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April 18, 2009

Just After Sunset - Stephen King

Just After Sunset - Stephen King

I'm a big Stephen King. This is even though he has disappointed me a lot over the last twenty years. I still keep coming back. Partly it is because even though his later books are sometimes a bit pointless and lack direction, the journey is often enjoyable because he is such a good writer.

The rot set in in about 1985 when I bought the hardback of Skeleton Crew, a book of short stories. I couldn't afford it, but had to have it. I was really disappointed with the quality of the stories - the first time I hadn't liked something King had written. His short stories before this had been superlative. They included classics like "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" and "The Body", from Different Seasons and both made into very famous films. The earlier collection, Night Shift was also responsible for a few films, but the stories are all good.

After that, I didn't give up. As I said, I'm a bit of an addict. I also read the collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes. I can't remember much about it, just that it wasn't that great. There were no stories that I cared much for.

Therefore I wasn't much bothered when "Just After Sunset" came out. I would probably have read it at some point, but I got the hardback for Christmas, and decided I may as well give it a go. I'm not going to describe any of the stories - I see little point in doing that for a short story collection review. What I will say is that these stories are a lot stronger than anything I've read by King for years. Some are horror as you'd expect, but the strongest I think are pure thriller. What many people, I guess the majority in fact, don't know about Stephen King is that he has a rare ability to write stories of pure emotion. His horror gets the most press, and his films are more famous than his books. But he can write about people and situations , and make you care about them, in a way I seldom encounter. This is the real reason I read his books. He only manages to do this in this book once - but once is enough.

Highly recommended, not every story hits the mark, but almost all are well worth reading.

Posted by se71 at April 18, 2009 10:20 AM

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