends to be his grandfather and talks to the Councillor Mr French. He implies that there is marital trouble with Todd’s parents and promises that the grades would come up. Todd is now forced to study day and night and hates Denker (aka Dussander) even more.
He plans to kill him but the wily old man forestalls him by revealing that he has written down the details and put it in a safe deposit box to be opened if anything happened to him. So Todd is trapped into an antagonistic relationship with him until he reveals one day that he is leaving for Hawaii with the family. He wants to forget the whole thing but Dussander tells him – proves to him – that there is no escape at all. The cat and mouse game is fascinating to read.
Also there is a neat tie in with the first story. The investment banker of Dussander was our own Andy Dufresne!
But suddenly the story stops moving in that direction and the author gets both Todd and Dussander in a killing urge (other people, destitutes mainly – Todd a series of winos and Dussander a series of poor gays). Makes no sense. However, during one of those killings, Dussander gets a heart attack and has to ask Todd to come clean up for him.
Story shifts to a brand new character now, confusingly at first. Morris Heisel broke his back (spine) when he was trying to do house repairs on a precarious ladder. When you realize that Morris is a concentration camp survivor and a Jew, you recognize the link. He remembers the real identity of Denker.
Meanwhile, the teacher whom Dussander met with a false name turns up at the city which Dussander said he was from and locates the person with the name Dussander used. When a Nazi hunter confronts him about it Dussander (aka Denker the Nazi commander) steals some meds, overdoses and commits suicide. The papers splash it on the front page and it comes as a complete shock to several. First Todd’s family – and Todd faints when his father shows him the paper – and also to the teacher who met him as Todd’s “grandfather”. Also he happens to call and visit the ‘real’ grandfather and sees that he is a totally different man and puts together Todd’s cheating earlier.
The investigation where the police interview Todd and Todd’s virtuoso performance are absorbing. But it all unravels fast and the ending is sudden but interesting.
The next story is The Body. It is about three friends who had a tree house they built out of salvage. Chris, the odd Teddy whose father went to jail because he fried his ears, and who wore thick glasses and hearing aid but was a daredevil and the narrator Gordie. They are in the tree house, playing when Verne arrives and asks them if they want to see a dead body. His brother and a friend stumbled upon a dead body and are discussing and Verne overheard it secretly. They cannot tell the police since they went in a stolen vehicle to that place by accident.
Suddenly the story shifts to Chico who is a young boy with a resentment for his stepmother Victoria and contempt about his dad and pity for his younger son. Again, his elder brother seems to have died in a crash and his father is cut up about it. He deflowers a girlfriend who is a virgin (Jane). Very disappointing when the author explains that Gordie, who is one of the boys, is a famous author now and this was one of the story snippets he tried out when he was young. Even if it was meant as both autobiographical and a recycling of an old story snippet, you go what the hell?
The story gets better though when the kids take water (but forget food) and faking camping to fool their parents who may spy on them, slip out and walk to the railroad where they heard that the body was found. When they reach a dump, they are nearly caught out by the dump’s keeper Milo Pressman with his dog with a fearsome reputation, Chopper. They enrage him by taunting him mercilessly but manage to walk away.
They almost get mowed down on a narrow bridge while they are walking on the rails when a train unexpectedly arrives and they have nowhere to go – it is high up and so you cannot jump on the side. That is interesting but when it goes from adventure to adventure, you start yawning. The story picks up and ends when they find the body and simultaneously, the brother of one of the boys and his friends turn up at the same place in a vehicle.
What ensues lifts the story into another level where the boys confront the older boys and the consequences of that many days later. He talks about many years later – what happened to each of his friends. Very nice ending and stays in your mind.
The last story in the series is also the smallest in comparison – it is called The Breathing Exercise. In it, the narrator goes to a “club” that has about thirteen members. The club is managed by Stephen, the mysterious butler who seems to be much older than he looks and tonight it is the turn of Emlyn McCarron to tell a story. The book goes back to how the narrator joined the ‘club’. He is a middling manager in a firm and a senior partner one day invites him to an evening. When he goes there, he finds a group of old men trading stories and many things about these seem to be strange. Stephen seems ageless, his invitee does not mention the outing again (though he was cordially invited, when he was there, to pop in whenever he felt like it’ and when he did finally, he was welcomed as if he had been a regular. Stephen, when he opened the door, totally looked blank until a few seconds later, when he was full of warmth. The story takes you by the throat and keeps your interest until the very end. The whole ‘club’ seems to exist for the purposes of exchanges of tales and except for a ‘slithering noise in the next room’ the idea of a sinister and supernatural element just hangs in the background. Probably not coincidentally, the narrator’s dead end career takes an upswing after he joined the club, quite unexpectedly – and, as suggested, perhaps not coincidentally.
The story within the story is told on a Christmas day. It is about a General Practitioner who specializes in obs-gyn and a woman of not large means but totally in control coming in pregnant – but without a wedding ring on her fingers – to be cared for. She wants to have the baby and wants Dr McCarren to help. His Breathing Method seems to help her not only in childbirth pain but also social anger. Then comes the climax where she gets into an accident on the way to the hospital during the childbirth and what happens next – including the incredible piece at the end. The club mystery is left unraveled but is visited upon at the end again.
In terms of the stories the first one is the best. Absolutely terrific. The second one is the second best. I would consider the Body as the least interesting of the four stories. I need to rate the book as a whole and so I think I can easily award it a 7/10
– – Krishna- (June 2019)