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Four Past Midnight #1-4
Four Past Midnight
Alternate Cover Edition of ISBN 0450542882
At midnight comes the point of balance. Of danger. The instant of utter stillness when between two beats of the heart, an alternative reality can slip through, like a blade between the ribs, and switch you into a new and terrifying world.
"Four Past Midnight": four heart-stopping accounts of that moment when the familiar world fractures beyond sense, the fragments spinning away from the desperate, clutching reach of sanity...
At midnight comes the point of balance. Of danger. The instant of utter stillness when between two beats of the heart, an alternative reality can slip through, like a blade between the ribs, and switch you into a new and terrifying world.
"Four Past Midnight": four heart-stopping accounts of that moment when the familiar world fractures beyond sense, the fragments spinning away from the desperate, clutching reach of sanity...
930 pages, Paperback
First published September 24, 1990
2789 people are currently reading
63144 people want to read
About the author
Stephen King
2,578 books880k followersStephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,590 reviews
August 2, 2020
4 tosses, 3 hits, no bad statistic in this highly varying collection of short works from the man himself.
Langoliers is a bit of a controversial thing, one of the rare cases King is using some Sci-Fi and cosmic horror elements, although he doesn´t seem to have cared so much about the characterization as one is used to by him. Something is just missing, it´s most possible that King just isn´t the man for combining worldbuilding and characters, seems to make him, or more the characters he is letting do the work, nervous.
Secret Window, Secret Garden is an escalating blackmailing, stalking story with a very finetuned end, something closer to a psychological thriller, psychothriller than the horror King is usually writing, inspired by real world problems.
The Library policeman reminds me of his stories with other strong, mad, frightening lead female characters, such as the Dark Tower witch and the misery nightmare nurse with elements of the old evil from It. I would call it the best of the 4 novellas, because it would have had the potential for a full novel, much could have been added here.
The Sun Dog is the classic, immediate Kingian gotcha, a simple camera used to write a story about occultism, haunting and greed, even including some ethics about money, playing with some flashbacks before Reminds me a bit of the Needful things concept too.
The stories are especially interesting because King was, after rehab, unsure if he would still have the same ultimate writing powaaa as before, but luckily nothing has changed and, as a bonus, he added the extra years to his life to make more unique art.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph....
Langoliers is a bit of a controversial thing, one of the rare cases King is using some Sci-Fi and cosmic horror elements, although he doesn´t seem to have cared so much about the characterization as one is used to by him. Something is just missing, it´s most possible that King just isn´t the man for combining worldbuilding and characters, seems to make him, or more the characters he is letting do the work, nervous.
Secret Window, Secret Garden is an escalating blackmailing, stalking story with a very finetuned end, something closer to a psychological thriller, psychothriller than the horror King is usually writing, inspired by real world problems.
The Library policeman reminds me of his stories with other strong, mad, frightening lead female characters, such as the Dark Tower witch and the misery nightmare nurse with elements of the old evil from It. I would call it the best of the 4 novellas, because it would have had the potential for a full novel, much could have been added here.
The Sun Dog is the classic, immediate Kingian gotcha, a simple camera used to write a story about occultism, haunting and greed, even including some ethics about money, playing with some flashbacks before Reminds me a bit of the Needful things concept too.
The stories are especially interesting because King was, after rehab, unsure if he would still have the same ultimate writing powaaa as before, but luckily nothing has changed and, as a bonus, he added the extra years to his life to make more unique art.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph....
June 26, 2024
English (Four Past Midnight) / Italiano
Four short novels (not so short, actually) of one of the best contemporary writers out there. The Langoliers (my favorite) carries the reader together with the protagonists into a parallel dimension. The unknown and the fear of what we do not know are the main themes, and the atmosphere resembles that of "The Twilight Zone", the acclaimed TV show. One of the best story I ever read. Secret Window, Secret Garden talks about what I suppose is the nightmare of every writer, ie being accused of plagiarism. The Library policeman is the story of an adult experiencing once again a trauma occurred when he was a kid. In The Sun Dog a boy gets a camera out of the ordinary.
Four past midnight... and you will not sleep anymore.
Vote: 8,5
Quattro lunghi racconti di uno dei migliori romanzieri contemporanei in circolazione. I Langolieri (il mio preferito dei quattro), trasporta il lettore, assieme ai protagonisti, in una dimensione parallela. L’ignoto e la paura per ciò che non conosciamo sono il tema principale, e l’atmosfera che si respira ricorda molto quella de “Ai Confini della Realtà”, la fortunata TV serie cult. Uno dei migliori racconti che io abbia letto. Finestra Segreta, Giardino Segreto parla di quello che immagino sia l’incubo di ogni scrittore, ossia essere accusato di plagio. Il Poliziotto della Biblioteca racconta della vicenda di un adulto che rivive un trauma avvenuto quando era un ragazzino. Ne Il Fotocane, un ragazzo riceve in dono una macchina fotografica fuori dal normale.
Quattro dopo mezzanotte... e non dormirete più.
Voto: 8,5
March 22, 2021
Four memorable novellas based around the theme of a breakdown in reality. The Langoliers, a haunting and very puzzling 'locked room' mystery set on a plane. The suspense and mystery in this story really got to me; but unfortunately, not so much the reveal of what caused the mystery/
Secret Window, Secret Garden, a Derry-set tale of alleged plagiarism and hell-bent on retribution. The Dark Half updated with a more subtle, but possibly more malignant threat?
The Library Policeman, set in the Stephen King created Junction City, is an absorbing tale of the sins of our past coming back to bite us in the ass.
And the final novella is The Sun Dog, is the penultimate Castle Rock tale, otherwise known as 'whatever did happen Pop Merrill?. This novella is a Stephen King old skool masterclass.
A very fine collection of novellas, each and every one worth delving into. 9 out of 12.
Secret Window, Secret Garden, a Derry-set tale of alleged plagiarism and hell-bent on retribution. The Dark Half updated with a more subtle, but possibly more malignant threat?
The Library Policeman, set in the Stephen King created Junction City, is an absorbing tale of the sins of our past coming back to bite us in the ass.
And the final novella is The Sun Dog, is the penultimate Castle Rock tale, otherwise known as 'whatever did happen Pop Merrill?. This novella is a Stephen King old skool masterclass.
A very fine collection of novellas, each and every one worth delving into. 9 out of 12.
February 10, 2017
A re-read after more than twenty years. Will it stand up?
Short answer: Absolutely. :)
The Langoliers fits snugly in the New Weird category, pretty much entirely esoteric SF with gremlin-types, alternate dimenions and/or time travel on a plane... There are no snakes here! :) The characters are a blast and we've got a firm horror vibe going on here where we are kept guessing as to who among all these random sleepers will make it to the end. Thoroughly enjoyable novella, but not my favorite. It's probably best that it was relegated to a TV movie. :)
My favorite is a toss up between Secret Window, Secret Garden, and The Library Police.
First, though, Secret Window, Secret Garden, which only slightly resembles the movie with Johnny Depp, or at least more or less. :)
This one was pretty fantastic for the writing insights, the plagiarism scare, the descent into paranoia, and the general ultimate break from reality. What's better than a writer being driven completely crazy by a story and/or a man with a definite grudge over a story? No spoilers, but so many wonderful twists happen, couldn't help but fall in love all over again.
And then there's The Library Police, which is a wonderful twist on early childhood nightmares, a diatribe on fear, Red Licorice, and a cool twist on vampirism. It was definitely probably the most effective and convoluted of all the novellas in this book, I think, and also the most scarily fantastic, diving into some of the most weird and eerie escapades, even outdoing Secret Window, Secret Garden on several levels, but maybe not as much for the MC.
The last novella, The Sun Dog, is classic SK not only for setting dropping and character dropping, but also in the twist he's known for... turning everyday objects into a nightmare of continuing and evolving proportions, driving all those involved into a deeper and deeper despair and fear. :)
Does SK have a think about mad dogs? Even Cujo was referenced here. But the dog in the photograph has got to be even better in this novella. It's absolutely more elusive and menacing, giving up on immediate danger and far-off menace for a much more paranormal and evil menace that gave me, at least, a more pervasive and ongoing fear.
It also happened to be my least favorite of the bunch, but it was still effective. :)
The middle two were plainly amazing, though. :)
Short answer: Absolutely. :)
The Langoliers fits snugly in the New Weird category, pretty much entirely esoteric SF with gremlin-types, alternate dimenions and/or time travel on a plane... There are no snakes here! :) The characters are a blast and we've got a firm horror vibe going on here where we are kept guessing as to who among all these random sleepers will make it to the end. Thoroughly enjoyable novella, but not my favorite. It's probably best that it was relegated to a TV movie. :)
My favorite is a toss up between Secret Window, Secret Garden, and The Library Police.
First, though, Secret Window, Secret Garden, which only slightly resembles the movie with Johnny Depp, or at least more or less. :)
This one was pretty fantastic for the writing insights, the plagiarism scare, the descent into paranoia, and the general ultimate break from reality. What's better than a writer being driven completely crazy by a story and/or a man with a definite grudge over a story? No spoilers, but so many wonderful twists happen, couldn't help but fall in love all over again.
And then there's The Library Police, which is a wonderful twist on early childhood nightmares, a diatribe on fear, Red Licorice, and a cool twist on vampirism. It was definitely probably the most effective and convoluted of all the novellas in this book, I think, and also the most scarily fantastic, diving into some of the most weird and eerie escapades, even outdoing Secret Window, Secret Garden on several levels, but maybe not as much for the MC.
The last novella, The Sun Dog, is classic SK not only for setting dropping and character dropping, but also in the twist he's known for... turning everyday objects into a nightmare of continuing and evolving proportions, driving all those involved into a deeper and deeper despair and fear. :)
Does SK have a think about mad dogs? Even Cujo was referenced here. But the dog in the photograph has got to be even better in this novella. It's absolutely more elusive and menacing, giving up on immediate danger and far-off menace for a much more paranormal and evil menace that gave me, at least, a more pervasive and ongoing fear.
It also happened to be my least favorite of the bunch, but it was still effective. :)
The middle two were plainly amazing, though. :)
May 17, 2020
“A woman who would steal your love when your love was really all you had to give was not much of a woman.”
Reviewing collections is so difficult, and my brain is literal mush right now, so I’ll make it easier by breaking it down story by story.
The Langoliers might possibly be my favourite in this collection. It grabbed my attention from the very beginning and didn’t let go! Flying is scary enough, but imagine waking up from your on-flight snooze to find the plane practically empty.... eerie stuff. 4 stars.
I have never watched the movie for Secret Window featuring Johnny Depp before so I went into the novella (Secret Window, Secret Garden) knowing absolutely nothing. Which was probably a huge reason why I did find it quite enjoyable. Although somewhat predictable, I enjoyed the themes and the general storyline around every author’s worst nightmare - accusation of plagiarism. 4 stars.
As for The Library Policeman... geez, that was hard-going. An entertaining story, but I can’t remember the last time I had to set aside a book because a scene was too graphic for me. I also got some intense Pennywise vibes with our featured creature! A stark reminder to everyone to return your library books!! 3.5 stars.
As always, it was good to visit Castle Rock in The Sun Dog. The story centres around a Polaroid camera that is producing some strange and alarming photos... And we get to spend some time with a member of the infamous Merrill family. However maybe this would have been more suited to a short story rather than a novella - it dragged on slightly, I thought. But loved the Lovecraft shoutouts with the mention of Arkham and Dunwich! 3.5 stars.
Overall, an entertaining collection! A welcome component is King introducing each story - I always love these. 3.5 stars.
Reviewing collections is so difficult, and my brain is literal mush right now, so I’ll make it easier by breaking it down story by story.
The Langoliers might possibly be my favourite in this collection. It grabbed my attention from the very beginning and didn’t let go! Flying is scary enough, but imagine waking up from your on-flight snooze to find the plane practically empty.... eerie stuff. 4 stars.
I have never watched the movie for Secret Window featuring Johnny Depp before so I went into the novella (Secret Window, Secret Garden) knowing absolutely nothing. Which was probably a huge reason why I did find it quite enjoyable. Although somewhat predictable, I enjoyed the themes and the general storyline around every author’s worst nightmare - accusation of plagiarism. 4 stars.
As for The Library Policeman... geez, that was hard-going. An entertaining story, but I can’t remember the last time I had to set aside a book because a scene was too graphic for me. I also got some intense Pennywise vibes with our featured creature! A stark reminder to everyone to return your library books!! 3.5 stars.
As always, it was good to visit Castle Rock in The Sun Dog. The story centres around a Polaroid camera that is producing some strange and alarming photos... And we get to spend some time with a member of the infamous Merrill family. However maybe this would have been more suited to a short story rather than a novella - it dragged on slightly, I thought. But loved the Lovecraft shoutouts with the mention of Arkham and Dunwich! 3.5 stars.
Overall, an entertaining collection! A welcome component is King introducing each story - I always love these. 3.5 stars.
July 26, 2024
Continuing my journey reading/re-reading all Stephen Kings books in publication order. Four Past Midnight is a short story collection from SK which I really enjoyed, but I preferred Skeleton Crew & Different Seasons.
The Langoliers - this one was a little gem for me, it was Sc-Fiction horror which I sometimes struggle with but this one was right up my alley. The plot was actually really interesting and fast-paced. It's written so well and the characters were incredibly done. I feel like something I love in SK's writing is his ability to bring together different personalities to create a dynamic group of people, because of this it reminded me of other books/short stories by SK like: The Mist, The Stand and The Dark Tower series all books that I really love. I thought this short story was really fun, it was scary because of the sense of isolation, near-death and tragedy. 4 stars.
Secret Window, Secret Garden - I always love it when SK writes his main character as a author they are always written so perfectly and this was no exception. Although there isn't a lot of horror, gore and brutality in this book it is scary because it's a deep dive into losing your mind and not knowing whether you are crazy or not, there isn't anything scarier than that. I loved the simplicity of this short story it wasn't far-fetched or fantastical it was just a man losing his mind but it was done so well. 4 stars.
The Library Policeman - There were a few little Easter eggs in this one and my favourite was the mention of Paul Sheldon, not only did it slot into the book so effortlessly and make perfect sense but also because Misery is one of my favourite books of all time. This shot story had more of a supernatural element which I quite enjoyed but it did just get weirder and weirder and it started to lose me a little in the middle. A lot of this short story is written as a side characters tells the main character a story of his own - and it just felt a little flat I think because we didn't have enough time to get to know the storyteller perhaps. It did have some truly scary moments and it does manage to remind the reader of their childhood fears and feelings well, but there was something missing for me in this one. 3.5 stars.
The Sun Dog - There was a nice little mention of Christine in this one 'cars that come to life and ran people over they don't like'. Shawshank also got a little mention too. I thought this one was the least scary of the four in this collection. Pop is a really interesting character though he is so creepy. Cujo is mentioned in this book - but there aren't many similarities other than the main source of horror being a dog this is a completely different story. One that unfortunately didn't fully capture my imagination - I feel like it could have been taken further. Right at the end of this book we do get some really well written body horror which bumped this one up a star for sure. 3.5 stars.
Overall a decent set of short stories but I were to re-read this I feel like I would just read the first two books in the collection again and miss the other two out.
The Langoliers - this one was a little gem for me, it was Sc-Fiction horror which I sometimes struggle with but this one was right up my alley. The plot was actually really interesting and fast-paced. It's written so well and the characters were incredibly done. I feel like something I love in SK's writing is his ability to bring together different personalities to create a dynamic group of people, because of this it reminded me of other books/short stories by SK like: The Mist, The Stand and The Dark Tower series all books that I really love. I thought this short story was really fun, it was scary because of the sense of isolation, near-death and tragedy. 4 stars.
Secret Window, Secret Garden - I always love it when SK writes his main character as a author they are always written so perfectly and this was no exception. Although there isn't a lot of horror, gore and brutality in this book it is scary because it's a deep dive into losing your mind and not knowing whether you are crazy or not, there isn't anything scarier than that. I loved the simplicity of this short story it wasn't far-fetched or fantastical it was just a man losing his mind but it was done so well. 4 stars.
The Library Policeman - There were a few little Easter eggs in this one and my favourite was the mention of Paul Sheldon, not only did it slot into the book so effortlessly and make perfect sense but also because Misery is one of my favourite books of all time. This shot story had more of a supernatural element which I quite enjoyed but it did just get weirder and weirder and it started to lose me a little in the middle. A lot of this short story is written as a side characters tells the main character a story of his own - and it just felt a little flat I think because we didn't have enough time to get to know the storyteller perhaps. It did have some truly scary moments and it does manage to remind the reader of their childhood fears and feelings well, but there was something missing for me in this one. 3.5 stars.
The Sun Dog - There was a nice little mention of Christine in this one 'cars that come to life and ran people over they don't like'. Shawshank also got a little mention too. I thought this one was the least scary of the four in this collection. Pop is a really interesting character though he is so creepy. Cujo is mentioned in this book - but there aren't many similarities other than the main source of horror being a dog this is a completely different story. One that unfortunately didn't fully capture my imagination - I feel like it could have been taken further. Right at the end of this book we do get some really well written body horror which bumped this one up a star for sure. 3.5 stars.
Overall a decent set of short stories but I were to re-read this I feel like I would just read the first two books in the collection again and miss the other two out.
October 3, 2020
Four Past Midnight is a collection of four stories that some would call novellas, but really they are closer to novels. They were written when Stephen King was supposedly “retired.” I think we can safely say, many novels and stories later, that he is never going to retire. I recently saw him on a Zoom meeting through Murder by the Book in Houston, and he was funny and sharp. Going strong.
THE LANGOLIERS
”Reality peeled away in narrow strips beneath them, peeled away wherever and whatever they touched, and as they neared, Brian realized that they were unzipping more than the world--they were opening all the depths of forever.”
I used to fly four times a week, and for about a year, as I crisscrossed the Western part of the US and Canada, it was pretty thrilling, but with the constant deadlines and having to navigate airports (this is pre-9/11, before airports became even more difficult), rental cars, Canadian border patrol, and hotels, it soon became wearisome. I never was a white knuckle flyer, but it did start to seem unnatural for a human being to be suspended that far above the earth. This is the perfect story for flyers who love to fly and those who don’t because, regardless of how you feel about flying, you are going to feel a creeping sense of dread as the circumstances are revealed to you.
Eleven flyers wake up on a redeye from LA to Boston to find that all the other passengers have mysteriously disappeared. The flesh and bone has disappeared, leaving behind wedding rings, watches, and titanium knees. The world they find themselves flying through is a dead world. Where are the lights of Denver? Where did Kansas City go? The possibilities of what happened are not endless, but none of them are scenarios that inspire confidence that anything is ever going to be okay again. When they land in Bangar, Maine, of course Stevie has to divert the plane to his favorite city, they find a world devoid of life, and something doesn’t want them there.
SECRET WINDOW, SECRET GARDEN
”’You stole my story,’ the man on the doorstep said. ‘You stole my story and something’s got to be done about it. Right is right and fair is fair and something has to be done.’”
I hope everyone has seen the wonderful film adaptation of this story titled Secret Window with Johnny Depp, Maria Bello, and John Turturro. It is one of my favorite adaptations of a King creation. I’ve been long overdue to read the story that inspired the movie, and needless to say, when John Shooter shows up on Morton Rainey’s doorstep demanding satisfaction for plagiarism, I see Turturro and Depp.
That would be the worst nightmare of a writer, right? No writer writes anything and believes it to be totally his/hers. There is nothing new. All the words have been put in the same order numerous times before. Most writers have read lots of books, and don’t we all wonder when a lovely phrase floats to the surface of our minds that it is a memory and not an “original” creation? Did I read that in Balzac or maybe Tolstoy or that pulp novel by Willeford? Being accused of stealing a phrase is one thing, but to be accused of stealing a complete short story? Well, something odd is going on. Someone is lying, and someone might be dying. Rainey isn’t in the best shape of his life to be dealing with anyone, never mind a guy named Shooter. The name implies what might happen to you if a disagreement happens. Rainey is going through a crippling divorce and spends most of his days sleeping in a ratty robe dreaming about when he used to be able to write. Needless to say, things spin deliciously out of control as the truth contorts around itself, strangling under the weight of its own disbelief.
THE LIBRARY POLICEMAN
”Her teeth were no longer dentures; they were long and discolored. They looked like vampire teeth to Sam, both sharp and horribly strong. Grimacing, she bit down her mouthful of candy. Bright blood squirted out, spraying a pink cloud in the sunset air and dribbling down her chin. Severed chunks of licorice tumbled to the weedy earth, still jetting blood.
She raised hands which had become hooked talons.
’Youuuu losst the BOOOOKS!’ she screamed at Sam, and charged at him.”
I didn’t have the best relationship with my librarian in my hometown, but I certainly never encountered the terrifying librarian that Sam Peebles encounters in this story. My librarian routinely had to run me out of the adult section of the library. I was always trying to sneak in a book I’d purloined from the south side of the library with the childish crap I was tired of from the north side of the library. Finally, I had to have my mom come in and sign a waiver that would allow me to check out anything I wanted to read...within reason. I was never threatened with the library police because I have always been careful to return books on time. I have been tempted to steal a treasured library book from time to time, but never have resorted to mixing criminality with my favorite passion of reading. King gets high marks from me for making Robert Louis Stevenson’s book The Black Arrow part of the plot and also for mentioning the magical season of 1980 when the Kansas City Royals went to the World Series. That was also the year that George Brett hit .390. What a year that was for a farm kid from Glade, Kansas. They lost the World Series in game six, but what a ride.
Sam borrows some books from the library to help him write a speech, and somehow the books become lost. This is a minor problem for most people. They just pay for replacement books and take their lumps with a lecture from the librarian, but Ardelia Lortz is not the usual prim and proper librarian. There is frankly something otherworldly about her. Sam’s nightmare might begin with lost library books, but he soon learns there is something much more insidious going on at the local library.
THE SUN DOG
”What was wrong with the picture was the feeling that it was wrong. Kevin had remembered the sense of unease he had felt while composing his subjects for the picture he meant to take, and the ripple of gooseflesh up his back when, with the glare of the flashbulb still lighting the room, he had thought, It’s mine. That was what was wrong, and as with the man in the moon you can’t unsee once you’ve seen it, so, he was discovering, you couldn’t unfeel certain feelings...and when it came to these pictures, those feelings were bad.
Kevin thought: It’s like there was a wind--very soft, very cold--blowing out of the picture.”
Kevin Develan gets a Sun 660 Polaroid Camera for his birthday, and the excitement of the gift quickly turns to puzzlement as each picture, no matter what he aims the camera at, comes out the same. Huh?
The first thought is to return it, but then Kevin realizes that he has a supernatural camera, a kind of boring supernatural camera, but still an honest to God paranormal producing camera. There is only one person in Castle Rock who might have an inkling of what is going on with it, and that man is Pop Merrill. For those who have been following the Castle Rock adventures, Pop is the father of Ace, who proves to be a problem for Sheriff Pangborn in The Dark Half. Merrill runs a shop of unusual things and is the precursor for Leland Gaunt, who opens the now famous shop of satisfying desires...Needful Things.
Pop has made some pretty good cabbage off of selling supernatural things to the outright gullible and the fanatical want-to-believe collectors. He is licking his lips over Kevin’s camera, and he is the first to notice that the image with each new photograph is changing ever so slightly. What at first seemed innocuous is evolving into something more sinister. With each depression of the camera trigger, the world in the picture comes closer to the real world. It won’t be long before Kevin will wish he’d taken a sledgehammer to the camera from the first moment he realized it was not a normal camera.
The four concepts in the collection are really good. The prefaces King wrote for each story are worth the price of admission. He discusses writing with such honesty with such aptitude and with as much brimming excitement as anyone in the business. If you haven’t read his book On Writing, you are truly missing an inspirational experience. The one issue that I have with King in this collection, and this is with most of his writing, is that he really stretches an idea. There are times in this collection when I really wanted the plot to move forward, and King kept adding stuffing to an already overstuffed reading chair. The stuffing is not poor writing by any means, but it does make the plot feel unnecessarily bloated. I’ve spent enough time with King’s work now that I’ve accepted that will be the case and still enjoy reading him despite feeling like the guy from Monty Python…”one more thin little wafer, Mr. Creosote?”
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THE LANGOLIERS
”Reality peeled away in narrow strips beneath them, peeled away wherever and whatever they touched, and as they neared, Brian realized that they were unzipping more than the world--they were opening all the depths of forever.”
I used to fly four times a week, and for about a year, as I crisscrossed the Western part of the US and Canada, it was pretty thrilling, but with the constant deadlines and having to navigate airports (this is pre-9/11, before airports became even more difficult), rental cars, Canadian border patrol, and hotels, it soon became wearisome. I never was a white knuckle flyer, but it did start to seem unnatural for a human being to be suspended that far above the earth. This is the perfect story for flyers who love to fly and those who don’t because, regardless of how you feel about flying, you are going to feel a creeping sense of dread as the circumstances are revealed to you.
Eleven flyers wake up on a redeye from LA to Boston to find that all the other passengers have mysteriously disappeared. The flesh and bone has disappeared, leaving behind wedding rings, watches, and titanium knees. The world they find themselves flying through is a dead world. Where are the lights of Denver? Where did Kansas City go? The possibilities of what happened are not endless, but none of them are scenarios that inspire confidence that anything is ever going to be okay again. When they land in Bangar, Maine, of course Stevie has to divert the plane to his favorite city, they find a world devoid of life, and something doesn’t want them there.
SECRET WINDOW, SECRET GARDEN
”’You stole my story,’ the man on the doorstep said. ‘You stole my story and something’s got to be done about it. Right is right and fair is fair and something has to be done.’”
I hope everyone has seen the wonderful film adaptation of this story titled Secret Window with Johnny Depp, Maria Bello, and John Turturro. It is one of my favorite adaptations of a King creation. I’ve been long overdue to read the story that inspired the movie, and needless to say, when John Shooter shows up on Morton Rainey’s doorstep demanding satisfaction for plagiarism, I see Turturro and Depp.
That would be the worst nightmare of a writer, right? No writer writes anything and believes it to be totally his/hers. There is nothing new. All the words have been put in the same order numerous times before. Most writers have read lots of books, and don’t we all wonder when a lovely phrase floats to the surface of our minds that it is a memory and not an “original” creation? Did I read that in Balzac or maybe Tolstoy or that pulp novel by Willeford? Being accused of stealing a phrase is one thing, but to be accused of stealing a complete short story? Well, something odd is going on. Someone is lying, and someone might be dying. Rainey isn’t in the best shape of his life to be dealing with anyone, never mind a guy named Shooter. The name implies what might happen to you if a disagreement happens. Rainey is going through a crippling divorce and spends most of his days sleeping in a ratty robe dreaming about when he used to be able to write. Needless to say, things spin deliciously out of control as the truth contorts around itself, strangling under the weight of its own disbelief.
THE LIBRARY POLICEMAN
”Her teeth were no longer dentures; they were long and discolored. They looked like vampire teeth to Sam, both sharp and horribly strong. Grimacing, she bit down her mouthful of candy. Bright blood squirted out, spraying a pink cloud in the sunset air and dribbling down her chin. Severed chunks of licorice tumbled to the weedy earth, still jetting blood.
She raised hands which had become hooked talons.
’Youuuu losst the BOOOOKS!’ she screamed at Sam, and charged at him.”
I didn’t have the best relationship with my librarian in my hometown, but I certainly never encountered the terrifying librarian that Sam Peebles encounters in this story. My librarian routinely had to run me out of the adult section of the library. I was always trying to sneak in a book I’d purloined from the south side of the library with the childish crap I was tired of from the north side of the library. Finally, I had to have my mom come in and sign a waiver that would allow me to check out anything I wanted to read...within reason. I was never threatened with the library police because I have always been careful to return books on time. I have been tempted to steal a treasured library book from time to time, but never have resorted to mixing criminality with my favorite passion of reading. King gets high marks from me for making Robert Louis Stevenson’s book The Black Arrow part of the plot and also for mentioning the magical season of 1980 when the Kansas City Royals went to the World Series. That was also the year that George Brett hit .390. What a year that was for a farm kid from Glade, Kansas. They lost the World Series in game six, but what a ride.
Sam borrows some books from the library to help him write a speech, and somehow the books become lost. This is a minor problem for most people. They just pay for replacement books and take their lumps with a lecture from the librarian, but Ardelia Lortz is not the usual prim and proper librarian. There is frankly something otherworldly about her. Sam’s nightmare might begin with lost library books, but he soon learns there is something much more insidious going on at the local library.
THE SUN DOG
”What was wrong with the picture was the feeling that it was wrong. Kevin had remembered the sense of unease he had felt while composing his subjects for the picture he meant to take, and the ripple of gooseflesh up his back when, with the glare of the flashbulb still lighting the room, he had thought, It’s mine. That was what was wrong, and as with the man in the moon you can’t unsee once you’ve seen it, so, he was discovering, you couldn’t unfeel certain feelings...and when it came to these pictures, those feelings were bad.
Kevin thought: It’s like there was a wind--very soft, very cold--blowing out of the picture.”
Kevin Develan gets a Sun 660 Polaroid Camera for his birthday, and the excitement of the gift quickly turns to puzzlement as each picture, no matter what he aims the camera at, comes out the same. Huh?
The first thought is to return it, but then Kevin realizes that he has a supernatural camera, a kind of boring supernatural camera, but still an honest to God paranormal producing camera. There is only one person in Castle Rock who might have an inkling of what is going on with it, and that man is Pop Merrill. For those who have been following the Castle Rock adventures, Pop is the father of Ace, who proves to be a problem for Sheriff Pangborn in The Dark Half. Merrill runs a shop of unusual things and is the precursor for Leland Gaunt, who opens the now famous shop of satisfying desires...Needful Things.
Pop has made some pretty good cabbage off of selling supernatural things to the outright gullible and the fanatical want-to-believe collectors. He is licking his lips over Kevin’s camera, and he is the first to notice that the image with each new photograph is changing ever so slightly. What at first seemed innocuous is evolving into something more sinister. With each depression of the camera trigger, the world in the picture comes closer to the real world. It won’t be long before Kevin will wish he’d taken a sledgehammer to the camera from the first moment he realized it was not a normal camera.
The four concepts in the collection are really good. The prefaces King wrote for each story are worth the price of admission. He discusses writing with such honesty with such aptitude and with as much brimming excitement as anyone in the business. If you haven’t read his book On Writing, you are truly missing an inspirational experience. The one issue that I have with King in this collection, and this is with most of his writing, is that he really stretches an idea. There are times in this collection when I really wanted the plot to move forward, and King kept adding stuffing to an already overstuffed reading chair. The stuffing is not poor writing by any means, but it does make the plot feel unnecessarily bloated. I’ve spent enough time with King’s work now that I’ve accepted that will be the case and still enjoy reading him despite feeling like the guy from Monty Python…”one more thin little wafer, Mr. Creosote?”
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March 15, 2019
3.5 Stars
I'm not sure Uncle Stevie knows the definition of a "short" story. The four stories in these collection are more like novellas or short novels. As with all story collections the ratings vary.
The Langoliers - 2 Stars
The first story was my least favorite. The premise is great several passengers on airplane awaken to find everyone else on board has vanished.
That sounded great but after the first 50 pages the story just dragged and the story was overly long. It just wasn't a fun read.
Secret Window, Secret Garden- 4 stars
This was my favorite story out of the collection even if it was a little predictable.
A writer dealing with a divorce and writers block opens his door to a man claiming the writer plagiarized his story.
The Library Policeman - 3.5 Stars
A man pays an unforgettable and terrifying visit to his local library.
So close to being my favorite but just overly long.
The Sun Dog - 3 Stars
A boy receives a very strange camera for his 15 the birthday.
The only true horror story in this collection but like a lot of Stephen King works the ending was a little Meh!
Four Past Midnight was a good collection but not one of his greats. Its still a great addition to your King collection.
I'm not sure Uncle Stevie knows the definition of a "short" story. The four stories in these collection are more like novellas or short novels. As with all story collections the ratings vary.
The Langoliers - 2 Stars
The first story was my least favorite. The premise is great several passengers on airplane awaken to find everyone else on board has vanished.
That sounded great but after the first 50 pages the story just dragged and the story was overly long. It just wasn't a fun read.
Secret Window, Secret Garden- 4 stars
This was my favorite story out of the collection even if it was a little predictable.
A writer dealing with a divorce and writers block opens his door to a man claiming the writer plagiarized his story.
The Library Policeman - 3.5 Stars
A man pays an unforgettable and terrifying visit to his local library.
So close to being my favorite but just overly long.
The Sun Dog - 3 Stars
A boy receives a very strange camera for his 15 the birthday.
The only true horror story in this collection but like a lot of Stephen King works the ending was a little Meh!
Four Past Midnight was a good collection but not one of his greats. Its still a great addition to your King collection.
November 15, 2022
This here book is my 64th book of his and the very first I've DNF'd, I just cannot get into it.
It wouldn't surprise me if someone told me this was written during his cocaine years because there's a fair bit of rambling and filler, like The Langoliers for example, I felt there was so much irrelevant backstory to the characters etc.
I'm just going to throw a moderate rating on it.
I'm not forcing myself to finish a book I'm not enjoying.
It wouldn't surprise me if someone told me this was written during his cocaine years because there's a fair bit of rambling and filler, like The Langoliers for example, I felt there was so much irrelevant backstory to the characters etc.
I'm just going to throw a moderate rating on it.
I'm not forcing myself to finish a book I'm not enjoying.
October 4, 2019
“Then his lids closed slowly over his slightly bloodshot eyes, and Mort Rainey, who had yet to discover what true horror was all about, fell asleep.”
I usually enjoy King’s short stories and novellas quite a bit. Unlike many, he has a consistent talent with shorter works. It’s sort of ironic he shines so heavy in this area considering most of his novels are too long, but I kind of digress here.
Unfortunately this was the least favorite I’ve read. I have many more to go, of course, so it may not stay in the weaker spot. 3 Stars isn’t bad, but this is a mundane offering compared to the brilliance of his other novella collections like the excellent Different Seasons.
While I enjoyed The Langoliers and couldn’t put it down (at first), time started weighing it down and the longer it continued, the more it started dragging. I do dig the concept, though, and the characters were fully fleshed.
I figured I’d like Secret Window, Secret Garden...and I did. I dig the idea of a writer obsessed with his fiction. I do keep picturing Johnny Depp in the role now, of course. The movie had a darker twist that fits the fictional short story with irony, but the book ending is a little more somber. I know this particular story gets its share of flack for some reason, but I enjoyed it in theater and I enjoyed it in written form. It was a clever mishmash with some twists, although the ending I’m used to from the movie didn’t match and I’m not sure which version I prefer.
The biggest disappointment was The Librarian Police. It sounded fascinated and started strong, but turns out inconsistent and downright silly.
The Sun Dog as a final installment was a weird wrap-up that stayed interesting enough but fully embraced its cheesiness.
A particular delight was Kings’ foreward before each story, talking about themes and how he came up with each story. He speaks of Castle Rock quite a bit. His stories set in so many imaginary towns in Maine have made that state stand out in the heads of horror fans.
I usually enjoy King’s short stories and novellas quite a bit. Unlike many, he has a consistent talent with shorter works. It’s sort of ironic he shines so heavy in this area considering most of his novels are too long, but I kind of digress here.
Unfortunately this was the least favorite I’ve read. I have many more to go, of course, so it may not stay in the weaker spot. 3 Stars isn’t bad, but this is a mundane offering compared to the brilliance of his other novella collections like the excellent Different Seasons.
While I enjoyed The Langoliers and couldn’t put it down (at first), time started weighing it down and the longer it continued, the more it started dragging. I do dig the concept, though, and the characters were fully fleshed.
I figured I’d like Secret Window, Secret Garden...and I did. I dig the idea of a writer obsessed with his fiction. I do keep picturing Johnny Depp in the role now, of course. The movie had a darker twist that fits the fictional short story with irony, but the book ending is a little more somber. I know this particular story gets its share of flack for some reason, but I enjoyed it in theater and I enjoyed it in written form. It was a clever mishmash with some twists, although the ending I’m used to from the movie didn’t match and I’m not sure which version I prefer.
The biggest disappointment was The Librarian Police. It sounded fascinated and started strong, but turns out inconsistent and downright silly.
The Sun Dog as a final installment was a weird wrap-up that stayed interesting enough but fully embraced its cheesiness.
A particular delight was Kings’ foreward before each story, talking about themes and how he came up with each story. He speaks of Castle Rock quite a bit. His stories set in so many imaginary towns in Maine have made that state stand out in the heads of horror fans.
May 4, 2021
¿Qué decir sobre este libro que recoge cuatro novelas cortas en su interior?
Pues que es un NO rotundo conmigo. Que no lo recomiendo ni estando sonámbulo, medio borracho o drogado. Sinceramente todas las historias se pasan en extensión y se vuelven aburridisimas en algún punto. Solo hubo una que me llegó a gustar y poco más. De resto, no creo que merezca la pena invertir tiempo y dinero en este libro habiendo mejores en el amplio catálogo de King.
1. Los langolieros 1/5★
Esta novela corta se traduce simplemente en algo aburrido, denso y sin sabor. La más larga de todas y la que no me aportó absolutamente nada; ni siquiera entretenimiento. La odié, hizo que me estancara durante varios días y siendo la primera que abre la colección por poco y me echa para atrás. Es demasiado lineal y predecible, haciéndose obvio el patrón que sigue SK en la mayoría de sus novelas.
2. Ventana secreta, jardín secreto 2/5★
Con Misery, La mitad oscura y esta novela corta; ventana secreta, jardín secreto, Stephen King sigue mostrando el papel del lector y escritor por consecutiva vez. Además, nuevamente entra en escena el poder de la ficción y la realidad, mezclada con un poco de fantasía; donde es difícil identificar qué es real o no. Una novela que me ha dejado en la total indiferencia y se debe al manoseo que hace el escritor sobre este mismo tema con frecuencia. Así, todo se vuelve demasiado predecible (porque no sorprende), y repetitible hasta el hartazgo.
Eso sí, no descarto que a alguien le guste, porque tiene su sazón para quien todavía no ha tocado la idea con King.
3. El policía de la biblioteca 4/5★
Leyendo las reseñas de goodreads me he dado cuenta lo poco que gusta y lo poco que se habla de esta novela. A mí, personalmente es la única que me ha gustado de las cuatro. Me entretuvo y me enganchó desde el inicio con la sencilla propuesta de una historia de terror que se transmite de generación en generación; tan simple y terrorífica como la de un policía de la biblioteca que te perseguirá si no devuelves un libro a tiempo. Es concurrente que a los niños se les asuste de algún modo para que cumplan con algo y aquí se juega con esto, solo que con un adulto. Y sí, le sobran algunas páginas pero no son muchas comparándolas con las demás.
Advierto que contiene una escena muy fuerte y delicada que retrata algo que pasa en la cotidianidad. Y es muy terrible. El título de esta novela engloba algo espeluznante, repugnante y que te eriza la piel. Justo lo que busco cuando leo terror, que en su mayoría me gusta que me genere más el horror. Y como plus a la trama, tiene unos aires con el libro It. Quien lo lea sabrá porqué lo digo.
4. El perro de la polaroid 1/5★
Me pasó lo mismo que con la primera; me aburrió de sobremanera y lo mucho que le sobran páginas es alarmante. De verdad, lo digo muy en serio, a veces hay que tener un filtro o todo se vuelve cansino.
En fin, que casi todo muy mal, King. Ni abriste con broche de oro ni mucho menos cerraste en condiciones. Lo siento, pero no me convenciste. No esta vez. A la próxima, que aún me queda bastante por leer.
Pues que es un NO rotundo conmigo. Que no lo recomiendo ni estando sonámbulo, medio borracho o drogado. Sinceramente todas las historias se pasan en extensión y se vuelven aburridisimas en algún punto. Solo hubo una que me llegó a gustar y poco más. De resto, no creo que merezca la pena invertir tiempo y dinero en este libro habiendo mejores en el amplio catálogo de King.
1. Los langolieros 1/5★
Esta novela corta se traduce simplemente en algo aburrido, denso y sin sabor. La más larga de todas y la que no me aportó absolutamente nada; ni siquiera entretenimiento. La odié, hizo que me estancara durante varios días y siendo la primera que abre la colección por poco y me echa para atrás. Es demasiado lineal y predecible, haciéndose obvio el patrón que sigue SK en la mayoría de sus novelas.
2. Ventana secreta, jardín secreto 2/5★
Con Misery, La mitad oscura y esta novela corta; ventana secreta, jardín secreto, Stephen King sigue mostrando el papel del lector y escritor por consecutiva vez. Además, nuevamente entra en escena el poder de la ficción y la realidad, mezclada con un poco de fantasía; donde es difícil identificar qué es real o no. Una novela que me ha dejado en la total indiferencia y se debe al manoseo que hace el escritor sobre este mismo tema con frecuencia. Así, todo se vuelve demasiado predecible (porque no sorprende), y repetitible hasta el hartazgo.
Eso sí, no descarto que a alguien le guste, porque tiene su sazón para quien todavía no ha tocado la idea con King.
3. El policía de la biblioteca 4/5★
Leyendo las reseñas de goodreads me he dado cuenta lo poco que gusta y lo poco que se habla de esta novela. A mí, personalmente es la única que me ha gustado de las cuatro. Me entretuvo y me enganchó desde el inicio con la sencilla propuesta de una historia de terror que se transmite de generación en generación; tan simple y terrorífica como la de un policía de la biblioteca que te perseguirá si no devuelves un libro a tiempo. Es concurrente que a los niños se les asuste de algún modo para que cumplan con algo y aquí se juega con esto, solo que con un adulto. Y sí, le sobran algunas páginas pero no son muchas comparándolas con las demás.
Advierto que contiene una escena muy fuerte y delicada que retrata algo que pasa en la cotidianidad. Y es muy terrible. El título de esta novela engloba algo espeluznante, repugnante y que te eriza la piel. Justo lo que busco cuando leo terror, que en su mayoría me gusta que me genere más el horror. Y como plus a la trama, tiene unos aires con el libro It. Quien lo lea sabrá porqué lo digo.
4. El perro de la polaroid 1/5★
Me pasó lo mismo que con la primera; me aburrió de sobremanera y lo mucho que le sobran páginas es alarmante. De verdad, lo digo muy en serio, a veces hay que tener un filtro o todo se vuelve cansino.
En fin, que casi todo muy mal, King. Ni abriste con broche de oro ni mucho menos cerraste en condiciones. Lo siento, pero no me convenciste. No esta vez. A la próxima, que aún me queda bastante por leer.
October 8, 2023
4.5 stars for the collection as a whole
The Langoliers - 4 stars
Mysteries of time and reality on are explored in this intense piece. I loved the ensemble of unrelated characters who are thrown together into a terrifying situation they don't understand.
The "locked room" setup of a red-eye flight shares similarities with King's well known supermarket confinement horror story, The Mist, which appears in the collection Skeleton Crew. Although the threat in The Langoliers, is less overt at the start, it proves itself to be complete, and it's existential nature is every bit as effective as the cosmic horror of The Mist. Once again, we see how the different characters react and change under pressure, and that's where the real meat of the story lies.
Secret Window, Secret Garden - 4 stars
King does stories about writers going off the deep end like no one else. One of the great things about his repeated use of this particular theme is that he does it differently each time. You never know if the writer is sane or not, if the antagonist is real or not, and if the perception of reader is true or not.
Secret Window, Secret Garden starts with the known and the true tightly wrapped, and then slowly unfurls it, building the truth behind story piece by piece. The result is both expected and not, but always tense and discomforting. My only issue might be with the ending. The Epilogue spells out the closure to the story, but honestly, the less defined place we are left without it is perhaps even better.
The Library Policeman - 4 stars
Childhood trauma reawakens to feed a real life, if completely supernatural, monster. Slaying the monster requires taking hold of repressed memory and fear and bringing it fully to life.
The imagery in this story is shocking and frightening (and possibly too graphic in parts for some readers), the characters rich and as real as any person you meet on the street. Among other things, a good reminder that we don't know the story of every person around us, the battles they fight, and the monsters they strive daily to vanquish.
The Sun Dog - 5 stars
My favourite story of the four. There is something about mechanical recording devices, be they tapes or film or a Polaroid camera, that lends itself to the mysterious. The idea of a horror attaching itself to you and drawing itself into being is among the most basic and continually frightening precepts. As usual, King dresses this idea in the most ordinary of clothes and makes it uniquely terrifying.
The writing is particularly good here, capturing the very essence of small towns and big characters. The ending is perfection, and only makes this excellent story even better.
The Langoliers - 4 stars
Mysteries of time and reality on are explored in this intense piece. I loved the ensemble of unrelated characters who are thrown together into a terrifying situation they don't understand.
The "locked room" setup of a red-eye flight shares similarities with King's well known supermarket confinement horror story, The Mist, which appears in the collection Skeleton Crew. Although the threat in The Langoliers, is less overt at the start, it proves itself to be complete, and it's existential nature is every bit as effective as the cosmic horror of The Mist. Once again, we see how the different characters react and change under pressure, and that's where the real meat of the story lies.
Secret Window, Secret Garden - 4 stars
King does stories about writers going off the deep end like no one else. One of the great things about his repeated use of this particular theme is that he does it differently each time. You never know if the writer is sane or not, if the antagonist is real or not, and if the perception of reader is true or not.
Secret Window, Secret Garden starts with the known and the true tightly wrapped, and then slowly unfurls it, building the truth behind story piece by piece. The result is both expected and not, but always tense and discomforting. My only issue might be with the ending. The Epilogue spells out the closure to the story, but honestly, the less defined place we are left without it is perhaps even better.
The Library Policeman - 4 stars
Childhood trauma reawakens to feed a real life, if completely supernatural, monster. Slaying the monster requires taking hold of repressed memory and fear and bringing it fully to life.
The imagery in this story is shocking and frightening (and possibly too graphic in parts for some readers), the characters rich and as real as any person you meet on the street. Among other things, a good reminder that we don't know the story of every person around us, the battles they fight, and the monsters they strive daily to vanquish.
The Sun Dog - 5 stars
My favourite story of the four. There is something about mechanical recording devices, be they tapes or film or a Polaroid camera, that lends itself to the mysterious. The idea of a horror attaching itself to you and drawing itself into being is among the most basic and continually frightening precepts. As usual, King dresses this idea in the most ordinary of clothes and makes it uniquely terrifying.
The writing is particularly good here, capturing the very essence of small towns and big characters. The ending is perfection, and only makes this excellent story even better.
November 7, 2021
OT: Four Past Midnight
Stephen King is a special guy. When a publisher asks an author to hand in a collection of stories, you’d usually end up with 15-20 stories and a 300–500-page book. Not with Mr. King, though. This is a collection of four stories that weighs in at 1,154 pages (in the German translation). And still, when I rated these separately not one, but two of my friends told me that the respective story was amongst their favorite SK short stories. Ha ha! Yeah, he is special.
I’m glad to report that three of the four stories were totally worth my time. Even The Langoliers, which I had read already (and didn’t like the first time around), was pretty entertaining. And while the book ended on a low for me, overall this was very enjoyable.
The Langoliers 🔹 sci-fi / horror 🔹 416 pages
A couple of people wake up during a commercial flight from LA to Boston and realize that while they were sleeping the crew and the other passengers have disappeared. What has happened? Well, that's the question, and as long as the answer isn't clear this story is super intriguing. To speculate about this was a lot of fun.
It's true that when we are getting the answers, leave the land of sanity behind for a while, and the whole thing is less and less grounded in reality, the book isn't great. Or maybe it is just less enjoyable to me because of personal preferences. But when the characters are trying to find a way out of their situation and the story is nearing its conclusion, I was again enjoying myself quite a bit. And the ending is actually rather cool.
So, yeah, I've changed my mind about this one.
3.5 – 4 stars
Secret Window, Secret Garden 🔹 thriller 🔹 218 pages
Another re-read for me. But I didn’t change my mind about this one. This story of a writer that sees himself pressured by a stranger who accuses him of having plagiarized one of his stories was just as much fun as the first time around. It's super interesting to see Mort's life come undone and to question what is real and what is imagined. Yes, the epilogue is unnecessary and what King did on the last eigth pages almost feels like he wanted to live up to his reputation of writing bad endings. But otherwise this is almost perfect.
4 stars
The Library Policeman 🔹 horror 🔹 301 pages
Sam must hold a speech and his secretary Naomi recommends two books to him that might help spice it up. The town’s library turns out to be a not particularly inviting place, though, and the strange librarian warns him to return the books on time, or else he will face the wrath of the Library Police.
160 pages of why isn‘t this a short story? followed by wow, this is awesome! Creepy, with interesting characters and some nice body horror.
4 stars
The Sun Dog 🔹 horror 🔹 186 pages
The premise of this story is intriguing. Kevin is gifted a Polaroid camera for his birthday. Every picture he's taking shows a menacing dog, though, no matter where he points the camera. All the photos appear to be the same. But not quite. The dog is coming nearer.
Yep, King is special. Only he can take what should be a twenty page story, make it almost 200 pages long, and still somehow does not end up with something terrible. But, by God, I hated reading it. Clearly the low-point of this collection for me.
Pop goes to the drugstore to buy a film for the Polaroid? Somehow this results in a 10-page chapter. What other authors would write as, "For a couple of days Pop tried to sell the camera to several of his customers, but to no avail" turns into a 40-page chapter in which nothing happens, except that Pop tried to sell the camera to several people but couldn't. Of course, this is not quite true. In this chapter we learn about four people that Pop is doing business with. However, they are completely irrelevant for the rest of the story.
King might be special in many ways. But he often has a problem with bloat. And he knows it too. All those endless digressions, that annoyed the crap out of me, are not badly written, though. Far from it. I almost felt like maybe I had to give this 3 stars. But then again, I didn't like it.
2 stars
Since the only story I didn’t like is the shortest in this collection and because the rest was very enjoyable, I’ll go with a four over a three here. It’s a shame that the last 100 pages or so were a real struggle. But overall this was fun.
Stephen King is a special guy. When a publisher asks an author to hand in a collection of stories, you’d usually end up with 15-20 stories and a 300–500-page book. Not with Mr. King, though. This is a collection of four stories that weighs in at 1,154 pages (in the German translation). And still, when I rated these separately not one, but two of my friends told me that the respective story was amongst their favorite SK short stories. Ha ha! Yeah, he is special.
I’m glad to report that three of the four stories were totally worth my time. Even The Langoliers, which I had read already (and didn’t like the first time around), was pretty entertaining. And while the book ended on a low for me, overall this was very enjoyable.
The Langoliers 🔹 sci-fi / horror 🔹 416 pages
A couple of people wake up during a commercial flight from LA to Boston and realize that while they were sleeping the crew and the other passengers have disappeared. What has happened? Well, that's the question, and as long as the answer isn't clear this story is super intriguing. To speculate about this was a lot of fun.
It's true that when we are getting the answers, leave the land of sanity behind for a while, and the whole thing is less and less grounded in reality, the book isn't great. Or maybe it is just less enjoyable to me because of personal preferences. But when the characters are trying to find a way out of their situation and the story is nearing its conclusion, I was again enjoying myself quite a bit. And the ending is actually rather cool.
So, yeah, I've changed my mind about this one.
3.5 – 4 stars
Secret Window, Secret Garden 🔹 thriller 🔹 218 pages
Another re-read for me. But I didn’t change my mind about this one. This story of a writer that sees himself pressured by a stranger who accuses him of having plagiarized one of his stories was just as much fun as the first time around. It's super interesting to see Mort's life come undone and to question what is real and what is imagined. Yes, the epilogue is unnecessary and what King did on the last eigth pages almost feels like he wanted to live up to his reputation of writing bad endings. But otherwise this is almost perfect.
4 stars
The Library Policeman 🔹 horror 🔹 301 pages
Sam must hold a speech and his secretary Naomi recommends two books to him that might help spice it up. The town’s library turns out to be a not particularly inviting place, though, and the strange librarian warns him to return the books on time, or else he will face the wrath of the Library Police.
160 pages of why isn‘t this a short story? followed by wow, this is awesome! Creepy, with interesting characters and some nice body horror.
4 stars
The Sun Dog 🔹 horror 🔹 186 pages
The premise of this story is intriguing. Kevin is gifted a Polaroid camera for his birthday. Every picture he's taking shows a menacing dog, though, no matter where he points the camera. All the photos appear to be the same. But not quite. The dog is coming nearer.
Yep, King is special. Only he can take what should be a twenty page story, make it almost 200 pages long, and still somehow does not end up with something terrible. But, by God, I hated reading it. Clearly the low-point of this collection for me.
Pop goes to the drugstore to buy a film for the Polaroid? Somehow this results in a 10-page chapter. What other authors would write as, "For a couple of days Pop tried to sell the camera to several of his customers, but to no avail" turns into a 40-page chapter in which nothing happens, except that Pop tried to sell the camera to several people but couldn't. Of course, this is not quite true. In this chapter we learn about four people that Pop is doing business with. However, they are completely irrelevant for the rest of the story.
King might be special in many ways. But he often has a problem with bloat. And he knows it too. All those endless digressions, that annoyed the crap out of me, are not badly written, though. Far from it. I almost felt like maybe I had to give this 3 stars. But then again, I didn't like it.
2 stars
Since the only story I didn’t like is the shortest in this collection and because the rest was very enjoyable, I’ll go with a four over a three here. It’s a shame that the last 100 pages or so were a real struggle. But overall this was fun.
February 5, 2019
This isn’t my favourite King collection but it does have some spectacular stories despite that! I love the first three stories and I think they each stand out for very different reasons. They’re all very unique stories but I think The Library Policeman has to be my favourite out of the four, mainly because I actually used to have nightmares about getting arrested for not returning my books when I was a kid so it provides a bit of a nostalgic scare for me. The Sun Dog is definitely the story I enjoyed the least, I thought it was so predictable and unnecessarily long. I just wanted King to get to the damn point with that one and it’s why I can’t give this collection 5 stars, it drove me nuts!
January 15, 2024
It was about time I read this book. The paperback came out in 1991 and I got it shortly thereafter. My copy’s been sitting on shelves, getting moved from place to place, move to move, apartment to apartment, etc. I’m glad I finally got through this—mostly. It was like reading a horror time-capsule. It came out before Dreamcatcher, the Dark Tower was finished. A lot of them. So it was kind of cool going back now and seeing this collection of earlier novellas. Here’s one guy’s take on them:
The Langoliers: Way better than the movie, though I will say as an aside that it was cool rewatching the movie and seeing that it was very faithful to the source material. It was creative and goes to show (in my humble opinion) that sometimes it is just too difficult to capture the idea of a book into a movie. It was decent, but not mind-blowingly great. 3.75/5
Secret Window, Secret Garden: This was the only one of the four that just did not work for me. The even for a storytelling master like King. It came across as plot holes to me and a lot of it didn’t make sense. 2/5
The Library Policeman: This is the one that is really going to stick with me. Brutal, dark, emotional, and had all the things and threads tied up. Every part of the narrative seemed to me had a purpose and moved the process along. Brutal stuff, but it had meaning. 4.5/5
The Sun Dog: A supernatural tale with colorful characters, an evil jerk, with a sprinkling of omniscient POV. Classic King. 4/5
So, 3.56 rounded up to 4.
The Langoliers: Way better than the movie, though I will say as an aside that it was cool rewatching the movie and seeing that it was very faithful to the source material. It was creative and goes to show (in my humble opinion) that sometimes it is just too difficult to capture the idea of a book into a movie. It was decent, but not mind-blowingly great. 3.75/5
Secret Window, Secret Garden: This was the only one of the four that just did not work for me. The even for a storytelling master like King. It came across as plot holes to me and a lot of it didn’t make sense. 2/5
The Library Policeman: This is the one that is really going to stick with me. Brutal, dark, emotional, and had all the things and threads tied up. Every part of the narrative seemed to me had a purpose and moved the process along. Brutal stuff, but it had meaning. 4.5/5
The Sun Dog: A supernatural tale with colorful characters, an evil jerk, with a sprinkling of omniscient POV. Classic King. 4/5
So, 3.56 rounded up to 4.
August 25, 2024
Almost perfect set of stories!
The Langoliers - excellent piece of sci-fi horror!
5/5
Secret Window, Secret Gardern - mesmerized by this one too!
5/5
The Library Policeman - Nightmarish, disgusting, nail biting! Incredible!
5/5
The Sun Dog - now here is where King kind of lost me. The premise is so interesting but to make it a 200 page story out this.. it was a bit much..
3/5
Overall: 4.25/5
The Langoliers - excellent piece of sci-fi horror!
5/5
Secret Window, Secret Gardern - mesmerized by this one too!
5/5
The Library Policeman - Nightmarish, disgusting, nail biting! Incredible!
5/5
The Sun Dog - now here is where King kind of lost me. The premise is so interesting but to make it a 200 page story out this.. it was a bit much..
3/5
Overall: 4.25/5
September 9, 2021
Wow that took a while! I’d rank them:
1) The Sun Dog
2) The Langoliers
3) Secret Window, Secret Garden
4) The Library Policeman
1) The Sun Dog
2) The Langoliers
3) Secret Window, Secret Garden
4) The Library Policeman
October 3, 2020
Welcome to nineties King!!!! Yes, I’ve made it to 1990 in my reread of Kings’ work. Four Past Midnight is a collection of four long novellas that if they were released today probably would have been published separately due to their length and the horror industry boom in novellas.
The Langoliers - 3 Stars
The first and longest novella in the collection The Langoliers comes across as a horror adventure tale that explores the myths behind the Bermuda Triangle phenomenon concerning disappearing aircraft, except in King’s story it occurs on a flight from LA to Boston. Ten passengers wake up to find everyone on their flight has disappeared including the pilots, leaving behind all their belongings such as wedding rings, pacemakers and even a dildo. Yes, that’s right.
First of can I say that I actually found this to be refreshing after his last two books The Tommyknockers and The Dark Half. I think that’s down to the fact that I have good memories of reading this story as a teen and I discovered that more less the story is as good as I remembered. That being sad it boosts the worst ensemble cast King has ever written. The ten passengers that wake to discover the empty plane are at least four too many, because of this a few of them feel pointless and the majority feel one dimensional. There’s literally one person in this whose only contribution is to complain he is hungry. Also there’s an eleventh character who sleeps through the entire story only to wake up at the end of the event to deliver a punch line to a joke you can see coming for a mile. I think it would have worked more effectively overall if the small character traits these pointless individuals had been wrapped on into one person. However, there is an aloofness to the story that makes me think this was intentional. What saves it is characters like Nick Hopewell, a British spy, Albert, a violinist going to college, Brian Engle, a pilot, Toomy, an insane stock broker and Dinah, a blind girl with shining abilities, though she’s never referred to as such.
The premise of the story is interesting that of a group of people that find themselves outside of time and they must find away back before the creatures that eat old time, The Langoliers, come after them. And there are some fine moments such as Albert surviving a gunshot because the effectiveness of the gun has been dampened or the ending, which is one of King’s most joyful. It’s all held down by that aloof theme that makes it feel like a farce, as if King’s real intention was to write his version of Airplane!
Secret Window, Secret Garden - 2 Stars
There’s a small introduction note before this story in which King’s writes that this story is an exploration of similar themes that existed in Misery and The Dark Half. Where this sits, in terms, of quality is in the middle if you were to rank these three. He also writes that this would be the last time he would write about writers and this type of tale.
YEAH RIGHT!!
Not only did King not keep to his promise, but he also wrote two other stories set in similar settings such as Bag of Bones and The Rat. Yes, Secret Window, Secret Garden is the story of Mort Rainey, a writer whose hiding out at a cabin in the woods. And where in those stories King brings something new, he doesn’t here. This was spoiled for me on account of how identical the movie version is to this, enough to the point that while this is a first time read for me it felt like a reread. The difference is the ending, which was a surprise until the over description in the epilogue.
The Library Policeman - 3.5 Stars
One of the enjoyable surprises with doing this reread is encountering stories I haven’t read by King and this was one of those for me. The Library Policeman is story of Sam Pebbles and Naomi Higgins and Dave Duncan and it’s the best story in this collection, certainly the most harrowing by miles. You see Sam has been asked to perform a speech for the local Rotary Club and in order to so seeks the help from the local library, through Naomi’s encouragement, where he encounters a creepy old woman by the name of Ardelia. What happens after is a chain of events that leads Sam and Naomi and Dave not only fighting for their lives, but also to find redemption in confronting their past.
King remarks in the beginning note that this story was originally supposed to be a funny tale that took a dark turn as he was writing it and it shows. The first third Sam spends focused on embarrassing himself about the Rotary Club speech. It’s not until he gets to the Library that things begin to darken and boy do they go dark. Yet, as far as the story goes it never feels unearned. So if you want to read this novella I’d suggest going in with caution, but to do so also introduces you to one of King’s creepiest and freakiest villains.
Libraries. Safe havens for people that love to read and get lost in other worlds. Not anymore.
The Sun Dog - 3 Stars
This is the classic story of a seemingly ordinary object that enters into someone’s life only for them to discover it holds sinister ramifications for them. In this case the seemingly ordinary object is a type of Polaroid camera. King tends to recycle and this story is the second in his career that features a evil dog. It’s also the poorer version. No matter what the camera takes a picture of the polaroid that is expelled shows a nameless fanged dog slowly getting closer and closer to the camera.
Yes, instead of Cujo, a good dog turned bad, we get a nameless mutt. Does it matter? Not really as The Sun Dog isn’t really a story about a camera, dog or its owner. It’s a story about Pop Merrill, cruel son-of-bitch who rules King’s fictional town of Castle Rock. When Pop hears about the camera he steals it and this gives King the chance to write about what he really wanted to write about, Pop. It’s like he had this great character in this head that has this presence in a town featured in many of his novels, but could never find the story to show him off in. Which makes this story painfully long beyond reason.
The Langoliers - 3 Stars
The first and longest novella in the collection The Langoliers comes across as a horror adventure tale that explores the myths behind the Bermuda Triangle phenomenon concerning disappearing aircraft, except in King’s story it occurs on a flight from LA to Boston. Ten passengers wake up to find everyone on their flight has disappeared including the pilots, leaving behind all their belongings such as wedding rings, pacemakers and even a dildo. Yes, that’s right.
First of can I say that I actually found this to be refreshing after his last two books The Tommyknockers and The Dark Half. I think that’s down to the fact that I have good memories of reading this story as a teen and I discovered that more less the story is as good as I remembered. That being sad it boosts the worst ensemble cast King has ever written. The ten passengers that wake to discover the empty plane are at least four too many, because of this a few of them feel pointless and the majority feel one dimensional. There’s literally one person in this whose only contribution is to complain he is hungry. Also there’s an eleventh character who sleeps through the entire story only to wake up at the end of the event to deliver a punch line to a joke you can see coming for a mile. I think it would have worked more effectively overall if the small character traits these pointless individuals had been wrapped on into one person. However, there is an aloofness to the story that makes me think this was intentional. What saves it is characters like Nick Hopewell, a British spy, Albert, a violinist going to college, Brian Engle, a pilot, Toomy, an insane stock broker and Dinah, a blind girl with shining abilities, though she’s never referred to as such.
The premise of the story is interesting that of a group of people that find themselves outside of time and they must find away back before the creatures that eat old time, The Langoliers, come after them. And there are some fine moments such as Albert surviving a gunshot because the effectiveness of the gun has been dampened or the ending, which is one of King’s most joyful. It’s all held down by that aloof theme that makes it feel like a farce, as if King’s real intention was to write his version of Airplane!
Secret Window, Secret Garden - 2 Stars
There’s a small introduction note before this story in which King’s writes that this story is an exploration of similar themes that existed in Misery and The Dark Half. Where this sits, in terms, of quality is in the middle if you were to rank these three. He also writes that this would be the last time he would write about writers and this type of tale.
YEAH RIGHT!!
Not only did King not keep to his promise, but he also wrote two other stories set in similar settings such as Bag of Bones and The Rat. Yes, Secret Window, Secret Garden is the story of Mort Rainey, a writer whose hiding out at a cabin in the woods. And where in those stories King brings something new, he doesn’t here. This was spoiled for me on account of how identical the movie version is to this, enough to the point that while this is a first time read for me it felt like a reread. The difference is the ending, which was a surprise until the over description in the epilogue.
The Library Policeman - 3.5 Stars
One of the enjoyable surprises with doing this reread is encountering stories I haven’t read by King and this was one of those for me. The Library Policeman is story of Sam Pebbles and Naomi Higgins and Dave Duncan and it’s the best story in this collection, certainly the most harrowing by miles. You see Sam has been asked to perform a speech for the local Rotary Club and in order to so seeks the help from the local library, through Naomi’s encouragement, where he encounters a creepy old woman by the name of Ardelia. What happens after is a chain of events that leads Sam and Naomi and Dave not only fighting for their lives, but also to find redemption in confronting their past.
King remarks in the beginning note that this story was originally supposed to be a funny tale that took a dark turn as he was writing it and it shows. The first third Sam spends focused on embarrassing himself about the Rotary Club speech. It’s not until he gets to the Library that things begin to darken and boy do they go dark. Yet, as far as the story goes it never feels unearned. So if you want to read this novella I’d suggest going in with caution, but to do so also introduces you to one of King’s creepiest and freakiest villains.
Libraries. Safe havens for people that love to read and get lost in other worlds. Not anymore.
The Sun Dog - 3 Stars
This is the classic story of a seemingly ordinary object that enters into someone’s life only for them to discover it holds sinister ramifications for them. In this case the seemingly ordinary object is a type of Polaroid camera. King tends to recycle and this story is the second in his career that features a evil dog. It’s also the poorer version. No matter what the camera takes a picture of the polaroid that is expelled shows a nameless fanged dog slowly getting closer and closer to the camera.
Yes, instead of Cujo, a good dog turned bad, we get a nameless mutt. Does it matter? Not really as The Sun Dog isn’t really a story about a camera, dog or its owner. It’s a story about Pop Merrill, cruel son-of-bitch who rules King’s fictional town of Castle Rock. When Pop hears about the camera he steals it and this gives King the chance to write about what he really wanted to write about, Pop. It’s like he had this great character in this head that has this presence in a town featured in many of his novels, but could never find the story to show him off in. Which makes this story painfully long beyond reason.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 11, 2017
This is a great book. The Library Policeman scared the shit out of me. Thinking about that nasty man with the lisp sends a shiver down my spine!
December 12, 2019
YAY! It took 6 months to finish this beast of a book, but I've finally done it. No I'm not that slow of a reader and no it wasn't awful that I couldn't pick it back up....I'm what you call a non-mood/random reader where I pick up book randomly and read half of it then put it down and pick up another book. All of the books that I have on my currently reading shelf is about half way done. I have a problem with reaching the end because I like a lot of books and it scares me to end them. *cough Dark Tower cough* Giving this super awesome short story collection 5 stars.
Typically when I'm reviewing a short story collection it has many stories and I pick my favorites out and talk about those. In this book 'Four Past Midnight', there are only 4 stories so I'll talk about all of them.
Langoliers is the first story in this collection. I LOVE THIS STORY. I read it back in high school ages ago..... okay it was twenty years ago and to some that isn't necessarily ages, but to me I sometimes feel ancient, so there you go. Langoliers is about a plane going from L.A. to Boston. It's a red eye flight and it's pretty full. At the beginning of the story, we find the passengers that had been sleeping... they are awakened by a screaming girl. When all are awake, they find there are ten still on board. The passengers are scared and confused. Where did everyone else go? Why were they left behind. When I first read this story the Langoliers where creepy furry creatures. When I watched the movie they were metal balls with razor teeth. I, of course, don't want to give away any of the story, but I loved it.
The next story in the collection is 'Secret Window, Secret Garden'. Our main character is an author of thrillers and has just gotten a divorce from his wife who was caught cheating. They owned two homes the one in the suburbs and the one in the country. I guess it's more of a Lake house. Anyways, one day our author meets a strange man accusing him of stealing/plagiarizing his story. We get to see what the author does about this knowledge and if he can convince the author of said story is wrong. Again another great movie and story.
The third story is called 'Library Policeman'. This one threw me for a loop. Part vampire, part boogieman, this story really kept me on edge. Especially the way it brought you back to earth with the stories of our main characters past and the alcoholic homeless man's backstory. King always gets it right when he is coming up with characters and their backstories.
Lastly there is 'The Sun Dog', about a young teen boy who gets a Sun 660 Polaroid camera for his birthday. The thing that makes this Polaroid camera unique is that it doesn't take pictures of what is in front of it, but of a place unknown to the family. This place features a white picket fence and a shaggy mutt of a dog. The story takes place in Castle Rock and features a lot of characters that you may have read about in Needful Things.
Overall great great collection of short stories. If I had to put them in order of best to worst (which none of them are worst) it would be Langoliers, Library Policeman, Secret Window, and then The Sun Dog. If you haven't picked up King yet, please know that he doesn't write "horror" like people think "horror" ought to be. It's not all blood and gore and mayhem. King writes mostly supernatural, paranormal, weird fiction. They are almost always character driven. If you like character driven stories with a little bit of weird then you'll love these short stories.
Typically when I'm reviewing a short story collection it has many stories and I pick my favorites out and talk about those. In this book 'Four Past Midnight', there are only 4 stories so I'll talk about all of them.
Langoliers is the first story in this collection. I LOVE THIS STORY. I read it back in high school ages ago..... okay it was twenty years ago and to some that isn't necessarily ages, but to me I sometimes feel ancient, so there you go. Langoliers is about a plane going from L.A. to Boston. It's a red eye flight and it's pretty full. At the beginning of the story, we find the passengers that had been sleeping... they are awakened by a screaming girl. When all are awake, they find there are ten still on board. The passengers are scared and confused. Where did everyone else go? Why were they left behind. When I first read this story the Langoliers where creepy furry creatures. When I watched the movie they were metal balls with razor teeth. I, of course, don't want to give away any of the story, but I loved it.
The next story in the collection is 'Secret Window, Secret Garden'. Our main character is an author of thrillers and has just gotten a divorce from his wife who was caught cheating. They owned two homes the one in the suburbs and the one in the country. I guess it's more of a Lake house. Anyways, one day our author meets a strange man accusing him of stealing/plagiarizing his story. We get to see what the author does about this knowledge and if he can convince the author of said story is wrong. Again another great movie and story.
The third story is called 'Library Policeman'. This one threw me for a loop. Part vampire, part boogieman, this story really kept me on edge. Especially the way it brought you back to earth with the stories of our main characters past and the alcoholic homeless man's backstory. King always gets it right when he is coming up with characters and their backstories.
Lastly there is 'The Sun Dog', about a young teen boy who gets a Sun 660 Polaroid camera for his birthday. The thing that makes this Polaroid camera unique is that it doesn't take pictures of what is in front of it, but of a place unknown to the family. This place features a white picket fence and a shaggy mutt of a dog. The story takes place in Castle Rock and features a lot of characters that you may have read about in Needful Things.
Overall great great collection of short stories. If I had to put them in order of best to worst (which none of them are worst) it would be Langoliers, Library Policeman, Secret Window, and then The Sun Dog. If you haven't picked up King yet, please know that he doesn't write "horror" like people think "horror" ought to be. It's not all blood and gore and mayhem. King writes mostly supernatural, paranormal, weird fiction. They are almost always character driven. If you like character driven stories with a little bit of weird then you'll love these short stories.
February 15, 2017
There is an old Family Guy cutaway which depicts Stephen King meeting with his publisher to pitch his next novel. Obviously desperate for an idea, King quickly looks around the office and grabs the publisher's desk lamp. "So this family gets attacked by . . . a lamp monster! Ooooh!" he waves his hands, trying to convey the scariness and shock of his laughably bad offering. Of course the skit is satirizing King's prolificacy. The publisher sighs, defeated, and asks when he can have the manuscript.
Four Past Midnight feels a little like that. None of these stories quite plummet to the lows of an evil, murderous lamp come to life . . . but this is not King on his A-game. These stories were written in the late '80s, when SK was getting off alcohol and drugs; that can have a huge impact on a person's life — especially a person who has to live up to the expectations of millions. King once said of this time period that everything he wrote "fell apart like wet tissue paper," and that self-consciousness and unease is very evident here. The writing is clunky and oft-uninspired; few of the characters come alive. The excellent characterization is why I pay the price of admission. Even if the story gets bloated and the ending disappoints, King's characters are typically reliable. Not so here.
In essence, it feels like King studied what worked best earlier in his career and incorporated those elements into the novellas, with diminished results. We have the small band of survivors fighting for life against an apocalyptic setting a'la The Stand and The Mist (The Langoliers), a psychic child (again, The Langoliers), the tortured writer (Secret Window, Secret Garden), repressed childhood memories/using the innocence of childhood to fight a shape-shifting monster (The Library Policeman) and a boring-as-shit Castle Rock tale about a murderous dog (The Sun Dog). All of these stories feel like they're stuck in tired, been-there-done-that territory; I almost never accuse King of repeating himself, but this collection is nothing but reheated leftovers of plot points from earlier, better novels and novellas.
My ratings for each story are as follows:
The Langoliers: 3
Secret Window, Secret Garden: 4
The Library Policeman: 3
The Sun Dog: 1
That puts the average at 2.75, which rounds up to 3. This is a totally average book. Secret Window, Secret Garden is easily the best of the lot; I don't care to ever reread the others.
King Connections
The Langoliers features a shout-out to The Shop.
Secret Window, Secret Garden partially takes place in Derry; The Sun Dog takes place in Castle Rock. Both towns are, of course, very important to the King universe.
Favorite Quote
“'I'm not taking that,' Mort said, and part of him was marvelling at what a really accommodating beast a man was: when someone held something out to you, your first instinct was to take it. No matter if it was a check for a thousand dollars or a stick of dynamite with a lit and fizzing fuse, your first instinct was to take it.”
Up Next
Needful Things
Four Past Midnight feels a little like that. None of these stories quite plummet to the lows of an evil, murderous lamp come to life . . . but this is not King on his A-game. These stories were written in the late '80s, when SK was getting off alcohol and drugs; that can have a huge impact on a person's life — especially a person who has to live up to the expectations of millions. King once said of this time period that everything he wrote "fell apart like wet tissue paper," and that self-consciousness and unease is very evident here. The writing is clunky and oft-uninspired; few of the characters come alive. The excellent characterization is why I pay the price of admission. Even if the story gets bloated and the ending disappoints, King's characters are typically reliable. Not so here.
In essence, it feels like King studied what worked best earlier in his career and incorporated those elements into the novellas, with diminished results. We have the small band of survivors fighting for life against an apocalyptic setting a'la The Stand and The Mist (The Langoliers), a psychic child (again, The Langoliers), the tortured writer (Secret Window, Secret Garden), repressed childhood memories/using the innocence of childhood to fight a shape-shifting monster (The Library Policeman) and a boring-as-shit Castle Rock tale about a murderous dog (The Sun Dog). All of these stories feel like they're stuck in tired, been-there-done-that territory; I almost never accuse King of repeating himself, but this collection is nothing but reheated leftovers of plot points from earlier, better novels and novellas.
My ratings for each story are as follows:
The Langoliers: 3
Secret Window, Secret Garden: 4
The Library Policeman: 3
The Sun Dog: 1
That puts the average at 2.75, which rounds up to 3. This is a totally average book. Secret Window, Secret Garden is easily the best of the lot; I don't care to ever reread the others.
King Connections
The Langoliers features a shout-out to The Shop.
Secret Window, Secret Garden partially takes place in Derry; The Sun Dog takes place in Castle Rock. Both towns are, of course, very important to the King universe.
Favorite Quote
“'I'm not taking that,' Mort said, and part of him was marvelling at what a really accommodating beast a man was: when someone held something out to you, your first instinct was to take it. No matter if it was a check for a thousand dollars or a stick of dynamite with a lit and fizzing fuse, your first instinct was to take it.”
Up Next
Needful Things
October 22, 2019
The Langoliers: 4 stars
Secret Widow, Secret Garden: 2 stars
The Library Policeman: 5 stars
The Sun Dog: 2 stars
Secret Widow, Secret Garden: 2 stars
The Library Policeman: 5 stars
The Sun Dog: 2 stars
January 12, 2013
Four Past Midnight is a collection containing the following "short" stories:
1. The Langoliers (233 pages)
2. Secret Window, Secret Garden (146 pages)
3. The Library Policeman (195 pages)
4. The Sun Dog (149 pages)
Generally speaking, Stephen King begins with amazing concepts that are soon dragged down by poor execution. To make it more fun, look for the following the next time you read a King novel and see how many you can find:
- FLAT, IMPARTIAL TONE. Whether he is describing the main character's morning routine or the final climactic moment where he or she is on the verge of death, battling a fierce supernatural creature, King just takes it all down like a courtroom stenographer. He sprinkles in some flashy similes, occasional pop culture references and, rarely, a few words of truly good writing, but these bits and pieces stand out against a bland background. It is easy to picture him coming up with one such gem suddenly in the shower, at the only moment when he isn't actually trying, and racing across the house, naked and soapy, to jot it down before he can forget it again.
- REDUNDANCY. After rinsing and drying off, King lovingly coddles his favourite inventions. He uses and reuses words, phrases, references, and concepts among his books and there's nothing wrong with that, per se, but he will also use the same word or phrase multiple times in a paragraph or even in a sentence.
- SELF-REFERENCE. It might not happen in every story, but King tends to reference his own works a fair bit. You can decide for yourself whether this is actually witty or just egotistical.
- UNREALISTIC DIALOGUE. Spoken ideas are not constructed the same way as ideas that are written down... unless you're a character in a King novel. King's character dialogue is more or less just like the surrounding narration, which makes his characters sound scripted.
- STORY ABOUT A WRITER. King's books are almost always about authors. If the main character is not an author, another significant character will be.
- UNECESSARY MONSTERS. King loves to invent monsters for his stories, but they aren't usually necessary. It is much more thrilling to imagine familiar creatures and objects acting strangely or violently than it is to watch monsters, which one would naturally expect to behave that way. It is also disruptive because King's monsters tend to be complex, sparsely-described, and in a constant state of metamorphosis, making it extremely difficult to form a mental image of them.
- KNOWLEDGE WITH NO LOGICAL SOURCE. Rather than take the time to construct a path for the characters to obtain knowledge in a reasonable way, King relies almost completely on intuition and gut feelings, psychic connections between people, the influence of supernatural objects or beings, and tremendous leaps in logic.
- DEUS EX MACHINA. When it looks like all the character's problems are about to be over, but you're only halfway through the book's length, hold on to your pants - a supernatural force is about to seize control and knock the story back on track. On the other side of the coin, if it all looks hopeless for the characters, then someone is probably about to win the battle by spontaneously obtaining knowledge, as mentioned before.
- RAPID AGING. Being a character in a story falling under the genre of thriller or horror is understandably stressful, but King's characters take it especially hard. Watch for characters whose hair turns white or grey overnight or who otherwise display outward signs of having had several years taken off of their lives during the course of the story due to trauma.
[WARNING: THE REST OF THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.]
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The following reviews contain examples of the above listed, spoilers, and a fair bit of bashing.
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THE LANGOLIERS:
The writer in The Langoliers is Jenkins and he is also the main character gaining knowledge with no logical source. Jenkins explains just about every aspect of the characters' situation with theories based on his experience in writing mystery novels. Fact and fiction collide every time he opens his mouth but, for the most part, the other characters buy right into it. The only thing more maddening than their incredible suspension of disbelief is how Jenkins always manages to be right, even though most of his ideas seem to come from nowhere and can hardly be justified by the "I've written a lot of stories" excuse. Dinah also knows too much, coming to a variety of her own conclusions using intuition or by spontaneously gaining knowledge. She can also hear the langoliers long before anyone else can, can look through other people's eyes, and appears as an apparition because, in this story universe, being blind apparently gives you superpowers.
Overall, it is difficult to take The Langoliers seriously. The dialogue isn't bad, for a King novel, but the character relationships, the plotline, and the actual premise of the story are heavily contrived. The story generally lacks substance and contains two especially painful bits. The first is that Albert has an imaginary alter-ego - Ace Kaussner, the fastest Jew west of the Mississippi. This could have been cute if the character were a little kid with a vivid imagination, but why is a seventeen-year-old, college-bound individual who is sound of mind and described as being "fiercely bright" wandering around leaking out so much cheese? The second is a bit of stumbling prolongation: after successfully passing through the rip in space-time, one would expect the characters to find themselves back in the normal world. Instead, King forces the suspense to pointlessly continue several more pages with the justification that time somehow hasn't caught up with the characters yet. It is as if King could tell the story was lacking something and was afraid to end it, but didn't know how to fix the problem.
The langoliers, themselves, are King's typical difficult-to-imagine, vicious-without-a-cause critters. Their nature is largely explained by the only character in the story who isn't of sound mind. They aren't terribly impressive to read about and the story would probably have been better without them.
SECRET WINDOW, SECRET GARDEN:
Secret Window, Secret Garden was easily the best story in this collection. Perhaps it was only a fluke, but King managed to compose a story that was thrilling without involving a steaming pile of surreal fantasy and bad logic. The writing was very tight. Every aspect of the story is explained, though the reader still must suffer a minor touch of deus ex machina: just as Mort is about to kill Amy, Evans seems to appear out of nowhere to rescue her. His reasons for being there are later explained, but it is still a bit thin, especially when you consider that he made himself known at the last possible second and not before, allowing Mort to do some serious damage. This point aside, King ties up all the loose ends quite nicely. The main character is still a writer, but the characters aren't bad, the dialogue could be worse, and there is an utter lack of poorly-constructed monsters. Secret Window, Secret Garden was actually a good story, though King was one-upped by the movie version, which had a much-improved ending - it made more sense, it was cleaner, it cut out the dull epilogue, and it was both creepier and more memorable.
THE LIBRARY POLICEMAN:
Sam is the writer in this story - the reason he visits the library in the first place is to check out some books to help him compose a speech. Fortunately, the speech is not included in the story, which is dull enough on its own. The real meat of it is contained in the forty pages or so that Dave spends explaining everything. Even though he was apparently completely sotted the entire time he was interacting with Ardelia and even though his knowledge of what she really was is extremely limited, Dave manages to give a very detailed account of his dealings with her and is absolutely certain of what's going to happen next. After Dave is finished pulling (correct) explanations out of his hat, Sam defeats the monster, relying entirely on intuition. His method and its origins are completely outlandish, but the best idea to defeat a monster in a King novel is apparently to just have no idea what you're doing while you're doing it. Basically everything surrounding Dave's story and Sam's face-off with the monster is filler. In addition to being difficult to form a mental image of, the monster turns out to be a pretty big let-down, since the creature receives a very great deal of build-up for how brief the final battle is and how little it manages to fight back. This story probably would have been better if King had invested more in the library policeman and the idea that it could be a real being and less in Ardelia. These were really creatures of two different stories who somehow got thrown in together to fight over the spotlight.
THE SUN DOG:
The Sun Dog starts off as being downright chilling, but starts to go downhill when the dog in the photographs begins morphing unnecessarily into yet another poorly-described monster. The dog monster's origins and motivations remain completely unexplored throughout the course of the story and this is no great loss, but the final show-down between Kevin and the monster is awkward, at best. Rather than having the dog lunge spectacularly out of an image, King dives into a bizarre metaphor for child labor. In the process, he melts a camera, kills a man in an indeterminate way, and stretches the size of a photograph far beyond the limits of the reasonable. Kevin defeats the monster thanks to a little dose of sourceless knowledge - after a series of nightmares, he knows that Pops still has the camera. He doesn't have a hunch or want to check to soothe his nerves, he just KNOWS, even though he destroyed the camera, himself. After finding that Pops does, indeed, still have the camera in his possession, Kevin knows exactly how to defeat the dog monster with no explanation at all. The predictable ending to this story was for Kevin to take a picture of the dog monster to return it to the Polaroid world and then destroy the camera. For once, it was a let-down to see a story behave unpredictably. When Kevin takes the monster's picture, it randomly turns to stone and then falls back through the photograph it was born of, which smolders dramatically away into nothing. Father and son share a mushy moment of poor dialogue and then we get a painful epilogue in which a completely unrelated electronic device threatens Kevin, telling him that the dog monster is alive and well and angry. Wow.
September 12, 2024
4⭐️s
As with most King short story/novella collections, this is a mixed bag for me. There are moments in these stories that are among King’s most memorable, and there are other moments I’d rather my memory neglects.
All of these are very long, and all are very strange. I’ll never be the same after that flashback scene in The Library Policeman, and lisps now terrify me. I love everything about The Langoliers so much. It’s one of my favorite novellas of all time. But i could live without the other two stories in here.
Thematic similarities
The tenuousness of one’s grip on reality, and the exploration of what it looks like when that grip begins to weaken
Thing I’ll Walk Away With
A newfound distaste for red licorice
Stories ranked
1. The Langoliers
2. The Library Policeman
3. Secret Garden, Secret Window
4. The Sun Dog
As with most King short story/novella collections, this is a mixed bag for me. There are moments in these stories that are among King’s most memorable, and there are other moments I’d rather my memory neglects.
All of these are very long, and all are very strange. I’ll never be the same after that flashback scene in The Library Policeman, and lisps now terrify me. I love everything about The Langoliers so much. It’s one of my favorite novellas of all time. But i could live without the other two stories in here.
Thematic similarities
The tenuousness of one’s grip on reality, and the exploration of what it looks like when that grip begins to weaken
Thing I’ll Walk Away With
A newfound distaste for red licorice
Stories ranked
1. The Langoliers
2. The Library Policeman
3. Secret Garden, Secret Window
4. The Sun Dog
May 3, 2024
Great novel from Stephen king that puts you on the edge with a lot of suspense and anticipation. I enjoyed. Though a very long read with a bunch of pages shy of 1000. Took almost a week to complete.
June 13, 2024
Remember The Shawshank Redemption, the beloved film based on King's novella that garnered multiple Oscar nominations, was 1995's top video rental, and went on to be preserved in the US Library of Congress's National Film Registry for its cultural significance?
How about Stand By Me, made from The Body in the same collection, that classic American coming-of-age story that is rightly considered one of the greatest films of all time?
Yeah, those are from the other Stephen King novella collection. This is the one with the stories no one remembers.
I mean, maybe you remember The Langoliers. "They were on a plane, right?" You, sir, are correct. It was even made into a TV mini-series in 1995, with amazing special effects visuals:
Yep, people were definitely watching this instead of Shawshank Redemption on VHS that year. I learned after rereading the second collected novella that it was adapted into the Johnny Depp film Secret Window. The other two novellas to my knowledge didn't receive any screen treatment. For some reason there must not be a lot of appeal in filming child rape.
I definitely read this book in my teens, but it turns out that I didn't remember a whole lot. I remembered that they're on a plane in the first story. I remembered the opening of the second story. I didn't remember the third story at all, and for the last I remembered the whole camera and dog picture thing, and I very specifically remembered the details of the interest scheme on the father's loan, but I thought the story ended with the boy using the camera to bring the dog forward to save himself from a serial child killer. I'm clearly conflating that last bit with some other King story I haven't revisited yet in my publication-order reread project.
King previously reported that after finishing a big novel, he would usually have just enough juice left in him to crank out a novella next. So, this collection's novellas were generated over a span of a few years. I don't know what order they were written in, but I do know that those years included the time when King's daily substance use reached a head and he finally got sober and stuck with it. The Tommyknockers was written while fully under the influence, The Dark Half bridged his becoming sober, and Needful Things was the first novel written completely while sober. I don't know where his next published work after this collection, The Waste Lands, falls into the mix. I only know that the novellas contained herein have some problems, but what role too many drugs or not enough drugs played into each of them, I cannot say.
It's a long collection. It didn't need to be that long. At least two of the four novellas could have been short stories, in my opinion, or could have at least been severely cut back.
Here we go:
The Langoliers
It's the one on the plane.
Three of this book's four novellas could be termed "portal horror," and this one is the most literally so. It's . . . okay? *shrug.* The plot is, eh, *shrug*. The characters are particularly flat for King's usual, definitely two-dimensional at best. And the villain of the piece: he is lame. Just a lame villain with a lame backstory and motivation, it's perplexing why he of all possible things was conceived. Add in The Fastest Hebrew in the West, the little blind girl, and basically every other character and I had to wonder how King was feeling those days.
What bothered me the most about this one was how all the characters, when faced with a serious time crunch before total annihilation, would constantly bring their actions to a standstill to wax philosphical about the situation and debate the metaphysics of the moment, all in overly long monologues, frequently neglecting the obvious quick words that would immediately explain everything and compel the behaviour they were going for. Like, for real, how about shouting, "We're not asleep!!!!" instead of "Stop! You have to turn away! Trust me on this, I just realized this vital thing over the course of the previous subchapter and there's not much time!" and just hoping for the best. Like, how about when several of you have already laid hands on the rolling stair cart, you just push the damn thing, instead of freezing there with your hands still on it to discuss whether you think it will still roll, because if electricity doesn't work will wheels even still work? I don't know, what would the cavemen who invented the fucking things think? PUSH for chrissake and see if the damn thing rolls already if you have any doubts.
So that's The Langoliers. It's the longest story of the bunch.
Secret Window, Secret Garden
This one was alright. It plays a bit with the impostor syndrome that every writer must experience at some time. It can be read as a straight-up thriller. I remember, from my teen reading, enjoying the main character's sense of frustration about their inability to prove themself against the accusation of plagiarism that opens the story, and it was equally good this time around.
It might help that this is the shortest story of the bunch.
The Library Policeman
. . . in which a wad of licorice saves the world.
Twice.
The same wad both times, I think.
If you were to read only one novella from this collection, I recommend this one. Not because it's necessarily the best, but it's the wildest and, I think, the most fun and deservedly memorable. If you're looking for a broad King experience without reading absolutely everything the man published, this one adds the spice to that experience. The way it started felt like a different tone for King. The opening line is great—
The story does a good job with a gradual roll-out of dread and horror. I questioned some choices by the end—the moment of insta-love and subsequent related parts for one, why virtually all of the travel sequence following Dirty Dave's backstory wasn't cut, and details about the monster, like: okay it feeds on fear but in its backstory it didn't make use of its apparent ability to create building-sized throwback illusions, or did it actually warp time somehow? Unclear. And what is Uncle Steve's thing about lisps? A baddie has a lisp here because it adds . . . something? I'm reminded of his much more recent The Institute with its final nothingburger villain with a lisp, because lisps are scary, what?
The story relied on a couple of tropes: first, the "plugged up tailpipe makes a car explode" thing, which as far as I have gathered doesn't actually happen. Second, library stacks toppling like dominoes, that comedy staple. I thought for sure that never actually happens in real life, because why wouldn't they bolt those suckers to the floor? I asked about it in a library forum and holy shit, it happens all the time! So thanks to this story, I now know to get in and out of those stacks as fast as possible from now on. Although it might be my ideal way to go. Hmm.
This story features Alcoholics Anonymous heavily, making me wonder if King had engaged in it (for the time that his sobriety stuck) prior to penning this one.
The Sun Dog
Oh my god, Uncle Steve, would you please stop? Just, like, shut up once in a while. You don't have to go on an extended tangent of description for every little thing! This is the one story that was definitely just too much. The basic story about the camera with the dog in it could have been just a short story. The whole purpose of "introducing" Pop Merrill, per King's introduction to the story, hinting that it's all set up for then-upcoming Needful Things was a net loss since the dude dies. Oops, sorry, spoiler but if this dissuades you from reading the story, you owe me thanks. My take about King's whole Castle Rock sequence currently leans towards self-indulgence, and self-indulgence is the hallmark of the writing throughout this story. It's all weird asides and characterizations that are strongly King in style and not without literary purpose, in theory, but the effect is detraction. It's brutal trying to get through this story. Here, let's sample chapter 14, as the story is racing to its climax, see how you feel about it all.
Dear Stephen King's editor of the time: could you maybe have done some of that editing I hear is sometimes a good thing? Or did you feel you had to take it easy on him because of the detox sweats?
I needed to save some characters for my last excerpt:
Final Verdict: Man, do I ever not want to see this collection ever again. It's strictly for the King completionist, and if you must try something from it, stick with The Library Policeman.
(And honestly: praise to the man for staying off the sauce for all the decades since this 1990 beast.)
How about Stand By Me, made from The Body in the same collection, that classic American coming-of-age story that is rightly considered one of the greatest films of all time?
Yeah, those are from the other Stephen King novella collection. This is the one with the stories no one remembers.
I mean, maybe you remember The Langoliers. "They were on a plane, right?" You, sir, are correct. It was even made into a TV mini-series in 1995, with amazing special effects visuals:
Yep, people were definitely watching this instead of Shawshank Redemption on VHS that year. I learned after rereading the second collected novella that it was adapted into the Johnny Depp film Secret Window. The other two novellas to my knowledge didn't receive any screen treatment. For some reason there must not be a lot of appeal in filming child rape.
I definitely read this book in my teens, but it turns out that I didn't remember a whole lot. I remembered that they're on a plane in the first story. I remembered the opening of the second story. I didn't remember the third story at all, and for the last I remembered the whole camera and dog picture thing, and I very specifically remembered the details of the interest scheme on the father's loan, but I thought the story ended with the boy using the camera to bring the dog forward to save himself from a serial child killer. I'm clearly conflating that last bit with some other King story I haven't revisited yet in my publication-order reread project.
King previously reported that after finishing a big novel, he would usually have just enough juice left in him to crank out a novella next. So, this collection's novellas were generated over a span of a few years. I don't know what order they were written in, but I do know that those years included the time when King's daily substance use reached a head and he finally got sober and stuck with it. The Tommyknockers was written while fully under the influence, The Dark Half bridged his becoming sober, and Needful Things was the first novel written completely while sober. I don't know where his next published work after this collection, The Waste Lands, falls into the mix. I only know that the novellas contained herein have some problems, but what role too many drugs or not enough drugs played into each of them, I cannot say.
It's a long collection. It didn't need to be that long. At least two of the four novellas could have been short stories, in my opinion, or could have at least been severely cut back.
Here we go:
The Langoliers
It's the one on the plane.
Three of this book's four novellas could be termed "portal horror," and this one is the most literally so. It's . . . okay? *shrug.* The plot is, eh, *shrug*. The characters are particularly flat for King's usual, definitely two-dimensional at best. And the villain of the piece: he is lame. Just a lame villain with a lame backstory and motivation, it's perplexing why he of all possible things was conceived. Add in The Fastest Hebrew in the West, the little blind girl, and basically every other character and I had to wonder how King was feeling those days.
What bothered me the most about this one was how all the characters, when faced with a serious time crunch before total annihilation, would constantly bring their actions to a standstill to wax philosphical about the situation and debate the metaphysics of the moment, all in overly long monologues, frequently neglecting the obvious quick words that would immediately explain everything and compel the behaviour they were going for. Like, for real, how about shouting, "We're not asleep!!!!" instead of "Stop! You have to turn away! Trust me on this, I just realized this vital thing over the course of the previous subchapter and there's not much time!" and just hoping for the best. Like, how about when several of you have already laid hands on the rolling stair cart, you just push the damn thing, instead of freezing there with your hands still on it to discuss whether you think it will still roll, because if electricity doesn't work will wheels even still work? I don't know, what would the cavemen who invented the fucking things think? PUSH for chrissake and see if the damn thing rolls already if you have any doubts.
So that's The Langoliers. It's the longest story of the bunch.
Secret Window, Secret Garden
This one was alright. It plays a bit with the impostor syndrome that every writer must experience at some time. It can be read as a straight-up thriller. I remember, from my teen reading, enjoying the main character's sense of frustration about their inability to prove themself against the accusation of plagiarism that opens the story, and it was equally good this time around.
It might help that this is the shortest story of the bunch.
The Library Policeman
. . . in which a wad of licorice saves the world.
Twice.
The same wad both times, I think.
If you were to read only one novella from this collection, I recommend this one. Not because it's necessarily the best, but it's the wildest and, I think, the most fun and deservedly memorable. If you're looking for a broad King experience without reading absolutely everything the man published, this one adds the spice to that experience. The way it started felt like a different tone for King. The opening line is great—
Everything, Sam Peebles decided later, was the fault of the goddamned acrobat.—leads to some over-the-phone dialogue in the opening scene that was playful in a way I don't connect with King.
The story does a good job with a gradual roll-out of dread and horror. I questioned some choices by the end—the moment of insta-love and subsequent related parts for one, why virtually all of the travel sequence following Dirty Dave's backstory wasn't cut, and details about the monster, like: okay it feeds on fear but in its backstory it didn't make use of its apparent ability to create building-sized throwback illusions, or did it actually warp time somehow? Unclear. And what is Uncle Steve's thing about lisps? A baddie has a lisp here because it adds . . . something? I'm reminded of his much more recent The Institute with its final nothingburger villain with a lisp, because lisps are scary, what?
The story relied on a couple of tropes: first, the "plugged up tailpipe makes a car explode" thing, which as far as I have gathered doesn't actually happen. Second, library stacks toppling like dominoes, that comedy staple. I thought for sure that never actually happens in real life, because why wouldn't they bolt those suckers to the floor? I asked about it in a library forum and holy shit, it happens all the time! So thanks to this story, I now know to get in and out of those stacks as fast as possible from now on. Although it might be my ideal way to go. Hmm.
This story features Alcoholics Anonymous heavily, making me wonder if King had engaged in it (for the time that his sobriety stuck) prior to penning this one.
The Sun Dog
Oh my god, Uncle Steve, would you please stop? Just, like, shut up once in a while. You don't have to go on an extended tangent of description for every little thing! This is the one story that was definitely just too much. The basic story about the camera with the dog in it could have been just a short story. The whole purpose of "introducing" Pop Merrill, per King's introduction to the story, hinting that it's all set up for then-upcoming Needful Things was a net loss since the dude dies. Oops, sorry, spoiler but if this dissuades you from reading the story, you owe me thanks. My take about King's whole Castle Rock sequence currently leans towards self-indulgence, and self-indulgence is the hallmark of the writing throughout this story. It's all weird asides and characterizations that are strongly King in style and not without literary purpose, in theory, but the effect is detraction. It's brutal trying to get through this story. Here, let's sample chapter 14, as the story is racing to its climax, see how you feel about it all.
The Castle Rock LaVerdiere's Super Drug Store was a lot more than just a drugstore. Put another way, it was really only a drugstore as an afterthought. It was as if someone had noticed at the last moment—just before the grand opening, say—that one of the words in the sign was still "Drug." That someone might have made a mental note to tell someone else, someone in the company's management, that here they were, opening yet another LaVerdiere's, and they had by simple oversight neglected yet again to correct the sign so it read, more simply and accurately, LaVerdiere's Super Store . . . and, after making the mental note, the someone in charge on noticing such things had delayed the grand opening a day or two so they could shoe-horn in a prescription counter about the size of a telephone booth in the long building's furthest, darkest, and most neglected corner."Although it was named LaVerdiere's Super Drug Store, "drugstore" must have been an afterthought, as suggested by the miniscule prescription counter tucked away in the back." There, was that so hard? Anyway, we've established what kind of store it is. I wonder what real-life store King was mad at? In any case, now a character of significance can walk in—
The LaVerdiere's Super Drug Store was really more of a jumped-up five-and-dime more than anything else. The town's last real five-and-dime, a long dim room with feeble, fly-specked overhead globes hung on chains and reflected murkily in the creaking but often-waxed wooden floor, had been The Ben Franklin Store. It had given up the ghost in 1978 to make way for a video-games arcade called Galaxia and E-Z Video Rentals, where Tuesday was Toofers Day and no one under the age of twenty could go in the back roomThank you for spending a whole paragraph on a place that doesn't exist and became a place that has no bearing on this story. Now can we—
LaVerdiere's carried everything the old Ben Franklin had carried, but the goods were bathed in the pitiless light of Maxi-Glo fluorescent bars which gave every bit of stock its own hectic, feverish shimmer. Buy me! each item seemed to shriek. Buy me or you may die! Or your wife may die! Or your kids! Or your best friend! Possibly all of them at once! Why? How should I know? I'm just a brainless item sitting on a pre-fab LaVerdiere's shelf! But doesn't it feel true? You know it does! So buy me and buy me RIGHT . . . NOW!Uhh, can I call someone for you, Uncle Steve?
There was an aisle of notions, two aisles of first-aid supplies and nostrums, an aisle of video and audio tapes (both blank and pre-recorded). There was a long rack of magazines giving way to paperback books, a display of lighters under one digital cash register and a display of watches under another (a third register was hidden in the dark corner where the pharmacist lurked in his lonely shadows). Halloween candy had taken over most of the toy aisle (the toys would not only come back after Halloween but eventually take over two whole aisles as the days slid remorselessly down toward Christmas). And, like something too neat to exist in reality except as a kind of dumb admission that there was such a thing as Fate with a capital F, and that Fate might, in its own way, indicate the existence of that whole "other world" about which Pop had never before cared (except in terms of how it might fatten his pocketbook, that was) and about which Kevin Delevan had never before even thought, at the front of the store, in the main display area, was a carefully arranged work of salesmanship which was billed as the FALL FOTO FESTIVAL.Congratulations, the characters have been mentioned. None of them are present yet, and the whole thing so far could have been, "Pop walked into the local generic store that happened to sell Polaroid cameras and film because the story requires this," but just for funsies I'm going to ride this out until I hit the Goodreads character limit, because you must suffer as I have suffered.
This display consisted of a basket of colorful autumn leaves spilling out on the floor in a bright flood (a flood too large to actually have come from that one basket alone, a careful observer might have concluded). Amid the leaves were a number of Kodak and Polaroid cameras—several Sun 660s among the latter—and all sorts of other equipment: cases, albums, film, flashbars. In the midst of this odd cornucopia, an old-fashioned tripod rose like one of H.G. Wells's Martian death-machines towering over the crispy wreck of London. It bore a sign which told all patrons interested enough to look that this week one could obtain SUPER REDUCTIONS ON ALL POLAROID CAMERAS & ACCESSORIES!Goddamn finally a character is actually THERE.
At eight-thirty that morning, half an hour after LaVerdiere's opened for the day, "all patrons" consisted of Pop Merrill and Pop alone. He took no notice of the display but marched straight to the only open counter, where Molly Durham had just finished laying out the watches on their imitation-velvet display-cloth.
Oh no, here comes old Eyeballs, she thought, and grimaced. Pop's idea of a really keen way to kill a stretch of time about as long as Molly's coffee-break was to kind of ooze up to the counter where she was working (he always picked hers, even if he had to stand in line; in fact, she thought he liked it better when there was a line) and buy a pouch of Prince Albert tobacco. This was a purchase an ordinary fellow could transact in maybe thirty seconds, but if she got Eyeballs out of her face in under three minutes, she thought she was doing very well indeed. He kept all of his money in a cracked leather purse on a chain, and he'd haul it out of his pocket—giving his doorbells a good feel on the way, it always looked to Molly—and then open it. It always gave out a little screeeeek! noise, and honest to God if you didn't expect to see a moth flutter out of it, just like in those cartoons people draw of tightwads. On top of the purse's contents there would be a whole mess of paper money, bills that looked somehow as if you shouldn't handle them, as if they might be coated with disease germs of some kind, and jingling silver underneath. Pop would fish out a dollar bill and then kind of hook the other bills to one side with one of those thick fingers of his to get to the change underneath—he'd never give you a couple of bucks, huhn-uh, that would make everything too quick to suit him—and then he'd work that out, too. And all the time his eyes would be busy, flicking down to the purse for a second or two but mostly letting the fingers sort out the proper coins by touch while his eyes crawled over her boobs, her belly, her hips, and then back up to her boobs again. Never once her face; not even so far as her mouth, which was a part of a girl in which most men seemed to be interested; no, Pop Merill was strictly interested in the lower portions of the female anatomy. When he finally finished—and no matter how quick that was, it always seemed like three times as long to Molly—and got the hell out of the store again, she always felt like going somewhere and taking a long shower.Too much cocaine, or not enough cocaine?
So she braced herself, put on her best it's-only-eight-thirty-and-I've-got-send-and-a-half-hours-to-go smile, and stood at the counter as Pop approached. She told herself, He's only looking at you, guys have been doing the same since you sprouted, and that was true, but this wasn't the same. Because Pop Merrill wasn't like most of the guys who had run their eyes over her trim and eminently watchable superstructure since that time ten years ago. Part of it was that Pop was old, but that wasn't all of it. The truth was that some guys looked at you and some—a very few—seemed to actually be feeling you up with their eyes, and Merritt was one of those. His gaze actually seemed to have weight; when he fumbled in his creaky old-maid's purse on its length of incongruously masculine chain, she seemed to actually feel his eyes squirming up and down her front, lashing their way up her hills on their optic nerves like tadpoles and then sliding bonelessly down into her valleys, making her wish she had worn a nun's habit to work that day. Or maybe a suit of armor.
But her mother had been fond of saying What can't be cured must be endured, sweet Molly, and until someone discovered a method of weighing gazes so those of dirty men both young and old could be outlawed, or, more likely, until Pop Merrill did everyone in Castle Rock a favor by dying so that eyesore of a tourist trap he kept could be torn down, she would just have to deal with it as best she could.Pop Merrill's character was quite well established before this chapter, and the reader is 100% aware that he's going to the store to buy Polaroid film without knowing what he's doing. Please, get on with it! I'll spare you the rest; after these past four pages, him actually buying the film takes another six.
Dear Stephen King's editor of the time: could you maybe have done some of that editing I hear is sometimes a good thing? Or did you feel you had to take it easy on him because of the detox sweats?
I needed to save some characters for my last excerpt:
Get away! the wino screamed. Get away! Feef! Fushing feef! Fushing FEEF!This "fushing feef" nonsense appeared verbatim already in The Talisman and I hated it there for the first time. At least this confirms that was King's specific contribution, as I already suspected. What is it King has about speech impediments?
Final Verdict: Man, do I ever not want to see this collection ever again. It's strictly for the King completionist, and if you must try something from it, stick with The Library Policeman.
(And honestly: praise to the man for staying off the sauce for all the decades since this 1990 beast.)
September 6, 2022
Θεότρελη ιδέα, από τις πολλές που κατεβάζει η κούτρα του: “πειραγμένη” Polaroid Sun 660, αντί να απαθανατίζει τον κόσμο γύρω της, φωτογραφίζει συνεχώς το ίδιο τρομακτικό σκυλί που, μολονότι στην πραγματικότητα δεν υπάρχει, δείχνει ικανό, ανά πάσα στιγμή, να πάρει σάρκα και οστά και να σκοτώσει επιτεθεί. Κι εδώ απέναντί του δεν είναι παρά ένα δεκαπεντάχρονο παιδί. Αν δεν ήταν ο King, μια ιδέα σαν και αυτή θα εξαντλούνταν στις σελίδες ενός διηγήματος (το πολύ). Αλλά επειδή πρόκειται για την Αυτού Εξοχότητα, το Σκυλί της Πολαρόιντ έγινε πανεύκολα μια ακόμη (συναρπαστική) νουβέλα τρόμου και αγωνίας.
Δεν είναι Κούτζο, παρότι του φέρνει, ούτε και Needful Things, έστω κι αν το μαγαζάκι του Ποπ Μέριλ της ιστορίας θυμίζει εκείνο των Χρήσιμων Αντικειμένων. Αλλά είναι τίμιο, δεν κάνει “κοιλιά” και εν πολλοίς δικαιώνει τις προσδοκίες του αναγνώστη του.
Δεν είναι Κούτζο, παρότι του φέρνει, ούτε και Needful Things, έστω κι αν το μαγαζάκι του Ποπ Μέριλ της ιστορίας θυμίζει εκείνο των Χρήσιμων Αντικειμένων. Αλλά είναι τίμιο, δεν κάνει “κοιλιά” και εν πολλοίς δικαιώνει τις προσδοκίες του αναγνώστη του.
April 12, 2024
Otro acierto absoluto 🤩
Las cuatro después de medianoche es un libro que contiene dos relatos, o más bien, dos novelas cortas debido a su extensión.
Casi siempre suele gustar uno más que otro cuando hay una selección en el mismo libro, pero en esta ocasión las dos historias me han gustado y sorprendido a partes iguales.
La primera historia se titula El policía de la biblioteca.
Nuestro protagonista Sam, por una serie de acontecimientos tiene que sustituir a un compañero dando una charla. Plantea un discurso y lo comenta con su secretaria para que le de sus impresiones. Ella escucha atenta y le plantea que con algún chiste o anécdota puede amenizarlo, le sugiere dos títulos de libros que puede encontrar en la biblioteca que le aporten ese toque distintivo al discurso.
Al encaminarse hacia ella se encuentra con una sensación impactante. Carteles en los que pone ¡SILENCIO! de manera contundente, una iluminación apagada, carteles siniestros en el área infantil y una encargada un tanto peculiar. La señora Lortz tras entablar conversación con él y darle los libros que busca le recalca que el préstamo es de siete días, sino vendrá el policía de la biblioteca a buscarlo. A caballo entre lo que parece la creación de un personaje para asustar a los niños y la realidad, Sam se verá envuelto en toda una odisea para devolver los libros que se le han prestado.
Es una historia muy al estilo King y en la que se guarda unos cuantos ases en la manga, porque retrasarse en la devolución de unos libros y encajar la debida sanción no puede ser en sus manos una historia sencilla.
El perro de la polaroid, es la otra historia que completa este libro.
Kevin recibe por su cumpleaños una cámara tipo polaroid, como todo niño que recibe regalos quiere estrenarla cuanto antes y enmarca a su familia para retratarla. Al sacar la foto e ir apareciendo la imagen ve que su familia no sale, sólo se ve a un perro al lado de una valla.
Vuelve a probar y obtiene la misma fotografía, siempre la misma. Devolverla es la opción más lógica para que la cambien por otra pero Kevin más intrigado que otra cosa decide quedársela y acaba pidiendo ayuda a Papi Merrill, un señor destartalado con una tienda de antigüedades igualmente destartalada. En su pequeña investigación se van dando cuenta de que las fotos no son exactamente iguales.
Una historia bien contada, con los elementos necesarios para mantenerte pegado a las páginas y con escenas realmente turbadoras.
Ambas historias, y para nuestro gozo como lectores asiduos a él, tiene conexiones, guiños y aparición de personajes de otros libros lo que hace que sonriamos y caigamos, nuevamente, rendidos a sus pies.
Las cuatro después de medianoche es un libro que contiene dos relatos, o más bien, dos novelas cortas debido a su extensión.
Casi siempre suele gustar uno más que otro cuando hay una selección en el mismo libro, pero en esta ocasión las dos historias me han gustado y sorprendido a partes iguales.
La primera historia se titula El policía de la biblioteca.
Nuestro protagonista Sam, por una serie de acontecimientos tiene que sustituir a un compañero dando una charla. Plantea un discurso y lo comenta con su secretaria para que le de sus impresiones. Ella escucha atenta y le plantea que con algún chiste o anécdota puede amenizarlo, le sugiere dos títulos de libros que puede encontrar en la biblioteca que le aporten ese toque distintivo al discurso.
Al encaminarse hacia ella se encuentra con una sensación impactante. Carteles en los que pone ¡SILENCIO! de manera contundente, una iluminación apagada, carteles siniestros en el área infantil y una encargada un tanto peculiar. La señora Lortz tras entablar conversación con él y darle los libros que busca le recalca que el préstamo es de siete días, sino vendrá el policía de la biblioteca a buscarlo. A caballo entre lo que parece la creación de un personaje para asustar a los niños y la realidad, Sam se verá envuelto en toda una odisea para devolver los libros que se le han prestado.
Es una historia muy al estilo King y en la que se guarda unos cuantos ases en la manga, porque retrasarse en la devolución de unos libros y encajar la debida sanción no puede ser en sus manos una historia sencilla.
El perro de la polaroid, es la otra historia que completa este libro.
Kevin recibe por su cumpleaños una cámara tipo polaroid, como todo niño que recibe regalos quiere estrenarla cuanto antes y enmarca a su familia para retratarla. Al sacar la foto e ir apareciendo la imagen ve que su familia no sale, sólo se ve a un perro al lado de una valla.
Vuelve a probar y obtiene la misma fotografía, siempre la misma. Devolverla es la opción más lógica para que la cambien por otra pero Kevin más intrigado que otra cosa decide quedársela y acaba pidiendo ayuda a Papi Merrill, un señor destartalado con una tienda de antigüedades igualmente destartalada. En su pequeña investigación se van dando cuenta de que las fotos no son exactamente iguales.
Una historia bien contada, con los elementos necesarios para mantenerte pegado a las páginas y con escenas realmente turbadoras.
Ambas historias, y para nuestro gozo como lectores asiduos a él, tiene conexiones, guiños y aparición de personajes de otros libros lo que hace que sonriamos y caigamos, nuevamente, rendidos a sus pies.
July 10, 2007
This book is consisted of 4 short stories (app. 200 pages each) and as all of King's works, the super-natural has a very important role in them.
1) The first one is called "The Langoliers" and is about a group of people who wake up in an deserted plane. Your in an unknown world where you don't know the rules. Fascinating. (I give it 4/5)
2) The second one is called "Secret Window, Secret Garden". I found this story somehow boring. It's about a writer which someone accuses him of stealing his story. (I'd give it 2/5)
3) The third story is called "The Library Policeman". This was a story I couldn't put down. The writing was magnificent. As the years go by, I find it harder to find books which you can't stop reading. It's about a guy who borrows two books from the town library but fails to return them on time and the librarian sends the library police to him. (I give this one 5/5)
4) The last but not least, is a story called "The Sun Dog". I can clearly say, this is by far the scariest story I've read. King has put in some very detailed paragraphs which gives you the goosebumps all over you. This is a story which I'm ashamed to say, gave me a nightmare. It's about a camera that takes pictures of some unknown place.(5/5 is my opinion)
At the end, my average grade is 4/5 for this book
1) The first one is called "The Langoliers" and is about a group of people who wake up in an deserted plane. Your in an unknown world where you don't know the rules. Fascinating. (I give it 4/5)
2) The second one is called "Secret Window, Secret Garden". I found this story somehow boring. It's about a writer which someone accuses him of stealing his story. (I'd give it 2/5)
3) The third story is called "The Library Policeman". This was a story I couldn't put down. The writing was magnificent. As the years go by, I find it harder to find books which you can't stop reading. It's about a guy who borrows two books from the town library but fails to return them on time and the librarian sends the library police to him. (I give this one 5/5)
4) The last but not least, is a story called "The Sun Dog". I can clearly say, this is by far the scariest story I've read. King has put in some very detailed paragraphs which gives you the goosebumps all over you. This is a story which I'm ashamed to say, gave me a nightmare. It's about a camera that takes pictures of some unknown place.(5/5 is my opinion)
At the end, my average grade is 4/5 for this book
July 1, 2019
4 outstanding novellas for the price of one. My favourite is "the langoliers" followed closely by "the Library Policemen". For me this is easily up there with Different Seasons.
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