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A review by hsarto
Just After Sunset by Stephen King
4.0
A short story collection of mostly subdued horrors, where by the bend of each page an undercurrent of anxiety slowly crawls onto our skin and smothers our bones. There is no fear of the unexpected here, so much as there is fear itself.
"Willa" - A ghost story that is also a love story and a story of hope beyond death.
"The Gingerbread Girl" - Strong thriller where the scares are of a more conventional, real nature.
"Harvey's Dream" - A good companion story to the previous one. This is the kind of short story that lurks in one's memory: the moment just before the storm hits, when the oncoming gale can become imagined feeling on our bare arms.
"Rest Stop" - The first time I read this story it did nothing for me. Now, on rereading it, I'm reminded of those private confrontations that sometimes blow up in public and of our own role, as witnesses, as either passive or active agents in somebody else's story.
"Stationary Bike" - There's an important moral to this cautionary tale about exercise, health and the expectations of life expectancy.
"The Things They Left Behind" - Writing about trauma is a difficult undertaking. Facile metaphors, elsewhere in fiction a deplorable use of technique, are necessary to understand things that demand to remain unsaid and that we must force out. It's as if these unspoken things can only be made into language when we resort to a primitive sort of thinking.
"Graduation Afternoon" - A nightmare about the promises of the future that can, with a gentle push of a button, seem like the absurd daydreams of another world.
"N." - I believe this to be a silent prequel to King's Under the Dome. Lovecraftian, eery, the kind of quiet terror that is best not to overthink.
"The Cat From Hell" - One of King's early stories, written with verve and with very impactful imagery. An outlier here in the sense that it evokes a kind of explicit horror otherwise absent from this collection.
"The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates" - A gentle study of grief. Its apparent simplicity masks a well-crafted, unusually condensed, ghost story.
"Mute" - Brilliant noir tale, unpredictable and vivid. Like a lost episode of Fargo.
"Ayana" - Beautiful, a minor song about the improbable possibility of miracles. Perhaps my least favourite of the stories in this collection.
"A Very Tight Place" - Intense and bursting at the seams with sharp irony. There's some resonance with "Mute" in this final story of the collection, and also some echoes of Cujo. A moving, disgusting, feral tale of grief and the instinct of survival.
"Willa" - A ghost story that is also a love story and a story of hope beyond death.
"The Gingerbread Girl" - Strong thriller where the scares are of a more conventional, real nature.
"Harvey's Dream" - A good companion story to the previous one. This is the kind of short story that lurks in one's memory: the moment just before the storm hits, when the oncoming gale can become imagined feeling on our bare arms.
"Rest Stop" - The first time I read this story it did nothing for me. Now, on rereading it, I'm reminded of those private confrontations that sometimes blow up in public and of our own role, as witnesses, as either passive or active agents in somebody else's story.
"Stationary Bike" - There's an important moral to this cautionary tale about exercise, health and the expectations of life expectancy.
"The Things They Left Behind" - Writing about trauma is a difficult undertaking. Facile metaphors, elsewhere in fiction a deplorable use of technique, are necessary to understand things that demand to remain unsaid and that we must force out. It's as if these unspoken things can only be made into language when we resort to a primitive sort of thinking.
"Graduation Afternoon" - A nightmare about the promises of the future that can, with a gentle push of a button, seem like the absurd daydreams of another world.
"N." - I believe this to be a silent prequel to King's Under the Dome. Lovecraftian, eery, the kind of quiet terror that is best not to overthink.
"The Cat From Hell" - One of King's early stories, written with verve and with very impactful imagery. An outlier here in the sense that it evokes a kind of explicit horror otherwise absent from this collection.
"The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates" - A gentle study of grief. Its apparent simplicity masks a well-crafted, unusually condensed, ghost story.
"Mute" - Brilliant noir tale, unpredictable and vivid. Like a lost episode of Fargo.
"Ayana" - Beautiful, a minor song about the improbable possibility of miracles. Perhaps my least favourite of the stories in this collection.
"A Very Tight Place" - Intense and bursting at the seams with sharp irony. There's some resonance with "Mute" in this final story of the collection, and also some echoes of Cujo. A moving, disgusting, feral tale of grief and the instinct of survival.