Full Dark, No Stars: Stories

For long time King fans, just be warned that this is one of those that in the old days he would have written under the Bachman pen name.

I couldn't finish three out of the four stories because they were just too awful and the one I did finish, I'd rather forget.

I have loved his work, long and short, for over 20 years. The Stand is one of the 2 or 3 best books I've ever read and although I've skipped or disliked a few of his over the last ten years, I'm not someone that thinks his best work was 20 years ago. I'm halfway through his newest JFK book and loving it so far.

What I found so objectionable about this book is exactly the sentiment contained in the title. FULL DARK NO STARS. That says it all. His best work is full of struggle and darkness and certainly horror or dread - but there is that redeeming and hopeful counter current. That unlikely hero who is at least going to flip off the steam roller as it crushes him. This book had no hope, no "stars" glimmering through the darkness.

I guess based on other reviews my opinion is not the norm, but I really did try to read all the stories and gave up on all but one in turn. The ideas are clear and his voice is undiminished... it's just that what he was sharing with me (constant reader) was atrocious. The kind of stories that Nancy Grace likes to harp on. Just foul awfulness - well written granted, but I just couldn't take it.

I ended up throwing the book in the trash; I can understand that Mr. King felt a need to get these stories out of himself and onto paper, it's just that after writing them he should have burned the paper.

I'm sure you get the point, but let me try one more explanation of how this differed from his writing that I love most. If at the end of "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption", Andy Dufrain (sp?) had drowned in that sewage pipe instead of escaping, then that story would have been almost awful enough to fit in with this collection.

Each of these novellas delivers a hard, tough and bleak perspective on humanity. Yes, we find characters with whom we can sympathise, but these have been brought into bad places by others whose terrible deeds wreak havoc. There is plenty of violence, some of it sexual, and each story is tense and taut. Gripping is an understatement.

"The souls of humans have become poor and transparent things" says the Devil in Fair Extension, the least violent but for me, the most bleak of the tales. These words could serve as an epigraph to the collection. It is visceral, disturbing and although King says in the Afterword that he doesn't want to make readers think as they read, yet throughout Full Dark, No Stars I was challenged intellectually as well as emotionally. What would I do in, or following, the situations depicted here? How do we grapple with the age old problem of evil? The concept of revenge is another age old philosophical and literary concern, wrenched open again for our consideration by Stephen King.

If you are a King fan you'll have this book already. If you are an occasional reader of his work, then I urge you to grab a copy asap. It ranks with his best.

I'm giving 4 stars, not because of the book/story itself but, because the condition of the book.

I would say no stars to this boring mess! All you get here is four short stories that are dull and hard to read without getting bored. Not the Stephen King I'm used to, and I have loved his books for many many years. This I found to be generic fiction with weird or violent actions by people with no developed character. No point to the story, nothing I thought about later. Just forgettable dross!
Full Boredom, No Stars!

One thing I can say for "Full Dark, No Stars" is its title is not only evocative but appropriate. This is the horror king writing at his blackest.

But it is not King at his best. "Full Dark, No Stars" presents four pieces of short fiction, from novella-sized to short-story length, dealing with the theme of retribution as experienced both by those dealing and those receiving. None are up to the standard King set in prior short-fiction volumes, and a couple leave decidedly sour aftertastes.

"1922" - An old man writes about the title year and the toll it took on him and his family. This employs a supernatural element, though not convincingly. It also shoehorns in a "Bonnie-and-Clyde" subplot which reads like King trying to pad out his underbaked revenge story into something more epic. The longest story in the collection, "1922" has flashes of King's unparalleled flair for seat-of-the-pants storytelling but lacks for both structure and soul.

"Big Driver" - Maybe the ugliest story in the collection, for the predicament in which it places the protagonist. Tess is a mystery writer who gets an invitation from a Connecticut book club, and what happens is one of the nastiest variants on a King theme I call the "short-cut story." (Whenever someone suggests a short cut in a King story, don't take it.) There's a viscerally satisfying revenge story here, but it's pocked by convoluted situations, unbelievable characters, and King's apparent notion of female empowerment by taking the law into one's own hands. I enjoyed the way it ended anyway, but it wasn't smart entertainment.

"Fair Extension" - The jacket blurb calls this "certainly the funniest" of the stories, but King's humor has never been his strong point. Here we get a variant on the "Faust" theme, with the idea of a middle-class fellow burning up with resentment that his dissatisfying life is being brought to a sudden end. The protagonist is likable enough that his transformation into something more monstrous feels like a cheat. It's by far the shortest story, and the least effective. King's ability to yarn-spin feels cut off by a curious sense of disengagement, one shared by the only other supernatural element in this collection, a rather jaded open-air vendor with whom the protagonist makes his Faustian bargain.

"A Good Marriage" - By far the best story here, "A Good Marriage" still left me short. Maybe it's again the sense of King pandering to his female fans with another self-empowered woman character, or maybe it's the unresolved way he leaves things between the woman and her husband, an accountant who hides a deadly secret she accidentally discovers. King develops the husband in a manner that makes us both loathe the guy and feel oddly sympathetic to his wife's lingering feelings for him. I wish King had done more with this one, as it has the makings of a classic. As it is, it's a good read with a few holes and unrealized opportunities.

So dark are these tales that King in an afterword feels the need to reassure his readers that he's really not an awful person and life is full of good things, too. I can't argue with that. The darkness of "Full Dark" is fairly oppressive at times, but the real problem I had with these stories is that all but the last lack the signature vitality I associate with King.

I have put off reading any of Stephen King's work, in part thinking I was saving his work for a later time. I thought a set of short stories would be an introduction. Unfortunately, the first story proved that his work and my sensibilities don't match up very well. Somehow reading about a Norway rat feasting on a dead woman with a badly slashed throat just below a head that was kicked by a thrashing cow dumped alive into a well -- somehow my imagination refused to function to give me this in picture format. The same malfunction occurred for other grisly passages. Mr. King is obviously loved by an army of followers but I find myself in the ranks of conscientious objectors.

In the chilling Tales of Stephen King there exist a high caliber of - excellence. Full Dark, No Stars falls short of this glory. King seemed to have been grasping in the dark in an attempt to add length to his stories. His books did well because he wrote well but now he writes without substance to sell books. Perhaps he should consider his own advice as penned in his final pages at the back.

Worst book ever

So far I'm loving this book!!!!!!

Good read for fans of S King.