THE HORROR WITHIN
In Stephen King’s stories, the horror lives in the people’s minds
tephen King’s supreme craftsmanship lies in his ability to allow the reader to build up the horror in her/ his mind instead of explicitly describing it. Most often, this horror lurks in the most mundane situations and in the most ordinary lives, until an event or a twist introduces the central plot and pushes the suspense towards its finale.
His latest, If It Bleeds, is a collection of four novellas. Three of them are vintage King. The fourth (though second in order of appearance), The
Life of Chuck, sees King try a completely different style of narrative, and pull it off with aplomb. It is a story in three acts told backwards, starting with the death of the protagonist. A disturbing yet enjoyable story, it requires the reader to remain fully engaged with the narration.
The volume starts with Mr Harrigan’s Phone, where a young boy, Craig, introduces his part-time employer, a retired businessman, Mr Harrigan, to the wonders of a smartphone, an Apple iPhone. As in many of King’s stories, there is a certain
Samount of ambiguity in the tale—it is left to the reader to decide whether Mr Harrigan was a good person or an evil one dishing out retribution.
The title story, If It Bleeds, is a sequel to King’s earlier novel, The Outsider. It revisits an old King preoccupation—ancient supernatural evil that can live on the miseries and misfortunes of people—and features the third appearance of Holly Gibney of Finders Keepers detective agency, a character created by King. The title is derived from the old newspaper slang, ‘if it bleeds, it leads’, denoting the dependence of the news business on bad news. The final story in the collection, The Rat, sees a failed author agree to a Faustian bargain to finish his novel only to find out that he has not looked carefully at the fine print while making his deal.
King is also a master of churning out volumes—he has published over 60 novels and short story collections till date and shows no signs of slowing down. However, despite his prolific output, he never gets boring. This volume, too, does not disappoint.
STEPHEN If it Bleeds KING’S his one of explores preoccupations— supernatural old ancient on can live evil that of miseries the people