Review - Full Dark, No Stars

Stephen King is back in all his terrifying glory!

Full Dark, No Stars is a book of stories like Different Seasons, Four Past Midnight and Nightmares and Dreamscapes. This book has four stories that are each scary in their own way.

1922 is a story about a pre-depression era farmer working like hell to keep his farm and avoid a big pig processing plant next door. It means so much to him that he not only murders his wife, he manipulates his teenage son to help him do it. But is she really gone?

Big Driver is about a small time mystery writer who is brutally raped on her way home from a book club luncheon and appearance. She doesn't want the publicity, so she avoids the police, but is she just going to take it? And what secrets does she uncover in her bid to get revenge?

Fair Extension is a story that reminded me of his book Thinner. The man has cancer, and is really going to die soon. He finds a character that will give him an extension for a price. 15% of his annual income for the rest of his life, and he must pass his misfortune onto someone he hates (in Thinner to get rid of the curse, he had to feed it to someone else). Read to find out who he hates, and how it plays out. It's not just passing the cancer to this person, it's much more sinister.

A Good Marriage is a story about a woman who thinks she has a perfectly good marriage until she makes a terrifying discovery in the garage. What can she do at this point? She doesn't want to disrupt her children's lives, and also she has been a housewife for the last 30+ years, what would she do? Read to see if she makes the correct choice (and for the record I think she does).

In the afterword he explains that his goal here was to explore what ordinary people might do in extraordinary circumstances, and he does that, fully. I was the most touched (and haunted) by Big Driver and A Good Marriage, in part because the characters were women, but also because they were the least ficticious. I mean, how well do you really know the people you meet, even someone you have shared your life with? You can't fully know anyone but yourself, and in a dark corner of the mind that can be scary.

If you like a scary story, get this book, arm yourself with a flashlight and have a good read. I am not kidding, I finished the last 2 stories in one night (even though I was exhausted) and then made Chris come to bed, because I was too terrified to be in my own room alone (even with my boys).

**standing ovation for Stephen King**