gross.Īnyway, other stories here also felt derivative - of LOTS of movies, and of poe, lovecraft, earlier king, not to mention some of his son's stories. right? but even when she's not being despised for that, she is being ridiculed for her size, and general lack of ladyness.

i feel like he is trying to drive the point home that they are related, because the brothers are huge people, and their mother is a large woman, mannish, butch, with 'thunder thighs.' obvious lesbian, right?. the two colluding brothers were raised by someone the main character keeps referring to, in an almost snickering way, as a possible butch lesbian, who not only raised such crazy people, but aids and abets their crimes. also, maybe the story is possibly homophobic? why else would he make such a point of alluding, over and over, to the sexual orientation of one of the characters. the actual revenge is sort of quick and unsatisfying. i'm fed up with rape for shock value, which is what this feels like, because the story seems to have no purpose except to have allowed a man to write about rape. 45' - two films that are not mentioned by the main character, who bolsters her revenge-courage with a blockbuster rental spree.

king is at his best when he is balancing light and dark, humanity and inhumanity, demonstrating the possibility of both existing side by side - but this teeter-totter is overly weighted down with the latter.Īlso, trigger warning for survivors of sexual assault, in a story that is basically a retelling of 'i spit on your grave' and 'ms. i don't feel like these stories do anything but bring us into the dark and leave us there. king's premise, which he overtly and unnecessarily states in the afterword, is that difficult and dark things are difficult and dark, and how well can you know someone, really? duh. most of these stories, out of five in all, had very little to redeem them.

this book provoked the 'don't like' reaction. I picked this up randomly at the library because i wanted something light, and because i sometimes like stephen king a lot, but i also sometimes don't.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King