The Girl Who Loved Stephen King

A Head Full of Ghosts -  Beware: Spoilers ahead. This is my first non-King related post, and I've chosen this particular book because it was one of the first I read as part of my New Year's Book Resolution (part 2). I had heard about this book countless times, and became even more intrigued after listening to Paul Tremblay speaking as a guest on the Books in the Freezer podcast (which is great for your reading list and terrible for your bank balance). A Head Full of Ghosts  is a modern take on the possession sub-genre. At first glance, the premise doesn't sound particularly original; Marjorie, a teenage girl from a comfortable, middle-class family, suddenly starts behaving strangely, frightening her little sister, swearing at her parents, vomiting in her dinner. The usual. Bring in the priests, right? The only difference is that Marjorie's exorcism will be filmed, edited, and played to the nation on prime time television. The story is told through a mix of flashba...

Carrie -  Beware: Spoilers ahead. King’s first published novel, Carrie , is a rare example of a story that has retained its power over forty years. It is the story of a high-school outcast with a religious zealot mother, who suffers the ultimate humiliation when she has her first period in the school showers after gym class. Due to her mother’s refusal to acknowledge a woman’s sinful reproductive system, Carrie does not understand what is happening to her, and her terror is compounded by the reaction of the girls around her, who pelt her with sanitary towels and tampons.This mix of fear and humiliation triggers a latent telekinetic power in Carrie, and the activation and growth of this power propels Carrie and her fellow students to a horrific, deadly fate. Carrie White is an iconic character, recognisable the world over. Most who haven’t read the book have seen one of the movies, and even those who haven’t won't show a completely blank face at the mention of her ...

This next story stands alone for me as a particularly memorable and unusual. Many of King's early stories take inspiration from sources in his childhood and his own favourite authors and filmmakers ( Trucks  and Duel , Grey Matter  and The Blob, etc), but this feels all his own. Sometimes They Come Back Sometimes They Come Back  is an updated, original take on a haunting, where the 'ghosts' take on a more solid shape. This is one of the best known of Stephen King's short stories, mainly due to the three movies it spawned (one made-for-TV, two straight to video). The material probably is meaty enough to make a movie out of, although the director took significant liberties with the source material, fluffing out a simpler, harsher story that probably would have created a more subtle, streamlined film. The story is centred on Jim Norman, a young English teacher with a dark history. As a boy, Jim narrowly escaped being killed by a gang of bullies on the way to the loca...

The next two stories on my list don't have a huge amount in common, but I've popped these two together because I thought both were a little thin, like snippets of much bigger ideas. Many of these early King stories have felt like practice runs for his bigger novels, and perhaps that's what some of them are. It Grows on You It wasn't that I didn't like  It Grows on You , exactly, I just couldn't quite work out where it was going. Just as with Night Surf , four years earlier, I felt like this was more a collection of interesting ideas and a concept that King wanted to explore, but couldn't quite get a handle on. The story is the first set in King's famous fictional Maine town of Castle Rock, and is told through the gossipy old man conversations of a small group in a general store. The town of Castle Rock is dying, but the Newall house, visible from the store, is alive and growing. It's a house with a history of death and devastation; among other ...

I thought I'd take a brief moment to comment on these three little snippets from my recently arrived hardback, Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing . The first two I mentioned in my first story post; they are where I suppose I should have started - King's first published works. The second is an interesting little essay about how to get your work published as an aspiring horror writer, and the 'ten bears' you can use to play upon the fears of the reader. Jumper and Rush Call Oh, so cute! Baby King could write, alright. He was just twelve when he wrote these two stories and put them in his brother's self-published newsletter called Dave's Rag. The first of the two is a story about a psychiatrist trying desperately to convince his patient to come off the ledge he claims he is about to jump from. Little King has great fun toying with the reader - will he jump? Will he be pushed? The second story is about a close-to-retirement doctor who...

The next two stories show what a difference a likeable main character can make. Both The Boogeyman  and Trucks are interesting ideas, well executed, but Trucks  is, in my opinion, easily the more successful, in the main because the narrator takes us with him. We like him and want him to survive. In The Boogeyman , the final appearance of the monster, come to take away the dreadful Lester Billings, comes as a bit of a relief. The Boogeyman We hear this story through the ears of the psychiatrist Dr Harper, who is listening to the wretched tale of Lester Billings, who claims that each of his three children was murdered by an evil monster they called 'The Boogeyman'. This monster, Billings claims, appeared from the children's closets, each time shortly after Billings insisted upon them moving into their own rooms, against his wife's wishes. Billings is a horrid character, almost entirely unsympathetic in spite of the horrendous trauma he and his family have gone throu...

The next two stories on the extensive first list were easy to slot together; they share similar characters, similar ideas, a similar vibe . The only major difference, other than obvious content-based ones, is that I really liked one and really hated the other. The Fifth Quarter I'm going to start this by saying I am a bit of a King purist; I don't gravitate towards work that is out of his normal zone. I haven't read all of the Dark Towers  series, for example (don't hurt me, I promise I will!), and I wasn't particularly enamoured with the Bill Hodges trilogy. I like King horror. Of course, there are exceptions, like the unquestinably wonderful Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption , but generally, you'll find my favourites sitting comfortably in the horror section of the bookshop. The Fifth Quarter  is a gangster story . In it, Jerry Tarkanian (the first of several ridiculously over the top gangster names) hunts down the men who killed his friend, an...

This is one of the few stories in this early selection that I remembered just based on the title. With most of the others ( Battleground, The Mangler  and Trucks  being the exceptions), I only realised I'd read them already once I began. This one, though. Oh, boy. This one gave me nightmares. I was excited to read Suffer the Little Children again partly just to see if it still had that effect on me. I first read it when I was about twelve, and I knew picking it up this time that my view of it was likely to be shifted significantly by adulthood. Suffer the Little Children This little gem is the story of Miss Emily Sidley, and elderly first grade teacher, who begins to feel as though her students have changed and are now watching her with evil intent. The ringleader, Robert, taunts her, even beginning to change and show her his new, real face; a terrifying, alien face which sends Miss Sidley screaming into the streets and almost under the wheels of a bus. The story end...

Apparently, this is an air compressor. Who knew? I had mixed feelings about the next two Kings on the list, mainly because I am not a big fan of either self-aware fiction, or science fiction. The Blue Air Compressor  is more self aware than all the Scream  movies put together, and I Am the Doorway  is wandering the fine line between horror-sci-fi and pure science fiction. So, neither would be my choice for preferred King style, but they're on my list, so read them I must. The Blue Air Compressor This story is pretty ordinary King at first glance. A young man named Gerald Nately writes a story about the enormously fat woman he is living with. The woman finds the manuscript and laughs at it (oh dear), suggesting that she was just too much woman for Gerald to write about. Gerald takes this insult to heart, and murders her by shoving an air compressor (a piece of machinery I had to google) down her throat and essentially inflating her to death. All in all it's a fun...

It's lockdown week 2. Both reading and blogging have been a challenge this week, as my husband and I juggled setting remote learning, heading into work to look after key worker children, and trying to stop our own child from devouring her crayons. But, I'm making progress, and Carrie is tantalisingly closer every day. Although this blog post will be relatively short, Graveyard Shift feels like it needs its own entry. It doesn't really fit with any of the other stories just before or after it, and stands alone both in length and in content. Graveyard Shift This is one of King's better known short stories, partly because of the 1990 movie adapted from it. I've not seen the movie yet, so watch this space for my thoughts on it. It received a hilariously low 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, and that's a score I've rarely seen beaten. I'm hoping it fits in the 'so bad it's good' category. Fingers crossed. For those of you that aren't fa...

Lockdown continues, but so does the beautiful sunshine. This is perfect weather for the next two stories, which are real summer horrors. They are, in many ways, nothing alike, but I've placed them together because they feel like trial runs of some of King's later heavy hitters. Both of them have a slightly unfinished quality, which could be intentional, but may result from them belonging as part of a much bigger whole. Night Surf Night Surf , collected in Night Shift , is set in the aftermath of a world-sweeping illness called Captain Trips, and if that sounds familiar, it's because it's the same name given to the population-ending virus from The Stand, published eight years later. In this short story, the flu-like illness is pretty much the same, except that victims heads swell to bizarre proportions just before death, which is something I don't recall from  The Stand. It's an interesting snippet which doesn't feel particularly finished, and wouldn...

In a busy first week of lockdown, I've been setting remote learning for my students, answering millions of (usually ridiculous) questions, chasing my tiny tornado of a toddler, and ploughing through the first big group of King's short stories. I'll admit that I hadn't realised just how many short stories King had published before Carrie came out in '74; I even had my copy out and ready when I started compiling my list of his works and organising it. It wasn't to be. King was pretty prolific even before Carrie  made him a household name. If you don't include Jumper  and Rush Call , by my count he'd written eighteen stories and one essay before his big break. Rather than dedicating a blog post to every story, I thought I'd put them together into groups which felt connected, not necessarily by theme or subject matter, but by a feel of the writing. Occasionally, where a story really speaks to me, I'll give it its own post. Cain Rose Up From t...

I'll start this post by saying that really, I suppose I ought to have started with Jumper and Rush Call, stories that King wrote with his brother when he was just twelve and submitted to the local paper. I will get to them, but as the book they're found in is on order, I thought I'd start with the first paid  piece King wrote. For those of you shouting 'where's Carrie ?', you might be surprised to know that there are a good twenty short stories for me to get through before I revisit that delicious little beast. The Glass Floor tells the story of Charles Wharton, who, after the suspicious death of his sister, visits the creepy home where she died to interrogate her husband. We quickly discover that her death was, of course, as creepy as the house it happened in. King himself describes The Glass Floor  as 'clumsy and badly written', but with a payoff ending. I think this is harsh. While the story does feel a little awkward in places, there are still...

On the 23rd March, 2020, the UK was officially placed on Coronavirus lockdown. All across the country, people wondered what they would do, stuck indoors with only their immediate family for company. Some found themselves anxiously remembering what happened to the Torrances in  The Shining.  So, what should one do when on lockdown? How does one avoid getting mallet happy? My name is Beth, and I hate being bored. After an hour stuck indoors, I am cranky. After three, I am bordering on homicidal. After a day, I could give Jack Torrance a run for his money. I knew, as soon as the announcement was made, that I needed was a new, time consuming hobby, something to distract me from the overwhelming urges to run outside and mingle, or throw my husband from a window. The Stephen King Challenge was born. All of Stephen King's published works, his books, short stories, poems, essays, and screenplays, in chronological order (or as close to it as I could get). I would hazard ...