He writes it shorter
★★★★
RELEASED 21 MAY 496 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook
Author Stephen King
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
The title of this short story collection is a little misleading, unless you get the reference. And since the reference is to a relatively obscure Leonard Cohen song of the same name, chances are many people won’t. In which case you’d be forgiven for thinking that You Like It Darker is a promise of Stephen King delving further into grisly horror than ever before.
Well, no. Okay, there are a couple of deliciously gruesome moments, but this collection is far from a mere scarefest, and that Cohen reference is the clue. The song’s lyrics – framed as a dialogue with God – deal with the songwriter’s acceptance of his own mortality upon turning 82.
King is currently 76, and it seems that the author who’s spent his career writing about death is now seriously contemplating his own. With a couple of exceptions, the tales in this collection feature an awful lot of old men nearing death, and coming to terms with it in different ways. There are aching backs, sore knees, retirement plans and sympathetic doctors aplenty. Which may all sound a bit depressing, but actually King is remarkably sanguine about his looming date with the Grim Reaper if the oddly uplifting tone of many of these stories is anything to go by. At the very least, he seems to be a big fan of growing old disgracefully.
There are 12 stories here, all previously unpublished and most of them written recently, though “The Answer Man” was originally begun 35 years ago, and left languishing until King finished it off for this collection.
They range from a few pages long to novella length. One of those novellas is the collection’s biggest hook: a belated sequel to Cujo called “Rattlesnakes”. It features the return of Vic Trenton, who, decades on, is still feeling the pain and guilt of not having saved his son. When he takes a break in a
Florida mansion owned by a friend, he soon regrets showing a moment of kindness to a seemingly mad old neighbour who believes she’s still pushing her long-dead twins around in a pushchair. It’s a classic, you could say formulaic, King ghost story that has little new to offer, but is well-crafted and well creepy.
The other novella is “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream”, one of the few tales without a
