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A review by meadforddude
Different Seasons: Four Novellas by Stephen King
5.0
Audible Edition: Read by Frank Muller
These four stories comprise King's best work up to this point in his career. Barring revisits of The Shining or The Stand, I think this is pretty much inarguably true. But, more importantly, these stories offer a glimpse of King's personality that expands his range of concerns far beyond the horror stories for which he was still best-known. This is where King matures as a storyteller, and it's impossible not to view the final, still-unadapted story in this collection, The Breathing Method, as both an invitation and a warning to his "constant readers."
In execution, The Breathing Method almost feels like the framing device for the anthology of stories we've just read, taking place as it does in a gentlemen's club where the telling of stories over cigars serves as the key feature. It's possible to imagine these old men telling the tale of "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" to their comrades-in-cigars on a wintry night, and I'd be surprised to learn King hadn't at least considered the idea of structuring this novella collection in a way that allowed for that to be more obviously what's going on here.
Considered in brief, "Rita Hayworth" is a minor masterpiece of structural engineering that is almost impossible to separate in my mind from the film it later became, but this is not a bad thing. It offers some shadings, and some minor stories that Darabont chose to leave out, but on the whole this is the rare case where the film is allowed to go further in-depth than the book.
"Apt Pupil" is a sneaky little thriller that deals in some of King's most abjectly horrific subject matter, which was utterly bungled by Bryan Singer in his adaptation. This could be a heightened, even campy satire if executed properly, even if its window of adaptation may be closed for good (you can't really modernize a story featuring a surviving Nazi in 2018, and that's mostly for the best).
"The Body" is haunting, and contains a wealth of information and personality that didn't even make it into Rob Reiner's excellent adaptation. I can see myself returning to this in the future, and its placement in King's bibliography marks it as a bit of a dry run for 1986's It. There's a reason it was the first story adapted from this collection.
"The Breathing Method" is a bit different, and the most overtly horrific of the stories here (yes, even more so than "Apt Pupil," as far as I'm concerned). It lands somewhere in the realm of a Hammer/Amicus tale, a Neil Gaiman Sandman one-off story, or one of the BBC's "Ghost Stories for Christmas" in terms of tone and execution, and that both explains why it hasn't been adapted but also why I love it so much. My expectations for it were low, and I'm pleased to report they really shouldn't have been.
Also, Frank Muller is quietly excellent as an audiobook narrator. Really glad I listened to him read these stories, even if the audio quality occasionally dips for some reason, that's not on him.
These four stories comprise King's best work up to this point in his career. Barring revisits of The Shining or The Stand, I think this is pretty much inarguably true. But, more importantly, these stories offer a glimpse of King's personality that expands his range of concerns far beyond the horror stories for which he was still best-known. This is where King matures as a storyteller, and it's impossible not to view the final, still-unadapted story in this collection, The Breathing Method, as both an invitation and a warning to his "constant readers."
In execution, The Breathing Method almost feels like the framing device for the anthology of stories we've just read, taking place as it does in a gentlemen's club where the telling of stories over cigars serves as the key feature. It's possible to imagine these old men telling the tale of "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" to their comrades-in-cigars on a wintry night, and I'd be surprised to learn King hadn't at least considered the idea of structuring this novella collection in a way that allowed for that to be more obviously what's going on here.
Considered in brief, "Rita Hayworth" is a minor masterpiece of structural engineering that is almost impossible to separate in my mind from the film it later became, but this is not a bad thing. It offers some shadings, and some minor stories that Darabont chose to leave out, but on the whole this is the rare case where the film is allowed to go further in-depth than the book.
"Apt Pupil" is a sneaky little thriller that deals in some of King's most abjectly horrific subject matter, which was utterly bungled by Bryan Singer in his adaptation. This could be a heightened, even campy satire if executed properly, even if its window of adaptation may be closed for good (you can't really modernize a story featuring a surviving Nazi in 2018, and that's mostly for the best).
"The Body" is haunting, and contains a wealth of information and personality that didn't even make it into Rob Reiner's excellent adaptation. I can see myself returning to this in the future, and its placement in King's bibliography marks it as a bit of a dry run for 1986's It. There's a reason it was the first story adapted from this collection.
"The Breathing Method" is a bit different, and the most overtly horrific of the stories here (yes, even more so than "Apt Pupil," as far as I'm concerned). It lands somewhere in the realm of a Hammer/Amicus tale, a Neil Gaiman Sandman one-off story, or one of the BBC's "Ghost Stories for Christmas" in terms of tone and execution, and that both explains why it hasn't been adapted but also why I love it so much. My expectations for it were low, and I'm pleased to report they really shouldn't have been.
Also, Frank Muller is quietly excellent as an audiobook narrator. Really glad I listened to him read these stories, even if the audio quality occasionally dips for some reason, that's not on him.