80 Books No.30: Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Whilst it may seem as though I read a lot, I wouldn't consider myself well-read. I believe this primarily for the reason that the type of thing I read is very limited. I pretty much only read fiction novels. I almost never read non-fiction, autobiographies, poetry, plays or short stories. I'm basically very stuck in my ways.

However, I like Stephen King and this book was recommended on a website I visit, so this seemed as good a read as any. King's work is always readable and enjoyable, so there seemed little harm in giving this a go. The whole collection is centred around the theme of murder and whether it is ever justified. Considering it is a collection of short stories, I'll treat each one separately before summing up the whole collection (this also makes this post longer - I know all the tricks)

1922
A Nebraska farmer relates the reasons he murdered his wife and what happened as a result of it. From the outset, this was a dark and disturbing story, and it really didn't let up. The wife was, admittedly, horrible, but then this was a story narrated by a murderer: he was hardly going to make his wife sound nice! This subtly changed throughout the story, emphasising his unreliable nature. The corruption of his son was the real heart of the story, and it was a shame that the subplot involving him and his girlfriend became slightly far-fetched. In some ways, this made it less disturbing than the later stories, and yet it was this story which gave me nightmares and freaked me out. At this point in the collection, I wasn't wholly enjoying myself.

Big Trucker
A novelist is attacked on her way home from a book reading and seeks revenge. This story continued the dark nature of '1922' and took it even further. This was a more believable tale, to a point, and the graphic descriptions of the attack made it worryingly real. There was a twist in the tale, as ever with King, but it worked well. However, it was such a disturbing story that I still wasn't really enjoying this book; I could have happily given up at this stage!


Fair Extension
The story of a man who wishes to be cured from his terminal illness - and is, but you have to wonder if it is worth it. This was where the collection came alive for me. There was a change in narration style, to a more detached perspective. It was far more moralistic, in my opinion, and had more of an edge of magical realism about it than the other tales in the collection. The ending was the most disturbing part of this one as the main character did not respond how you'd want him to.

A Good Marriage
A woman discovers her husband is not the man she thought he was. It was pretty obvious from its inclusion within the collection that her husband was going to be a Bad Man. What was fascinating was how much of a Bad Man he was and how she responded to him. Whilst the initial situation was less likely than 'Big Trucker', the emotions seemed more real and true. I really enjoyed this one.

Bonus story: Under the Weather
An advertising man remembers something he has worked very hard to forget. A terrible summary for what turned out to be an excellent and devastatingly sad story. Why was this only included as a bonus in the paperback edition? Whilst the other stories were more disturbing, the emotions this one brought about were more overwhelming. Stunning.

Overall, Full Dark, No Stars is a decent enough collection. Stephen King writes beasty books (see In which size definitely matters ) and I can't always face a full 1000 pages. This was a nice little taster of readable and well-crafted tales. The title is one-hundred per cent accurate though: this really is thoroughly dark with absolutely no hope. Not to be read whilst in a depressive state of mind.

In which size definitely matters

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
Oscar Wilde

I adore reading. Ironically, it’s been a part of my life since before I could read, via audio books and my parents reading to me, and I can barely remember a time since when I haven’t had a book on the go. Sometimes, my favourite thing about going to London by myself or to meet someone is that I get to read on the train and I feel completely vindicated in doing so as there is nothing more productive I could feasibly do (my relationship with technology being shaky at best).

 There are many books I can indeed read over and over again: Wuthering Heights, the Chronicles of Narnia, The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, Little Women, and so many others. They’re like old friends I can fall back on whenever I need some comfort food.

On one level, I agree with Oscar Wilde’s statement above. Without knowing the context, I would fully concur that nobody should be discouraged from re-reading a book they’ve enjoyed. Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of other books in the world which you could be reading instead. Yes, life is potentially too short to read about Christian Grey’s sex-life in Technicolor detail once again. But it’s surely your right to be able to read something you liked as often as you liked: at least you’re reading.
 
Yet, taken another way, I’m not entirely convinced by Wilde’s thoughts. I’ve read many books once only and probably been more affected by them than some of the ones listed above. The Book Thief, for instance, by Markus Zusak, is a brilliantly wonderful novel which took me a while to get around to reading and which I thoroughly enjoyed when I did. The narrative style was so original and involving, the prose so beautiful. Yet I’ve never even tried to read it a second time. Similarly, I’ve never read the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker more than once, unless you count random extracts as part of exam papers. It’s almost as though I’m afraid that they won’t live up to the hype I’ve created around them if I were to meet them all over again. This doesn’t mean that these books hold any lesser place in my life than the Chronicles of Narnia – it doesn’t make them any less enjoyable.
 
And then we come to the other section of books which I enjoyed but would never even contemplate re-reading. The section I like to refer to as ‘the bricks’. For some unknown reason, the last two years have seen me reading increasingly large books. As just a quick sample of the kind of beasts I have read since January last year:
 
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen: 570 pages

The Passage by Justin Cronin: 1008 pages

11.22.63 by Stephen King: 752 pages

Under the Dome by Stephen King: 896 pages

The Stand by Stephen King: 1344 pages

 They’ve been varying in quality. Freedom I remember as being interesting in some places and yet utterly pointless in others; The Passage was engaging and had one of the most startling endings in a novel I can remember reading for a very long (made even more startling when I realised it was one of a trilogy, with 688 pages in the second part which hasn’t even been published yet in paperback). 11.22.63 was, frankly, amazing, bested only by Under the Dome which I read in about three days last summer.

And then we come to The Stand, the longest novel I have ever read. It took me nearly a month and in the end, it was almost a sense of not wanting to lose a battle which got me through. I enjoyed it. The characters were engaging, the storyline reasonably interesting, and King’s writing is almost always accessible. Yet I can’t help thinking I’ve missed something. By the time I finished it, I’d almost forgotten what had happened at the beginning. There were some chunks of it which just felt like filler – and indeed, to some extent, were filler as they were initially edited out of the first edition and were put back in about ten years later when the novel was success. In the foreword, King comments upon how pleased he was to share some unseen characters with the reader now and to bulk out those characters which already ‘existed’.

But I wonder why. I can’t help thinking it could all have been easier and quicker, and that in some way I’ve been cheated out of over thirty hours of my life by a self-indulgent need to cash in on an old novel. I’ve set myself a target of reading eighty books this year, and The Stand was only book number four; I fear to even attempt the maths to work out how many I now need to read per week in order to catch myself up!

What I’m trying to say is, I enjoyed The Stand. But there is almost nothing which could induce me to even attempt to read it again.

Life is definitely too short for that.