It's been nearly a decade since Stephen King's last short story collection. Everything's Eventual presents fourteen stories that run the gamut of classic King horror tales to more literary pieces to crime fiction. Some have only appeared in audio or electronic form to date. Other critics have called the collection "uneven," but it is a rare assemblage of short stories that could be described in any other fashion. What some readers will read with delight others will find mere fluff. Such is the joy of a short story collection — there's something in it for everyone. King introduces the book by discussing the dire fate of short fiction and its dwindling number of markets while at the same time explaining why he continues to write and publish two or three stories each year. He describes his frustration with the reaction to "Riding the Bullet," the short story previously only published electronically. Articles discussed the marketing of the story, but very few explored the merits of the story itself, in which a young man hitchhiking home to visit his sick mother is forced to make a difficult choice and live with its consequences. Four of the stories first appeared in the New Yorker magazine. The most famous of these is "The Man in the Black Suit," which garnered an 0. Henry award. King professes surprise at this rather simple story's critical success. An even stronger entry is "All That You Love Will be Carried Away," a Death of a Salesman-like story that explores the cheerless fate of a man traveling the Midwest selling gourmet frozen foods to supermarkets. His hobby is collecting the graffiti he has seen in countless men's rooms across the country. He has almost decided it's easier to die than to change, even though he hates his life. It is a sad, poignant tale with a hint of promise at the end. "Lunch at the Gotham Café" relates the bizarre experience a man has while meeting his soon-to-be-ex-wife and her lawyer at a trendy Manhattan restaurant. He's still hoping for reconciliation but events beyond his control give him a reality check in this wry, twisted tale. "The Little Sisters of Eluria" returns readers to King's mythic Dark Tower world for a vignette from the early life of Roland the Gunslinger. The title story is a potent character piece about a geeky teenager whose wild talents gain him a job as an e-mail assassin. "1408" is an effective ghost chiller set in a haunted hotel room and "In the Deathroom" pits a man against ruthless South American interrogators. "The Death of Jack Hamilton," the newest of the stories, is a fictionalized account of events in the last days of the John Di!linger gang. King has a flair for period crime fiction, seen in some of his earlier stories. He revels in the characters and the mood of the time and personalizes a group of larger-than-life mobsters. "The Road Virus Heads North" is a Twilight Zone clone that builds tension without much substance. "LT's Theory of Pets" is a funny shaggy-dog story best experienced in the audio version. On the page, the story builds to a somewhat confusing end. Even though there are a couple of weak stories—"Luckey Quarter" was a poor choice to close the book—this is easily a far better collection than Nightmares and Dreamscapes. King's skill as a short story writer has improved immeasurably over the years and readers should find much to enjoy between these covers. Web site and all contents © Copyright Bev Vincent 2007. All rights reserved. |
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