Stephen King's Full Dark No Stars

I have just read Stephen King's latest book Full Dark No Stars. It is a collection of four novellas, patterned after earlier works of his like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight. The stories all explore the dark side of human nature, especially that element within "ordinary" people that causes them to justify themselves when hurting, even killing, others. There are many gruesome passages very descriptive in graphic carnage, so any squeamish readers who are prone to nightmares may take notice and avoid this book.

The first story is 1922, a first-person account of a Nebraska farmer who enlists the help of his teenage son to murder his own wife (and his son's mother). I'm not giving anything away here; it is the ramifications of that act that determine the story's flow and ending. In 1922, King accomplishes something pretty cool: the transpiring events can either be explained in real, psychological terms or in a paranormal framework (but not both). This intrigues me and is why I recommend it (but not for its gore and violence).

Big Driver is another of Stephen King's many stories featuring a writer as the protagonist and a demented, violent psychopath from the country as the chief adversary. Probably my favorite story of the four, Big Driver nevertheless contains elements of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and King's earlier novel Desperation, neither of which I cared for very much.

Fair Extension presents a familiar story structure: a man with terminal cancer (and a bad case of jealousy toward his best friend) makes a deal with the devil. Only this time the terms are not the protagonist's soul (by this time in human history, souls are almost worthless to the Big Bad Dude), but rather that the stricken character's woes be transferred to someone else that he knows (sounds a lot like the King/Bachman novel Thinner). What struck me about Fair Extension was its unexpected ending, which violated the unspoken rule about "deals with the devil" stories.

The last story, A Good Marriage, was inspired (if you can call it inspiration) by the news about serial killer Dennis Rader, who lived a double life for decades as a community-active family man while at the same time invading women's homes and brutally torturing and murdering them. But King makes the serial killer's wife the protagonist in his story, and once again the violence ensues, along with the self-justification.

There are common elements to all four tales in Full Dark No Stars. In each the protagonist either embarks on a trail of violence or endorses the suffering of others with a sense of justification. But just as important--no, even more so (with the exception of Fair Extension), other people arise as willing accomplices to the acts or as a means of justifying them. And that aspect scares the #@$% out of me more than any of the suspense or violence in the stories. Maybe Stephen King would be happy to know this, moralist that I believe he is deep down inside.