Book Review: You Like It Darker By Stephen King

"You Like It Darker" is the new collection of short stories by Stephen King, which was released in early May.  

I really meant to review this much earlier, having finished it early in June. But I got stalled and then sidetracked. Only recently, really, did it occur to me that I had never quite gotten around to reviewing this book. So here goes:

This book starts off with a short story, "Two Talented Bastids," which I actually really enjoyed. It's about two men from the same town in Maine who have reached an age where most other men have abandoned their dreams. They are good friends, and both of their careers just take off into huge success, more or less at the same time. There is a reporter trying to get to the bottom of their incredible success, but it is the son of the writer, who narrates this story, who one day encounters the truth. And the truth is bizarre and other worldly, literally. I enjoyed this short story - or possibly it qualifies as a novella - because the narrator, the son of a famous author, shows very human and relatable emotions, which helps to suspend the perhaps natural disbelief of the Constant Reader. A fun read, and I did not want to reach the end. That itself speaks volumes about how well-written and engaging this story was.

After that, there are two really short stories both easily read during one sitting. The first is "The Fifth Step." It takes place on a bench in an isolated park bench in New York's Central Park, when a man is approached by an alcoholic, Jack, who unexpectedly seems intent on telling the guy his life story. But things are not always what they seem, and the story takes a major twist. The next story is "Willie the Weirdo." This is about a kid, Willie, who's sickly grandfather is his only friend in life. We see the grandfather as he is about to die. But like with the previous story, there is a nasty surprise at the end of the story. I don't want to be guilty of any spoilers here, so you will just have to read the story for yourself, okay?

Then comes “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream.” This one that is more of a novella, at least in terms of length. It is an interesting story, and it really grabs you as you read it. This one starts off very much the way that you would expect a Stephen King story to begin, with a guy having a dream, and his legs carrying him against his will towards an abandoned gas station in some remote part of Kansas. There, he sees a human hand, and realizes that someone has been buried there. He tries to convince himself that it is just a dream, but then feels compelled to locate the place via Google, and then pays it a visit. Somehow, everything that he dreamed is true, down to the last details. So he places an anonymous call to the police, but it winds up being anything but an anonymous call. In fact, it makes him appear quite suspicious to the police.

That is when the story takes one of many turns. He finds himself confronted by two inspectors, including one who reminded me a great deal of Victor Hugo's Inspector Javert from Les Misérables. Even the name is relatively similar, although I'm not sure if King did that intentionally or not. Anyway, this inspector is absolutely convinced that Danny is guilty, and it turns out that he becomes completely obsessed and consumed with making sure that what he is convinced is the threat to society that Danny poses is taken off the streets, one way or the other. Again, his obsession feels reminiscent of that of Inspector Javert.

Meanwhile, Danny finds his own life unraveling, bit by bit. Things go from bad to progressively worse, until it gets positively unbearable. People he used to appreciate and have friendly relations with now have turned their backs on him, effectively ostracizing him.

Overall, it was a very engaging story. I began reading it and was immediately hooked, wanting to turn the page to see what happens next. And when the end of the story approaches, you kind of are sad and want it to keep going. A fun, solid and engaging read.

Up next is "Finn," a story about a young man who seems cursed with bad luck. But even his luck takes a turn for the worst when he finds himself abducted by a gang who insists that he is the drug dealer and thief that they are trying to get back at. Ultimately, he is released, but even then, he cannot quite believe his luck. On his walk back home, it occurs to him that his release might not be reality, that he might be a bit like the condemned man in the short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. 

"On Slide Inn Road" is a story that kind of reminded me of a ridiculous incident that took place during a family vacation with my brother and my son in eastern Quebec province once. The GPS told us to go down a road that may have technically been shorter in terms of miles, but which quickly deteriorated into more of a hiking trail than a road suitable for a car. In this one, it is an entire family in the car, and they run into two hoods at an abandoned hotel who prove to be very bad news. Again, I will not get into spoilers about how this one ends. But it was a good story.

"Red Screen" is a bizarre story, and would not be out of place as an episode of "The Twilight Zone." A New York City homicide detective is in a marriage that seems to be deteriorating. His wife is criticizing him more frequently in recent months. When he interviews a suspect to a murder, who claims that he di what he did because an alien race is slowly but surely taking over the planet, he is skeptical. But the suspect then mentions something about a red screen on his cell phone, before ultimately killing himself that night. When the detective returns home, his wife and he have the best night that they have enjoyed together in many years. That is, until the detective's cell phone screen also turns red. That probably is too close to being a spoiler itself. 

Next we have a short story that really intrigued me, called "The Turbulence Expert." There is an older lady who notices that the man next to her seems incredibly nervous about the flight. But he is not taking his first flight or have any kind of normal fear of flying. In fact, he does it all of the time. It's his job, he explains, and there are a lot of perks. But the job itself is not exactly a normal one. In fact, his job is to take flights like the one he is on, where his extreme nervousness and inner turmoil after some unexpected turbulence proves to be what prevents te airplane from crashing. He tells her that they always need more people like him who are sensitive to the dangers of turbulence in order to prevent more airline flights from crashing. And of course, there is a twist at the end of this story, as well. 

"Laurie" is another strange story. It is about a recently widowed man who is going through depression, and is gifted a dog by his sister when she comes to visit him. Initially skeptical, he comes to take care of the dog, first out of habit, then out of love. But there is a strange incident during one of the dog walks that they take together, when they find an alligator who recently had just killed his neighbor, and now threatens him (and the dog). Again, no spoilers. Read the story. 

The next story, "Rattlesnakes," is probably the one which most Stephen King fans (including me, admittedly) were quite a bit excited about when they first heard it. This is because it features Vic Trenton, one of the major characters in a previous King work, "Cujo." Those who read that book (and not just watched the movie, which had a very different end result than the book) will know that Vic lost his son all of those years ago, due to his wife and his won being trapped inside of a tiny car that would not start in the middle of a hot summer, and with a massive and rabid dog determined to keep them trapped inside of the car. 

Well, Vic is back. He is a lot older now, and retired in Florida. But his neighbor, eerily enough, is a woman who also knows tragedy, having lost her two sons on this island in the Florida Keys. They were killed when they managed to get out of the fenced in backyard and wandered into a pit of snakes in a field near the beach. The mother has been rolling the strollers and "dressing" them ever since, and she is generally regarded as having been a bit nuts. Vic assumes the same thing, until he begins to be haunted by the boys himself. When he comes back from a walk one day to see his neighbor dead, there are developments. For one, he is actually suspected of homicide with the woman, who inexplicably leaves everything to him in a hastily made, but perfectly legal, will. The second thing is that he becomes the focal point of the ghosts of the two kids who were killed on the island by rattlesnakes all of those years ago.

This one was more like a novella. But I personally feel that King is best when he has some room to build up his characters. In this one, the character of Vic is solid, in large part (I believe) because King has given himself some room to work with. This almost felt on the brink of being a novel, but is just a little short of that. Still, the longevity of this story is what I suspect helps to make this one of the more engaging - and thus, enjoyable - stories in this lot.

The penultimate story is called "The Dreamers." It is about a disillusioned Vietnam vet who takes a job working with a made scientist who bears a strong resemblance to the mad scientist in another King work, "Revival." For a little while, I thought it might actually be him. But it is not. Still, the experiments are strange, with people managing to make contact with either another dimension, or possibly another world, during their sleep. The results are minimal and relatively easy to pass off after the first experiment or two, but they gradually grow more and more extreme, until there is a real crisis a the place at the end. But I will not delve deeper into it here, and urge you to read the story. 

The Answer Man is the final story in this book, and is a really interesting and engaging story. I really got into it as soon as I started reading it, which is kind of what I expect when I read something from Stephen King. This story is about one man Phil Parker, who keeps running into a mysterious man on the side of the road with a table set up, and purporting to be the "Answer Man." At first the narrator takes it as a joke, until the things the Answer Man predicts actually come true. He runs into the Answer Man a few times in his life, but the time he gets to ask questions, as well as the seriousness of the ramifications of those questions, turn more and more serious each time. Parker's life seems to grow darker and darker over time, and he comes to understand that the Answer Man has told him the truth, but not the full story. In time, he begins to both resent his encounters with the Answer Man, and dread the possibility of further encounters. But of course, there will be one more encounter remaining for the very end. But I will try to keep this review relatively spoiler-free.