Full Dark, No Stars

Full review, three stars

Ah yes, Stephen King, the horror writer who supposedly has mellowed a bit in his old age and tried to become a "proper" writer who doesn't need monsters and ghosts to tell a story. And sure enough, of the four stories in Full Dark, No Stars, only one has any real supernatural element (though the narrators might beg to differ). But that doesn't mean this is King the good-natured baseball fan who wrote Stand By Me; the old guy is firmly in horror mode, though the focus is more clearly on the evil that men do.

Make no mistake, this is a violent, dark piece of work. The one story that does rely on the supernatural - "Fair Extension", a rather brilliant little twist on the old sell-your-soul-to-the-Devil plot - is the only one where King lets loose his sense of humour, and even then, it's just to hammer home the idea that in the early 21st century of religious fanatism, war as entertainment and celebrity worship, human souls have become so worthless that even Satan prefers cash. The rest of the stories are (to varying degrees of success) depressingly realistic; spousal abuse, rape, murder - and, saddest of all, our tendency to not want to see it. "1922" is probably the most successful story, a mixture of Steinbeck and Poe set in rural Nebraska in the years before the great depression, where a local farmer decides to murder his wife and make his son a co-conspirator. Which would have worked out fine, if not for the rats...

At the same time, despite all the despair and violence, it's not a Richard Bachman book. That's the name King uses when he just wants to get brutal. Here he has a point to make, a question he tackles from different angles in all four stories and is about as subtle about as King can be: the ripple effects of violence, the responsibilities not only of those who perpetrate it but those who let it happen - who don't see, who don't want to see, who willingly or not help to cover it up because it's just easier to live with yourself that way. The result, like I said, varies; especially "Big Driver", King's take on the rape-revenge story, ends up about as blunt and just a tiny bit too pleased with itself as most rape stories written by men. But overall it's a fine outing for the increasingly just-adequate King; a book that doesn't just say there are dark sides to humanity, but actually lets supposedly good people explore them.