Book Review: "Full Dark, No Stars" by Stephen King (2010)

Warning: some spoilers below

As much as I love, love, LOVE Stephen King, I'll be the first to admit that, even at his very best, he can be kind of a clumsy writer. Much as King himself described the late, great Robert E. Howard (of the original "Conan the Barbarian" stories), King tends to wield his considerable talent as bludgeon rather than a scalpel.

But, while he will never be a perfect writer, he is -- at his best -- a near perfect storyteller.

Full Dark, No Stars is a case in point.

The problem with Big Steve -- can I call you Big Steve? Thanks -- is that, as soon as he turned into a Bestsellasaurus Rex (his phrase), he appeared to believe that he really didn't need an editor anymore. I've always bristled at the oft-stated cliché that Steve could publish his laundry list if he wanted. But, as much as I hate to admit it, it's true. And, as time went on, the books just got longer...and longer...and longer...

Last year's Under the Dome was heralded by many as a return to form. It garnered (ridiculous) comparisons to The Stand. I disagree. It was good, but it wasn't great. The closest Steve has gotten to greatness in recent years was 2002's From a Buick 8, which -- aside from an absolutely godawful final chapter that I have since tried my best to block from my memory -- was taut, tight, original, and very scary. It was also the shortest book he had published in a long, long time.

Even though he has become so known for his massive, phonebook-sized tomes, with the exception of The Stand(1978), It (1986) and maybe Bag of Bones (1998) , most of them grow more exasperating than exhilarating as they ramble on (two of them -- 1987's The Tommyknockers and 1994's Insomnia -- are damn near unreadable).

This is what makes Full Dark, No Stars the first true King classic in probably about 15 years. It's a collection of novellas, much like the masterful Different Seasons (1982) and the very-good-if-not-quite-masterful Four Past Midnight (1990). This is the length where King is at his best. Most of my favorite King stories -- The Body, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, Secret Window, Secret Garden -- appeared in one of those two books. My other favorite King story, The Mist, is another novella first published in Kirby McCauley's Dark Forces anthology (1981) and reprinted in King's own Skeleton Crew (1985).

Add to that list at least two of the stories in the new collection. This is King at his leanest, meanest, darkest, Bachman best.

The first, longest, and best story in Full Dark, No Stars is 1922. Told in the first person in the form of a written confession by Nebraska Farmer Wilfred James, 1922 is a black-as-pitch examination of how apparent good fortune can lead to catastrophe. Wilfred's wife, Arletta, comes into an inheritance of 100 acres from her dead father. Arletta wants to sell the land and move to Omaha to open a dress shop. Wilfred wants to add the land to his own 80 acres. An immovable force meets and unstoppable object. Eventually (no spoiler here, this is revealed on the first page), Wilfred convinces their fourteen-year-old son, Hank, to help him murder Arletta and dump her body into an old well.

This being a Stephen King story, things go disastrously awry. The punishment meeted out to Wilfred, Hank, and Hank's innocent girlfriend Shannon is as tragic as it is absolutely horrifying. Supernatural elements aside, it's also all strangely plausible, rooted in the truth of 1920s Midwestern farm life.. King is a master at finding horror in everyday objects and situations, and in 1922 such things as a cracked drain pipe and a lady's hatbox gain almost totemic significance.

And, of course, there are the rats. I've never really had a fear of rats before, but I do now.

Steve follows this with Big Driver, a 70s-style rape-revenge fantasy that thankfully stays away from the inherent exploitation elements (Steve depicts the assault itself in just a couple pages, wisely getting in and getting out as quickly as possible) and instead focuses on the trauma and the aftermath. The lead character, Tess, is a semi-successful mystery novelist assaulted and left for dead on her way home from a lecture. Instead of reporting her attack she instead decides to exact her own justice. Steve makes a lot of the disconnect between Tess's fictional, light-hearted murder mysteries and the true horror of what she has experienced.

The story rings some false notes (there are a couple twists and turns that had me shaking my head) and wraps up altogether too neatly, but King paints a portrait of trauma that is both harrowing and heartbreaking, and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to cheer Tess on when her simmering rage inevitably turns to murder.

Fair Extension, the third and shortest story, is the only one that sort of feels like fluff. Streeter is a miserable man in his early 50s dying of cancer. He meets a stranger by the side of the road who may be the Devil himself. Ole' Scratch offers Streeter a deal: he'll give Streeter a "life extension" if he agrees to fork over 15 percent of his income (it seems Satan has lost interest in souls and is instead looking for Caribbean tax shelters). The catch is that Streeter has to pick someone to receive all his bad luck. Streeter picks his best friend from childhood, Tom Goodhough, a successful businessman with a perfect family whom Streeter has secretly hated for decades.

The story is a breezy and entertaining black comedy, but there's very little substance to it. We get to see Streeter's life improve as Tom's falls apart in Biblical ways. That's about it. What I did like, however, is how Steve essentially turns the old Faustian morality tale on its head. We keep waiting for Streeter to get his comeuppance. It doesn't happen.

The book ends with A Good Marriage, which is Steve's meditation on Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer, and how his wife claimed to know nothing of his murderous ways. Probably the less said about this one the better. Again, Steve very astutely stays away from most of the seamy details of the killings and instead focuses on the sheer horror of what it would be like to find out that the sweet, attentive husband you have shared a bed with for more than a quarter-century might actually be a psychopath. The story unfolds in some nice, unexpected ways, and leads to a conclusion that is -- while predictable -- ultimately satisfying. In many ways, it's the quietest of the four stories. It's also probably the most chilling.

I have no illusions that Full Dark, No Stars is going to be the start of a Stephen King renaissance. I'm sure his next book will likely be another bloated, overplotted brick. I'll read it anyway, and I'm sure I'll (mostly) like it. But until then, I'm thankful to have a little taste of the old, transcendent King that I have yearned for for so long.