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Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
4 October 2015
Title
| Nightmares and Dreamscapes |
Author
| Stephen King |
Publisher
| BCA |
Publication Date
|
1993
|
Pages
| 836 |
Genre
| Horror, short stories, paranormal |
Description from Amazon
The Stephen King Amusement Park – an unnerving experience, with rides every which way to hell…and a few to glory.
A solitary finger pokes out of a drain. Novelty teeth turn predatory. The Nevada desert swallows a Cadillac. Meanwhile, the legend of Castle Rock returns… and grows on you. What does it all mean? What else could it mean? Stephen King is here with a powerful collection of stories – a vast, many-chambered cave of a volume.
The long reach of Stephen King’s imagination will take you on a rollercoaster to places you’ve never been before. You will lose sleep. But Stephen King, writing to beat the devil, will do your dreaming for you.
My thoughts / contents
Yes, this is King. Pure and fine, it will grab you and you won't forget them ever. Every King fan recognises the stories:
1. Dolan's Cadillac
A husband revenges the killing of his wife. Only, it isn't that easy when the mob is involved. So you take a job at the Highway Department, learn all about digging out the road and wait for your chance.
2. The End of the Whole Mess
Howard gets a visit from his brother Bobby whom he hasn't seen for a while. Bobby has always been very bright and gifted and dreams of making the world a better place. He discovers that people in a certain place are more mellow than in others and links it to the water. Now if he could extract whatever it is in the water that makes people mellow and non-fighting and could distribute it around the world, that would be the solution to eternal peace.
3. Suffer the Little Children
A mean teacher, Miss Sidley, and how her pupils became infected with something rather strange. That brought her down a bit!
4. The Night Flier
Journalist Dees thinks he is on to a story. A serial killer who uses a small plane to turn up, and leaving mutilated bodies behind. Strangle, with a hold of the plane full of soil, and he wears a long coat and seems to operate only once daylight is gone. Dees catches up with him.
5. Popsy
Sheridan is about to abduct a kid at the local shopping mall. But he picked the wrong kid, because his popsy is coming. Both the kid and popsy are thirty, and it's not water they want.
6. It grows on you
Dedicated King fans:we are back in Castle Rock and a house that keeps growing. Locals remember.
7. Chattery Teeth
Hogan, a travelling salesman, buys a set of novelty teeth on legs in a roadside shop for his son. And he picks up a hitchhiker even though he usually does not do this kind of thing. And it was a bad choice, as it turns out. Will the chattery teeth save his life?
8. Dedication
Martha Rosswell tells her friend the story of the somewhat unusual conception of her son. That son will in later life be come a successful novelist. A bit 'yucky' but this story also has serious undertones of racism experienced by Martha.
9. The Moving Finger
Maybe the most creepy story of this collection, and, in typical King style, shows how two common objects - a finger and a wash basin - can become someones absolute horror.
10. Sneakers
John can see a pair of sneakers (worn by a person I shall add) under the toilet cubicle next to his. Nothing strange. Expect they are still there next time he goes, weeks later.
11. You Know They Got a Hell of a Band
A road trip. Mary and Clark get lost, the roads gets smaller and smaller and then opens into a clearing with a lovely little town. But something is odd. All the residents they meet seem to resemble deceased rock stars. Janis Joplin, Buddy Holly, Elvis. And they would like Mary and Clark to stay for a concert that evening.
12. Home Delivery
Maddie Pace is a simple country girl who marries young to a man who takes charge of her, and that's how she likes it. Now she is expecting her baby. But she seems to be the only one left now on this planet.
13. Rainy Season
Another road trip (I love those!) John and Elise Graham arrive in their holiday home in Willow, Maine (where else!). The local shopkeeper warn him that it is rainy season that night (It doesn't look very cloudy at all!) and that it rains frogs. He warns them to close all doors and windows to their holiday home tightly. John and Elise dismiss him, but of course should have listened to him.
14. My Pretty Pony
Grandpa explained Clivey a bit about the passing of time.
I struggled a bit with this story - didn't get into it as much as other stories, but t did contain a quote which I highlighted and took out from this book:
'Times when you're hurt go on forever, seems like'
15. Sorry, Right Number
Loved this, as the realisation of what's happened hit me on the last page. A story of time travel / different dimensions.
Katie receives a phone call: someone is sobbing and clearly in extreme distress, trying to tell her something. The voice sounds familiar, and she thinks one of her family members is in trouble. Katie and her husband Bill frantically check out their daughter and Katie's sister, but they are fine. So who called, and in a voice which was oddly familiar?
16. The Ten O'Clock People
The Ten O'Clock People are the ones who gather outside office buildings at 10, for their first cigarette break of the working day. Pearson sees the same people every day at 10, with their unspoken unity of their vice. But today Pearson notices something very strange indeed - his co-worker suddenly seem to transfer into some kind of alien species. Does no one else notice? And what is the link to the Ten O'clock People?
17. Crouch End
I lived in London for a while, and now still work here, so this took me almost to familiar territory. King's kind of horror does not only happen in Maine, but right in the suburbs of London.
An American couple on holiday in London, and they seem to end up in a very strange place indeed. Now I know that some areas in every big city are dodgy, but here we are talking a different dimension where the taxi cab which dropped them is suddenly gone and while they still stand in the same road, it has changed and the town's noise is muffled.
18. The House on Maple Street
The Bradbury children live with their mum and step-dad in said house. Lew, their step-dad, is not a very pleasant man, and it seems their mum as given up on life. Then the children discover some kind of strange metallic structure behind the walls in their house, and it grows.
19. The Doctor's Case
A Sherlock Holmes story here! I loved how King manages to exactly hit the writing style and tone of the Sherlock Holmes books. All our favourite characters are here: Holmes, Watson, Lestrade and of course, they solve a crime in typical Holmes/Watson manner. Lord Hull gets stabbed to death in his study, with no-one having access to the room. His wife and children were all in the house at the time, and they all had reasons to wanting to dispose of him.
20. Umney's Last Case
Umney is a detective in the 1940's - or is he? Maybe he belongs to a different time period? I don't want to give too much away, but here, the characters of a story interact with the writer of the story in unexpected ways.
21. Head Down
A departure here from all the other stories - this is a non-fiction account where King tells us about his son's local baseball team league. Nothing supernatural here. I did struggle a bit, as I don't know anything about baseball apart from the fact that it is a sport played in stadiums. But it was still worth reading for King's wonderful prose.
22. The Beggar and the Diamond
A Hindu Parabel, re-told by King
9 August 2015
Title
| Night Shift |
Author
| Stephen King |
Publisher
| Doubleday |
Publication Date
|
1978
|
Pages
| 336 |
Genre
| horror |
Description (from Amazon)
A collection of tales to invade and paralyse the mind as the safe light of day is infiltrated by the shadows of the night.
As you read, the clutching fingers of terror brush lightly across the nape of the neck, reach round from behind to clutch and lock themselves, white-knuckled, around the throat.
This is the horror of ordinary people and everyday objects that become strangely altered; a world where nothing is ever quite what it seems, where the familiar and the friendly lure and deceive. A world where madness and blind panic become the only reality.
An early Stephen King, a short story collection. Many of them were previously published in magazines, when King was still a struggling author. Some of the short stories have been made into movies, and the movie 'Cat's eye' contains 3 stories from this collection which also comes highly recommended.
The book shows how the King of horror can take everyday objects and people and normal situations and make them into a horror story. This is different from bloods and gore horror. A lawn mover man who mows butt naked and eats the grass, a couple taking a road trip and discover the evil which can hide in a humble corn field, a man trying to quit smoking and those how help him have somewhat unusual but very convincing methods, a man who has an affair with a rich guy's wife and the husband wants revenge on the outer ledge of a skyscraper.
Even though I am a big fan of King's work, I did not always find this short story collection very 'easy reading'. I think part of it is that you have to 'get into the story' and obviously with a short story collection, you constantly have to get into a new story. Once in, I was hooked on every single one of them and felt that literally all of them have enough plot and characters to make it a full book. What an imagination this guy has. His talent for turning the ordinary and mundane into the crazy is undisputed.
28 July 2015
Title
| The Severest Inks Shorts |
Author
| Several authors |
Publisher
| Severest Inks |
Publication Date
|
May 2015
|
Pages
| 260 |
Genre
| short stories |
Description (from Amazon)
The Severest Inks Shorts collects eight stories from some of the boldest new writers on the scene today. Melding unflinching themes with innovative narratives, these works confront the rawest elements of the human condition through the potent short story form. This anthology comes loaded with bonus material, including commentaries, special monochrome editions of original cover art and transcripts.
Contents:
Red by Khalid Patel
Dr Craine’s Body by Khalid Patel
Further South by Eryk Pruitt
June in July by Hunter Heath
Mesa Boys by Matt Phillips
Georgia Rouge by Lucy Black
The Exchange by Charmaine Pauls
Grand Finale by Charmaine Pauls
The Severest Inks Shorts compilation of stories offers a
great variety: from dark city fables to a pathologist in the mortuary, and this
is what I liked so much here – the variety of it.
Each story fitted neatly into my morning commute, and it was
easy to get into – something I sometimes find a challenge when reading a
compilation of short stories when you have to constantly transport yourself
into a different setting. All stories captured me from the beginning, kept my
interest and still made sense.
I would also like to draw the attention to the original
artwork on the cover of the stories which definitely caught my eye. I also
really enjoyed the extra chapters at the end of the book where the authors tell
us a bit about themselves and how their particular story came about.
I am sure, like me, the reader will have a favourite story
after reading the compilation. We have all different tastes, and this book
caters for quite a few without being too wide in range and extremes (i.e. soppy
romance and hard-core horror). I had
read 2 of the included stories before as ‘singles’ and enjoyed them, and was
glad to read this book. And, at the end, it is also good value for money, as
you get 8 stories in book.
13 April 2014
Title
|
Dr Craine's Body
|
Author
| Khalid Patel |
Publisher
| Severest Inks |
Publication Date
|
20 March 2014
|
Pages
| 34 |
Genre
| short story |
Blurb:
From Amazon:
ROMANCE. IS. DEAD.
A story about the destabilising nature of love. A scrutiny of society and life through the uncomfortable lens of death. An absorbing, unsettling portrait of a fractured psyche. A haunting yet beautiful subversion of the romance genre.
Dr Craine's Body follows a gifted, deeply unorthodox medical examiner as he battles with his unrequited feelings for a colleague, feelings that burn so deep they threaten to destroy his very being.
Constructed through innovative storytelling and jolting plot developments, Dr Craine's Body is a poetic, stark short that defies convention and arrests throughout.
A story about the destabilising nature of love. A scrutiny of society and life through the uncomfortable lens of death. An absorbing, unsettling portrait of a fractured psyche. A haunting yet beautiful subversion of the romance genre.
Dr Craine's Body follows a gifted, deeply unorthodox medical examiner as he battles with his unrequited feelings for a colleague, feelings that burn so deep they threaten to destroy his very being.
Constructed through innovative storytelling and jolting plot developments, Dr Craine's Body is a poetic, stark short that defies convention and arrests throughout.
If you want to read something a little bit different than give this short story a try. It is not for the squeamish though or those with a very sensitive disposition.
Dr Craine is a pathologist, performing autopsies is his profession and the mortuary is his office. He is also deeply in love with Priya, his colleague. An unrequited loved, Priya is married and sees him purely professionally. Than something unexpected and tragic happened and Priya's husband is asking Dr Craine for help. What follows next is the somewhat unconventional ending to a love story.
A short story has to establish character and plot within the first page and get us curious to read on, and I think this is perfectly executed here. I could tell that this Dr Craine is a little bit strange maybe, and the setting of the mortuary intrigued me. Not too many characters - Craine, Priya Lane and her husband, Dr Harvey Lane. It all happens quickly, but not 'without any reason or randomly'.
There is this somewhat unhealthy obsession with his colleague, but there is also a lot of truth in Dr Craine's thoughts.
'The doctor often found much irony in how analysing the dead gave him so much insight into the living'
'The doctor felt more alone in a crowd of people than he did among these corpses. The society of the dead cared not for wealth, nor appearance. they had no need to alter themselves to conform to standards.'
In my line of work, I often deal with deceased bodies / bereaved families, and we tell them that a post mortem examination, of course, has the benefit of hindsight. And when I get asked if I don't feel scared working in a mortuary, we always tell them 'the dead can't hurt you'.
An unconventional story and that's why I enjoyed it so much. Unconventional love. Sick love? Maybe. Love doesn't die when the physical body dies. Should we judge how to love?
About the author (from Amazon)
Khalid Patel is the British writer of cult, underground literature. His works are known for their subversive, unconventional qualities. Challenging narratives, unusual dialogue& beautifully offbeat prose are a staple of his writings. His words, also frequently laced with scalding social commentary & sneaky dark humour, wrenches readers out of their comfort zone for an unforgettable, jolting experience.
An English Literature graduate & culture junkie, Khalid breathes movies (particularly South Korean cinema), comic-books & videogames…passions which frequently seep into his works. He also copiously digs New York, pasta and wearing black shirts.
Khalid Patel advocates activism & the questioning of the status quo. He has supported greater rights for Burma (the birth country of his mother) long before the mass media began highlighting the brutalities & human right atrocities perpetrated by its military junta government. He is also a fierce critic of far-right, fascist outfits such as the English Defence League (EDL); he has attended anti-racism & anti-hate protests where he has engaged in running street battles with Neo-Nazis.
Khalid's stories are often laced with searing socio-political asides, quietly making his readers mull deeper issues whilst they're being entertained. With his writings, Khalid also seeks to disintegrate media-reinforced stereotypes of Muslims & people of brown colour. He is keen to raise the literacy rates of British South Asians, especially males, & hopes his stories more shall catch an interest in literature.
22 February 2014
Title
|
Red
|
Author
| Khalid Patel |
Publisher
| Severest Inks |
Publication Date
|
24 August 2013
|
Pages
| 24 |
Genre
| short story |
A short story which engages your literary brain, a dark satire on corporate America (though I think it could be certainly applied to any city in the 'Western' world).
The author takes a well known fairy tale and turns it on its head. Red, a young girl, clutching her books, walks home from the library and has to get to her grandmother's house quickly. She has to cross the notorious Forest (geddit?) Heights district of the city with winos, drug pushers and prostitutes on every street corner. She has to move fast to outrun her father's nemesis, The Wolf.
I liked the surprising ending of the story, but the most beautiful part for me was the wonderful use of language in this story. Rich words and great prose descriptions of this sordid city and its residents. Read every single word and every single sentence and let it sink in. This only works for a short story, and it works beautifully here. Why say "There where homeless alcoholics in the door way" when you can say (quote): "The discarded of the city sat suckling their gloom through a bottle, a reprieve from misery."
I'm not a teacher, but I think this story would be great for English students to read and analyse. It would also be a great addition in a compilation book of short stories.
Here are some more quotes from the story:
"The homeless were pleading the junkies for spare change for desperately needed sustenance. The junkies were pleading the homeless spare change for desperately needed fresh highs. The homeless junkies were pleading the ethereal figures dwelling their broken psyches for desperately needed hope."
"Her lips had become parchment, dry and crackling like desert twigs. Her heart had become calcified fire, burring in scorched beats against her chest. She drank a deep swathe of breath, feeling the airs slither down the rusted vulcano that had become her throat, feeling the almost liquid air run down and bathe her thirsty gullet."
"I agree, ma'am. Hey… And they like to blame video games. When we all know rap music's really to blame…"
"They dyin' so ugly the coroner won't know how to fill the forms out."
(ok, on a personal note, anything which mentions the Coroner - I'm a Coroner's Officer - deserves my mention!)
About the author:
(from Amazon)
Biography:
Khalid Patel is the British writer of cult, underground literature. His works are known for their subversive, unconventional qualities. Challenging narratives, unusual dialogue& beautifully offbeat prose are a staple of his writings. His words, also frequently laced with scalding social commentary & sneaky dark humour, wrenches readers out of their comfort zone for an unforgettable, jolting experience.
An English Literature graduate & culture junkie, Khalid breathes movies (particularly South Korean cinema), comic-books & videogames…passions which frequently seep into his works. He also copiously digs New York, pasta and wearing black shirts.
Khalid Patel advocates activism & the questioning of the status quo. He has supported greater rights for Burma (the birth country of his mother) long before the mass media began highlighting the brutalities & human right atrocities perpetrated by its military junta government. He is also a fierce critic of far-right, fascist outfits such as the English Defence League (EDL); he has attended anti-racism & anti-hate protests where he has engaged in running street battles with Neo-Nazis.
Khalid's stories are often laced with searing socio-political asides, quietly making his readers mull deeper issues whilst they're being entertained. With his writings, Khalid also seeks to disintegrate media-reinforced stereotypes of Muslims & people of brown colour. He is keen to raise the literacy rates of British South Asians, especially males, & hopes his stories more shall catch an interest in literature.
Khalid Patel is the British writer of cult, underground literature. His works are known for their subversive, unconventional qualities. Challenging narratives, unusual dialogue& beautifully offbeat prose are a staple of his writings. His words, also frequently laced with scalding social commentary & sneaky dark humour, wrenches readers out of their comfort zone for an unforgettable, jolting experience.
An English Literature graduate & culture junkie, Khalid breathes movies (particularly South Korean cinema), comic-books & videogames…passions which frequently seep into his works. He also copiously digs New York, pasta and wearing black shirts.
Khalid Patel advocates activism & the questioning of the status quo. He has supported greater rights for Burma (the birth country of his mother) long before the mass media began highlighting the brutalities & human right atrocities perpetrated by its military junta government. He is also a fierce critic of far-right, fascist outfits such as the English Defence League (EDL); he has attended anti-racism & anti-hate protests where he has engaged in running street battles with Neo-Nazis.
Khalid's stories are often laced with searing socio-political asides, quietly making his readers mull deeper issues whilst they're being entertained. With his writings, Khalid also seeks to disintegrate media-reinforced stereotypes of Muslims & people of brown colour. He is keen to raise the literacy rates of British South Asians, especially males, & hopes his stories more shall catch an interest in literature.
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