Customer Reviews

Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you are buying this book for the movie tie-in to 1408, you might be disappointed because the trailer for the movie and the plot of the short story really don't seem to mirror each other, so I have a feeling the two don't resemble each other down to the smallest detail. Word is that King gave approval to the movie version, so perhaps it maintains the emotional resonance of the short story which is, by the way, as spooky and eerie as you'd expect, so much so that it is easy to forget how well King writes.


In addition to the stories, one of my favorite parts of this book was the preface and author's notes on the stories, by King. Budding writers in this genre of horror or psychological suspense/horror should focus carefully on his writing advice. He doesn't give it lightly and he also doesn't mince words. You may primarily buy this book for the great and riveting tales within, but you may also find yourself equally fascinated by what King writes about...ssbout HOW to write and his own perspective on his craft. He confesses that he has been surprised that some stories which he considered less than stellar have won awards, showing that he is still capable of being surprised by his readers and reviewers. I expect that is part of the thrill of what he does, discovering what touches readers and what does not.

In the preface, for example, he brings up an important subject, the evolution of the short story and its possible demise. He writes so deftly about such a serious subject! I happen to be equally concerned, coming from a time when short stories filled so many magazines I read, from Atlantic to Redbook to Saturday Evening Post. I grew up reading them in magazines my parents had around the house. Try to find a typical, mass market magazine that contains short stories anymore, especially by writers whose words will become classic. Pretty hard, isn't it? Sad - at least to me and, based on what he wrote, to King as well.

He also touches on an E-book he wrote and his concern about how well it did. He was both fascinated and...yes, horrified. You'll have to read this book to find out why.

Anyway, this book is well worth reading, perfect for those who only have limited time and who find the idea of an entire book on one subject too daunting. I have a feeling you'll read this one straight through, even if you THINK you're going to only dip into one or two of the short stories. You'll be hooked and enthralled before you know it.

Some of the stories pay homage to other writers and if you are queasy when it comes to reading graphic details, consider yourself forewarned. I found the first story "Autopsy Room Four" to be particularly hard going but stuck it out - and I'm glad I did. Its genesis was an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, something I'd never have known if King hadn't pointed it out. Once he did, I actually remembered the particular episode with Joseph Cotten and- like King - agree that it was one of the spookiest Hitchcock episodes out there.

When hearing about the new movie, I had to pick up the book and was privelaged to take a gander and all the short stories. Here are the short reviews on each:

Autopsy room 4 - a tense, and engaging story of a man who is confined to the prison of his body. He thinks he is still alive even though his is in an autopsy room. Sometimes funny in its approach to the subject. Reminds me of Hitchcock. (5 stars.)

All that you love will be carried away - Depressing but interesting journey of a man's last thoughts that involve bathroom quotations.
(4 stars)

The man in the black suit - Intensly creepy and memorable. The description alone of the man makes for an uneasy feeling. It got under my skin, alright. (5 stars)

Death of jack hamiliton - while running away from the cops, one of the dillinger gang boys gets shot and this is his tale of passing on. Curiously interesting. (4 stars)

1408 - A psychological approach of a hanuted room. Way different than the movie. Movie added a lot more content. In my opinion, movie was better than the actual original short. (3 stars.)

That feeling, you can only say in french - Deja vu overload. It turns your mind around a bit. Don't really know where it goes. (2 stars)

Riding the bullet - Sooner or later, we all have to go. But which will go first, the mother or the son. In this dark tale, a driver leaves the descision up to the son. (5 stars)

This book is a collection of 14 shorts stories by Stephen King. The longest story is a prequel to the Dark Tower series and will doubtless be of interest to fans of that series. In recent months, a number of people have likely bought this collection to read "1408" so they can see the story that the movie was based on. I confess that this was my motivation and it's certainly worth reading. Because it is a true short story, it doesn't involve nearly as many twists and turns as the movie, and ends more cleanly.

The title of this collection comes from what may well be the finest story of the lot. It's a quirky tale of a young man with the ability to affect other people using symbols and writing. He narrates the story himself, sounds like the village idiot, and has just about the strangest job imaginable.

L.T.'s Theory of Pets is a second standout. It's a story of marital difficulties, pet incompatibility, and the art of storytelling. It's quite good and much better than any description of the plot could ever do justice to. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll enjoy it.

Autopsy in Room 4 may be the most suspenseful story. It features a paralyzed man on an autopsy table and you don't have to be the most imaginative person in the world to see how frightening that prospect would be.

Reviewing a collection of short stories can be tricky because there are so many stories in the book and each one is its own experience. Three or four are truly outstanding, and most of the rest are still quite good and well worth reading. There were two or three that didn't grab me but the beauty of a short story is that you don't invest that much time so the weaker stories don't take much out of your enjoyment of the book. I'd recommend thins book to all fans of King or the short story format.

I enjoyed this book. There are a number of great stories in this collection. His writing style is always intense and he strikes the right tone in each of the stories. If you like Stephen King, this is a must read. I recommend this to anyone looking for some entertaining short stories.

The introductory essay on short story-writing is worth the price of this collection alone; fans of King's "On Writing" book will want to pick this up for that reason. General fiction fans may find the O. Henry-winning story "The Man in the Black Suit" to their tastes, while more diehard fans will delight over the "Dark Tower" novella included. Add to that the short story "1408" (the basis for the John Cusack movie) and other rare King bits such as the eBook-only "Riding the Bullet" and you have King's most consistent collection to date...until his next one is released in Fall 2008, of course.

NOTE: This "movie tie-in" version (for the "1408" adaptation) does not include any new material; it is simply a new printing of the same collection that was originally published in 2001.

I read this book last year, after watching the movie 1408. My friend commented that the story was in Everything's Eventual by Stephen King. I was shocked. I used to own this book but had never gotten around to reading it. In fact, I had sold the book in a garage sale the summer before, and, although I once devoured all things Stephen King as soon as they were published, I have slowed down on reading in the last 10 years. Well, now I had to have that book! I ordered the book from Amazon the very next day, and read it from cover to cover. Why did I wait so long?

Like other reviewers, I really enjoyed his introductory chapter to writing, very insightful of the author, and the ever changing business of story telling (such as old time radio), book selling and e-book reading (love my Kindle).

These stories are what I love about Stephen King's writing, no one can match him in the "good scary story" department.

One story I really enjoyed was The Death of Jack Hamilton. I think about that story now when I see the trailer to Johhny Depp's new movie, Dillinger. I wonder if the account will be in the movie? One of the Dillinger Gang, Jack Hamilton, is shot while running away from the cops. Told by a member of Dillinger's gang, the story recounts Jack's last days, from the detailed account of his shooting through the next few days of the gang on the run, hiding out with friends, and Dillinger's attempts to keep Jack alive and entertain him through it all, as well. (Especially Dillinger's talent with flies!)

Strange, I thought, to include the prequel to the Dark Tower series. This is more of a Desparation or a Richard Bachman-type story, which I don't enjoy as much. Strangely interesting, the story did not inspire me to commit myself to the full series of books, but, at least now I know what the story is about.

My favorite Stephen King novels? It and Carrie.

Stephen King: Three Complete Novels: Carrie; Salems Lot; The Shining

This book reminds me of one of those shows on the Discovery Channel about how things are made. King explains, in relatively short amounts of space, the genesis of each story. He doesn't try to explain how he actually chooses the words and puts the story together, which is good, because no amount of describing how to apply paint to canvas is going to make me a painter, but it's fascinating to know where he finds the ideas. The stories themselves are mostly good, better than I expected. I was just looking for something to pass the time on a hot afternoon, but the stories are more subtle and much more varied than I remember King's short fiction being. Overall this was a much better book than I thought it would be and I enjoyed reading it.

The number of stars references the closest average for the thirteen stories in this book that I read. I didn't bother with The Little Sisters of Eluria, because I am not a fan of the Dark Tower Saga, and I didn't really want to spend the time reading an eighty page "short story" that I wouldn't enjoy anyway.

For each of the rest, a star value is below, along with any thoughts that I had on them.

Autopsy Room Four 3
The Road Virus Heads North 3
That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French 3
Riding the Bullet 3

Pretty average stories, all told. Nothing new, original, or particularly well done in any of them. The third of these has a particularly obnoxious title, as if the author thought that it was cute to say Deja Vu in 11 words. Not for that, I would have given it four stars, as the ending is slightly unexpected. As even the author references, Riding the Bullet (a hitchhiker gets picked up by a ghost), Autopsy Room Four (autopsied alive), and That Feeling... (the temporal quantum bubble of repeitition) are pretty standard fare for horror novelists and writers in general. The Road Virus Heads North is an interesting enough story, or it would be, if it didn't strike me as stolen from a movie or television show, I can't remember which, featuring a painting of a house with a fence out front, where a boy is, and then isn't. For some reason, the latter was way scarier, and the story in this book is pretty dull by comparison.

L. T.'s Theory of Pets 2
The Death of Jack Hamilton 2
Luckey Quarter 2

These three stories have little to recommend them. The first is, like the first four stories, a retelling of what happens in a classical urban legend. In this case, though, it is more about what happened BEFORE that. Unfortunately, what happened BEFORE that is boring. The second is about a friend of John . Not particularly good, but quite boring. The third is just lacking in real detail. It has no horror, it has little enough fiction. If anything, it seems like a vignette from The Dead Zone mixed with a little bit of Everyday America. Boooring.

The Man in the Black Suit 3

I'm not surprised that this story won an O. Henry award, per se. Rather, I am surprised that Stephen King wrote it. It is a good story, although it, again, feels like something that is taken out of IT. It was fun to read, though.

All That You Love Will Be Carried Away 4

This was one of the better stories in the collection. This one focuses on a purveyor of Latrinalia (look it up). This was well-written and believable. This is what short stories should be. I liked the ending, as well.

In the Deathroom 4

This was also really interesting. In a way, it departed, quite a bit, from normal King-esque horror. Instead of the quotidian fears, this one is quite reasonable. That doesn't stop it from being interesting, though. I particularly liked the ending. I thought that it was nice that he stuck with the optimism even through the end, rather than the more obvious ending of having the character wake up screaming and having the whole story his imaginings as he is tortured.

Everything's Eventual 4

The titular story of the collection, and one of its longer offerings as well. It also happens to be one of the best. Imagine what you would do if you received seventy dollars every week (in addition to free rent, no bills, all the food and frivolities you can write on a white board), but you had to spend it all? This is an interesting question, and the story could easily have been expanded into a novel akin to something that Bentley Little would write. The fact that it is a tight little short story makes it all the saucier.

Lunch at the Gotham Café 4

This is a good example of how the quotidian can be quite good. And disturbing. An unpleasant lunch spoiled by the deranged, psychopathic snap of a Mideast Side New York maitre d. It was funny, particularly, when the divorcing wife and husband are forced to confront a non-quotidian event, and are not brought together by it, but driven further apart. There is some real characterization here, and it makes the collection worth reading.

1408 4

This story gets a special mention solely because it nearly scared me into a bowel movement. It is also a pretty uninspired tale of the horrors of a haunted hotel room (again, a rehash of old ideas). It did not scare me on any of its own merits, but in conjunction with the Dolphin Hotel from A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami. As anyone who has read these two novels knows, there is a haunted, of sorts, hotel in them. It is called the Hotel Dolphin. That is the name of the hotel where room 1408 is. Creepy coincidence? Perhaps.

So, in general, nothing here is particularly inspired. Most of the stories are unoriginal, at best. All of them are readable, though. There are a lot of retellings, granted, but all fiction consists of similar motifs, and you just have delightful differences in the familiar to separate your favorites from those you loathe. In this case, most of them are pretty tepid.

If you are looking for short fiction by Stephen King, pick up the Skeleton Crew or Nightmares and Dreamscapes. If you have them, and the rest, grab this one too. There isn't much that is disappointing, just a lot that is familiar.

C

Harkius

These were good stories written in that great Stephen King manner. I missed that in some of his recent books. it is alive in these stories.

While this is not Stephen King's best collection of stories, on the strength of two stories in particular I can rate this as high as four stars. These two, originally appearing in The New Yorker, are, as one would hope, very well-written and compelling, especially "That Feeling, You Can Only Say it in French."

Unfortunately, some of the stories do not measure up to this. In the "Dark Tower" story, "Little Sisters of Eluria," odd, creepy things happen, but the story has no point. And for some reason, King violates the 'it was only a dream' rule not just once, but twice, in "Riding the Bullet" and "Luckey Quarter."