Instead he uses his knowledge to blackmail Dussander into regaling him with stories from the concentration camps. But when he discovers an old man living nearby is the fugitive Kurt Dussander, Nazi war criminal, he doesn’t tell his parents or report the old man to the authorities. Todd Bowden is an ordinary, all-American kid. It is bone-chillingly terrifying – definitely one of King’s scariest stories. This story is brutal and unjust and frightening in places, but it’s also filled with beauty and strength of character and hope.Īpt Pupil – If Shawshank is full of hope, then Apt Pupil is the opposite. Seriously, if you haven’t read this yet, stop whatever you’re doing and go and read it now. If I was ever in any doubt that King is a master of his craft, then this novella would wash all such thoughts away. The layers and complexity and depth that King manages to convey in this short book are just breath-taking. Despite all that, Andy exudes a mysterious calm, a sense that none of this can truly touch him and that everything will work out in the end. Many of the guards are bullies and at least one of the governors is a crook. When Andy Dufresne is wrongly convicted for the murder of his wife and her lover, he ends up in Shawshank State Prison, where he meets Red, they guy who can get you things, along with a whole host of other wonderful characters. I love Andy so much and Red is such a wonderful narrator. It’ll come as no surprise to you then that I adore the novella. For me, it is one of the few adaptations that really captures the heart of the story. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption – Like many people, I saw the wonderful film adaptation of this before I read the original story and even now, about twenty years since that first viewing, it is one of my favourite films. I’m a believer that a story has an ideal length with one exception, I felt these stories were perfect at the lengths they are. King talks about how each of these were written after he completed work on a novel, a time when he had a bit of story-telling juice left but not enough to make it through another 100,000+ words. That, and the fact that the first three novellas in the collection have nothing supernatural about them, made them a bit of a gamble from the publisher’s point of view and it’s one that I’m very glad they took.
Novellas did not sell as well during that time and it was harder to find a home for them. I’ll be looking at the recurring themes, the tricks he likes to use, the way he develops character and the way that his craft has evolved in the 44 years since Carrie was first published.Īccording to the afterword to this book, King had trouble at first convincing his editor to accept Different Seasons.
I will be reading all of Stephen King’s books in order of publication (with the exception of The Dark Tower series which I will read together, at the end of this adventure) and writing a review of each.
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