Full Dark, No Stars: featuring 1922, now a Netflix film - Softcover

King, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 144471256X ISBN 13: 9781444712568

Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks, 2011

Synopsis

Is it possible to fully know anyone? Even those we love the most? What tips someone over the edge to commit a crime?

For a Nebraska farmer, the turning point comes when his wife threatens to sell off the family homestead.

A cozy mystery writer plots a savage revenge after a brutal encounter with a stranger.

Dave Streeter gets the chance to cure himself from illness - if he agrees to impose misery on an old rival.

And Darcy Anderson discovers a box containing her husband's dark and terrifying secrets - he's not the man who keeps his nails short and collects coins. And now he's heading home . . .

Like DIFFERENT SEASONS and FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT, which generated such enduring hit films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, FULL DARK, NO STARS proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.

About this title

Review:

As well as being the most celebrated horror and fantasy writer of the modern age, Stephen King is a noted commentator on the genre, and some of his most intriguing writing includes studies of his great predecessors. The first story in the mesmerising collection of novellas which is Full Dark, No Stars bears the imprint of one of King's favourite writers, Edgar Allen Poe: it is the first-person confession of a murderer, in which he invites us not to judge him -- not unlike the narrator of Poe’s ‘The Tell-tale Heart’. King's protagonist, an unlettered farmer, does not relate his gruesome story in an elegant fashion. But King, of course, as well as being adroit at chilling our blood, has few equals at finding the right voice for his characters, whatever background they come from. That is precisely what happens here, as the farmer, Wilfred James, tells us how he planned the murder of his unsympathetic wife with the aid of his reluctance son. The murder itself has all the typical King flair for the macabre, but it is the steady unravelling of the killer’s plans that fascinates here – a theme that reappears in a grim tale involving a young woman's revenge on a man who raped her. As always with King's novellas, characterisation is strongly to the fore in these pieces, but the principle appeal of this form for the author would appear to be the opportunity to exercise his steely grasp of narrative technique, displayed in all the stories on offer here.

These King novellas are perhaps something of a relaxation for the author after the massive The Dome; for readers, Full Dark, No Stars is a reminder that this is a writer for whom both long and short formats are firmly in his grasp.

Some years ago, Stephen King announced that he was planning to cut down on his astonishing level of productivity, but this promise was barely kept (even a grim car accident was weathered – albeit with a heavy price paid – by the author), and though the exalted standard of the early books has faltered at times, he still has the knack of pulling that rabbit out of the hat (usually covered with blood). --Barry Forshaw

Review:

Fine stories to take with us into the night (Neil Gaiman in the Guardian)

An extraordinary collection, thrillingly merciless and a career high point (Matt Thorne in the )

America's greatest living novelist (Lee Child)

Mr. King's gift of storytelling is unrivaled. His ferocious imagination is unlimited (George Pelecanos)

The genius of King is not the fecundity of his imagination, great though it is, but the empathy he can create between the reader and a character . . . He is . . . not a national, but global treasure . . . just buy the book. Trust me, you won't be disappointed (Scotsman)

The collection's story stand-out story is the final novella . . . resembles Hitchcock's Suspicion with extra turns of the screw. (The Sunday Times)

offers striking reminders of King's mastery of structure . . . compulsively readable (Private Eye)

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 144471256X
• ISBN 13: 9781444712568
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480