Book Review: You Like it Darker by Stephen King

You Like it Darker

Stephen King

5/27/2024–6/20/2024

4 out of 5 stars

You Like it Darker is a book of short stories by Stephen King. My first reaction upon completion of this book was that the stories weren’t “darker” than most of King’s other work. In the afterword King mentioned that a lot of these stories were rescued from notes that never made it to writing. One such note was written over 45 years ago. It’s sad when a writer’s rejected story ideas are better than the best of your own, but that could also be my insecurities speaking.

The book opens with Two Talented Bastids, which is a story about a couple of guys who have a tradition of hunting together each year. One year they come back, and both become extremely famous, one as a writer and one as an artist. They attribute their talents to something that happened to them on their last hunting trip. It was an excellent story and the correct choice to open the book. It really sets the tone for what’s to come.

The Fifth Step is the next story, and at just 10 pages it is an easy and light read. I didn’t like this story and felt it didn’t really belong in this book, and it seriously brings the book down. That is, of course, holding King to King standards. If another author had written this story I might have had a higher opinion of it, although the twist can be seen a mile away.

Another low impact story follows, this one called Willie the Weirdo. Willie is intriguing and perhaps what this story needed was to be a bit longer, but ultimately it falls short of expectations. Another twist, though, and this one was more effective and led me to ponder the possibilities of such a talent.

The fourth story is by far the best in the book, Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream. This is not only the best story in the book, but the best short story I’ve read this year, and it left me longing for more. Danny dreams of a body buried, the details of the dream are so vivid they haunt his waking moments. He decides to go to the town where the dream took place and finds that everything about his dream was true, every detail was exact. He reports the body and the location despite a nagging “knowing” sensation that he would be accused of the crime. This turns out to be true and the rest of the story is Danny trying to prove his innocence and coming to terms with everyone he knows turning against him. What I loved about this story is that Danny is truly competent. He isn’t that innocent man that everyone feels sorry for because he was ground to dust beneath the wheels of justice. He fights back, and is constantly getting the upper hand on the inspectors investigating him. This is the longest story in the book, coming in at 152 pages, but I read most of it over night until the sun was coming up and all the while muttering “I really should go to bed” each time I turned the page.

Finn follows this story and was okay. What killed this one for me was I found myself scratching my head trying to figure out the ending. It wasn’t straight forward, and I suppose it’s left open for interpretation. My gripe is this story is too short to warrant such contemplation. I guess if this was a King story in a compilation with other authors it would be more acceptable, but in the middle of his own book I just didn’t feel like going down that rabbit hole and would have rather had it spelled out for me.

The next story is about a husband, a wife, their two young kids, and grandpa on a road trip to go see the grandfather’s dying sister. It’s titled On Slide Inn Road. One running theme I’ve noticed with King is that as he ages, so do his protagonists and focal characters. This isn’t a bad thing, on the contrary, I think demonstrates the realness that underlies King’s work. His inspiration comes from his own life. The story is good, not fantastic, but I wouldn’t skip it.

The Red Screen was a compelling short story, and it left open a lot of opportunity for a much longer story. It’s about a guy that’s being questioned for killing his wife, though he claims that she wasn’t his wife. Much of the story is dialogue, and the internal thoughts of the detective. It’s a fun, short read.

The Turbulence Expert is about a guy on a flight who experiences clear air turbulence that is so severe he has a vision of the plane crashing; with all the details one might expect to read about a plane crash story. The plane doesn’t crash, and he bonds with the woman in the seat next to him. I enjoyed this story, but I will not read it on a plane, Sam I am.

The next story, Laurie, is named after a dog. Lloyd’s sister brings him a puppy and leaves it with him despite his protestations. He bonds with the dog and much of the story is that bonding with horror intermingled later in the story. It was a decent story but largely forgettable.

The next story is Rattlesnakes and is, in essence, a type of sequel to Cujo. There is no rabid Saint Bernard in this story, though. Vic Trenton, who was Tad’s father and Donna’s husband, is staying in a friend’s mansion on Rattlesnake Key in Florida. There is mention of Duma Key off the coast, which I know is the title of a King book, but I haven’t read that one yet. King states in the afterword that he had an idea for this story but didn’t know the person in it would be Vic Trenton until it was time to write. I think this nuance makes it a more believable continuation for a character, because it allows the story to be its own story. It doesn’t need Vic Trenton to be good, it could have been just as good with Ellie Creed, or any number of old King protagonists. Second best story in the book.

The penultimate story is called The Dreamers. It’s about a Vietnam veteran who is one of the best stenographers in the world and is hired by a scientist to keep record of his experiments with dreaming subjects. The story tells of twisting and warping the world through dreams and is written as the protagonist recounts his experience working with the scientist. Like Finn earlier in the book, it’s a lighter story that follows a heavier story which allows the reader to catch their breath and recover. It is a solid story though, so I would recommend getting your breath back before starting this one.

The last story is called The Answer Man. Right from the get-go, the protagonist mentions that he met the Answer Man three times in his life. The Answer Man will provide accurate, but limited answers to the questions posed by the protagonist. Each time Phil meets the Answer Man, he is at a different point in his life with different challenges, but the Answer Man always answers true.

Overall, I give the book 4 stars, and if breaking it down it would be around 4.4 stars. The best stories in this book really carried it. Some were forgettable and I would need to skim a few lines to remember them in the future. King has always been my favorite author; he has a way of writing that is smooth for me. One thing that I noticed, though, was that the bookstore promoted this book with the quote “Sometimes dead is better.” That’s a quote from Pet Sematary, and even though it was attributed to Stephen King (and not Jud Crandall) it still seemed misleading to me and left me to wonder if there was also a sequel to Pet Sematary in this book. There isn’t. Definitely worth the read though, especially if you like Stephen King or books of short stories.