Krishna
Yet another Stephen King book, right after the review for 12/23/63.
This is a collection of short stories.
The first tale is Willa where David, an investment banker is puzzled when Willa, his bride to be, suddenly leaves a railway station where they had gathered with other survivors after a train derailment and were waiting for a special train to take them where they want to go. They originally were going to San Francisco in the train and got stuck in Wyoming. He goes in search of her, through dangerous wolf ridden territory and finds her in a bar where people are dancing. The twist in the story is good and reminds one of the best of Poe’s short stories. Nice.
The second is The Gingerbread Girl and it is told in the classic King style. He starts at the point where Emily is obsessed with running and slowly pulls back to show the death of their infant daughter Amy through a crib death, the mismatched personality of her with Harry, her husband, their fairly rich background, and the fact that Amy was born after four years of wanting to have a kid and at the point where they were contemplating fertility treatments.
She runs away from it all to a secluded house away in the seashore – the one belonging to her father – and starts running there, unobserved. When Pickering arrives, Deke, the guard warns her to stay off him because he comes with a different niece, all young ones, every time. But when she runs past his house, she glances inside and finds a blonde corpse in the trunk (which was open). Then she gets hit on the head and wakes up taped to a chair that is taped to the floor and the story really gets exciting, in the best of Stephen King’s traditions. Lovely how she plots to escape and how she nearly does not make it. Brilliant.
Next story is ‘Harvey’s Dream’ and Harvey Steven and Janet. This is as weird as the previous one is good. She gets increasingly disturbed when Harvey tries to tell her his dream with what she imagines is dangerous overtones of reality. Does not impress.
Next is a story called Rest Stop. Jack Dykstra writes as John Hardin but after a lecture in a book club, comes back home and on the way stops at a lonely rest stop. He sees Lee, an uneducated brute, abusing his wife. He steps in using his alter ego – one of his characters and subdues Lee. Nice.
Next story is about Richard Sifkitz, a commercial artwork creator, who is informed by Dr Brady that he is overweight and high in cholesterol. (Stationary Bike). The analogy he gives of construction workers inside his body trying to dispose of fat triggers a strong desire to paint. He sees that the obsessive painting and a stationary bike in front of it gets him into a trance and is improving his health tremendously and giving him abs to boot. The trip in the trance is evening and when it becomes night, he realizes that he is in trouble when a motorcar follows him at great speed.
Next, ‘The Things They Left Behind’. The narrator, Scott Staley, helps Paula Robeson, a cute but married artist with her predicament. He is a research journalist. He suddenly finds a pair of sunglasses and a baseball bat left inside his house, that have very big significance to past events in his life. The shades were Sonja D’Amico’s and the bat was Cleve Farrell’s. He finally figures out what he must do with them and we realize that he is a survivor of that great tragedy of Sep 11.
Graduation day tells the story of Buddy and Janice, she unable to say she loves him. Ends abruptly and weirdly, but you have to admit that the twist is unexpected.
N is a story about a mental patient. Johnny Bonsaint is a psychiatrist who gets a patient called N. He ultimately commits suicide and his wife, Sheila sends the notes to a childhood friend of Johnny. The notes are fascinating. It is about how N. one day came across a high place where there were seven or eight stones and he saw a dark evil shape in the middle trapped. N. has full fledged OCD and it developed because of this. He finally tells how his camera will not take pictures of the place and how his disposable camera actually got fried. He becomes the ‘keeper’ of the place and has to count and touch constantly so that evil does not come into this world. Very creepy and interesting story. N. dies and the Doctor, just so not to give in to paranoia, decides to visit the place once and see for himself that it is all in the patient’s mind. Major mistake. Wonderful ending of three stages, the doctor, his sister and the childhood friend that she sends the document to. A must read.
The Cat From Hell – A weird tale. An old man hires a professional killer to kill a cat that is in the house. It is exactly half black and half white and seems harmless. The old man claims it has killed three folks in the house already and is plotting to kill him. The hired killer takes it in a thick bag in a car to have it killed outside, as per the old man’s request. That is when everything goes wrong. Nice, but weird.
The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates – When Annie’s relatives are planning her husband James’s funeral, he calls her on the phone. She picks up when she is out from the bath. Very short and interesting but bizarre story. The title makes sense in the last statement of the story. But you may decide that it is a cop out.
Mute – Monette picks up a deaf and dumb hitchhiker (poor, raggedy, homeless) and takes him in a long car ride. Since the man cannot hear, he pours out his heart how his wife in her middle age left him for a sixty year old man and has been carrying on for near two years to boot. He tells the story to the deaf and dumb man. We can guess that, given the nature of the story and the author, the person perhaps is not really deaf, but what happens after is an interesting, including how it ends.
The next story is Ayana – a weird one. When that black girl kisses the narrator’s dad, he is cured and the narrator in turn gets many others cured. A different person each time (military man multiple times for the narrator) comes and asks him to help. Weird ending too.
A Very Tight Place – Curtis Johnson lives on Turtle Island and has a feud with Grunwald, a builder trying to acquire and build on the last vacant lot in that island. He is lured by the latter into a settlement talk in a remote location. He is forced into a portacabin at gun point and realizes that Grunwald plans to kill him and commit suicide thereafter. And that Grunwald has gone stark raving mad. The struggles of Curtis are icky but strangely captivating. But for all that, the end is kind of disappointing. I know that it is a truly liberating experience and what he says to Grunwald near the end is interesting, but still I think I would have preferred something else.
As always, the short story business is tougher as there are some excellent ones but there are some really ordinary ones. I still would rate it at 6/10
– – Krishna