‘We never cease wanting what we want, whether it’s good for us or not…’
As some of Stephen King’s best-known works are novellas or short stories (Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, The Body, Children of the Corn etc), a new cluster of short stories is met by fans with as much enthusiasm as a new novel. Full Dark, No Stars, a collection of four novellas, was released in the fall of 2010 and has become a fan favourite in the years since.
Featuring four novellas all written specifically for this collection, and all written with a darker tone in mind, Full Dark, No Stars is just that – a pitch-black collection of gruelling stories that place ordinary people in extraordinary situations. 1922, since adapted into a celebrated movie for Netflix, updates Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart to the American Heartlands on the eve of the Great Depression. Big Driver is King’s first foray into the controversial rape-revenge subgenre, Fair Extension sees the Maine writer returning to the subject matter he explored so successfully with Needful Things, and A Good Marriage, also adapted into a feature film, forces the reader to question how well we really know the people that we love.
All four novellas are utterly captivating and I found myself racing to the end of all of them. 1922 and its resulting film adaptation will both surely go down as some of King’s best-ever work once some critical distance can be applied to them and while the other three stories are slightly more generic (each fitting snugly inside a familiar subgenre or trope), all are well written and all present the reader with authentic characters and worlds that feel lived in and real.
Without going in-depth into each story, it’s difficult to give a sense of just how successful this collection is, but as a massive King fan myself for many years, I would happily recommend All Dark, No Stars to anyone looking to dive into the world of Stephen King for the first time. An essential collection.