Review: Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Full Dark, No Stars
By Stephen King
Available Now
Publisher: Scribner
Format: Hardcover
Source: Personal Copy
Challenge: Stephen King

FIRST LINE of 1922

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

My name is Wilfred Leland James, and this is my confession.

FIRST LINE of Big Driver

Tess accepted twelve compensated speaking engagements a year.

FIRST LINE of Fair Extension

Streeter only saw the sign because he had to pull over and puke.

FIRST LINE of A Good Marriage

The one thing nobody asked in casual conversation, Darcy thought in the days after she found what she found in the garage, was this: How’s your marriage?

REVIEW

1922 is written in confession format. Wilfred killed his wife with the help of his son because she wanted to move off the farm and into the city. What happens to them next could either be considered fate or a guilty man’s punishment. With a mix of an Edgar Allen Poe and Bonnie and Clyde mixed together, King delivers an eerie tale of the Conniving Man inside.

Big Driver dives into the mind of a woman named Tess who after being led to a shortcut is raped by a demented man. She comes to find out that the mother of this man is the one who sent her that way and has sent many others into his clutches. They never returned but she climbs out of the pit and makes her way home. Knowing that her career could end if it got out the Courageous Woman inside her is going to get her revenge.

Fair Extension I’m sure will resonated with a lot of people. To grab onto that last chance to extend your life at the cost of ruining someone you have been jealous of your entire life. Would you do it? King places Dave Streeter with this proposal. Streeter whose life has been shortened by cancer just has to pick someone else to transfer his dirty onto someone else and make a generous contribution each year of his extended life. Now he must watch his friend’s life crumble as his flourishes just because of a jealousy that has been building since they were young.

My favorite tale is A Good Marriage. Darcy stumbles upon her husband’s deep dark secret and must decide if she wants to ruin her life and her children’s life or should she pretend and exact her own kind of revenge. She becomes the Darker Wife.

Stephen King delivers again and smashes it out of the ballpark. I love each story in this collection, especially A Good Marriage. Nobody can deliver a short story like King. There is a beginning, middle and end that never leaves you feeling like anything was missing. How he comes up with his ideas is also told in his Afterword which sheds some light on certain aspects of why he wrote each story the way he did. Right away when I started reading A Good Marriage I thought of the BTK killer and sure enough that is what gave him the idea for that story.

RATING

 
PURCHASE FULL DARK NO STARS

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