Just After Sunset: The Gingerbread Girl and Harvey's Dream

While Willa was a disappointment, The Gingerbread Girl and Harvey's Dream are much much better.

The Gingerbread Girl is much longer than Willa was, almost twice the length, and it takes much more care in describing the characters and the situations. The Gingerbread Girl is more what I would consider to be classic Stephen King. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing supernatural in this story. The only monster is human. It tells the story of Emily, who takes up running to cope with the death of her infant daughter, Amy. She runs runs runs, as fast as she can to get away from the emotionally painful past, and ends up running right into the clutches of a mad man. This was one of those incredibly suspenseful stories where you start skimming paragraphs instead of reading because you just want to find out what happens already!

Harvey's Dream is a very simple story about a husband explaining his dream to his wife. King works his magic in making even this simple, rather mundane task suspenseful. I didn't like it nearly as much as I liked The Gingerbread Girl, but I didn't predict the end halfway through, so it's already way better than Willa.

I'm a few pages in to the next story Rest Stop, and I will have a lot to say about that story when I finish it. I also just finished reading Noises Off, but we'll wait to see if I'm cast in the play before I review it here.

Just After Sunset by Stephen King: Willa

I picked up this collection of Stephen King short stories at a garage sale this morning, and I just finished the first story, Willa. I'm a King fan, and I don't think I've written about him here before. I have several of his books on my "To Read" shelves, including Under the Dome, which I've already read about 200 pages of, but since that's still only about 15% of the book, it may be some time before I've worked up the energy to tackle that again. A collection of short stories seems to be the perfect option for me right now, since I seem to have trouble finishing books that I start. I like to blame the fact that I work with books all day, five days a week (I'm a cataloger at a library), so when I get home I usually don't want to curl up with another book. I'd like to blame my job, but it's probably the fact that I'm lazy and have a short attention span. So it's nice to have some bite-size fiction to get me back into the swing of being a Reader again.

That being said, I was decidedly underwhelmed by Willa. It's not that it's badly written, it's just kind of obvious. (Spoilers) It's a story about a group of ghosts who don't know they're ghosts, and how two of them figure it out and try to convince the others. But, in the beginning, we're not supposed to know they're ghosts either. The thing is, if you've ever read King before, or really any type of supernatural/horror fiction... you know what's going on from page one. There's minimal conflict, and not really much going on. I just read a review though that says that Willa is the worst story of the bunch, and King himself admits as much. Hopefully the next story will live up to what I expect from Stephen King.

Reviews forthcoming: Going in Circles by Pamela Ribon, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, and Noises Off by Michael Frayn.