Book Review: Different Seasons

Source: Amazon.com

Different Seasons, by Stephen King

From the book’s cover (summary from StephenKing.com):

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption--the most satisfying tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape since The Count of Monte Cristo.

Apt Pupil--a golden California schoolboy and an old man whose hideous past he uncovers enter into a fateful and chilling mutual parasitism.

The Body--four rambunctious young boys venture into the Maine woods and in sunlight and thunder find life, death, and intimations of their own mortality.

The Breathing Method--a tale told in a strange club about a woman determined to give birth no matter what.


The review:

Different Seasons is composed of four different semi-short stories (might even refer to them as novelettes?), and so I will handle each separately.

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: I can't recall who said it, but I heard the movie version of this story was called "the feel-good prison movie of the year" upon it's release. I liked the story, though the subject matter is definitely heavy stuff. I mean, you've got prison homosexuality/violence and... well, is not a nice story, but the ending is happy. And really, that is all I am impressed upon by this one. But even though I haven't seen the movie based on it, that I can specifically recall, I'd recommend this story for those who saw the movie and liked it. How's that for a cop-out?

I can't recall if I have actually seen this movie or not, to be honest.  It seems vaguely familiar.  But maybe that is just coincidence, seeing as I have read the novella it is based upon. / Source: RogerEbert.com

Apt Pupil: This one starts off as a sort of personal hell for an ex-Nazi SS Death Camp commandant. When a junior high boy happens to recognize him and, having a near-manic obsession with Nazi atrocities, the kid then blackmails the older man into spilling all his secrets. At first Denger, aka Kurt Dussander, commander of the fictitious Pateen concentration camp, feels smothered by Troy Bowden's attentions. But after a couple of years, the boy's nagging questions die away and are replaced by a budding psychosis, while the old Nazi's evil is re-animated by the attention from the boy.

The story is dark. Again, King hits on perversity, sexuality, and explores anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in a scatter-shot manner. The story is pretty good, and the ending is in near equal parts climactic, predictable (the web of lies falls apart) and unpredictable (one of our characters goes out quietly, while the other goes out with a bang - and the foreshadowing is there, but it is still pretty stark when the last sentence is read). A real exploration into the proverbial heart of darkness here.

To be honest (and what does it say about me that I feel this way?) of the three stories in this particular collection that have been made into movies, I am most interested in seeing the celluloid version of Apt Pupil.  Personally, I found the story refreshing in comparison to the others.  Though of course it was quite dark.  It was the most unique of the four offerings in Different Seasons. / Source: boekennieuws.nl

The Body: This one got a bit slow in places. It seems more like a conglomeration of King's other stuff, with familiar themes. The decaying corpse in the fill-in-the-blank (woods, in this case, but King uses this set piece in various locales often enough), the city dump, the mean gang of older boys, the plucky group of misfits, the parental issues... There is even Hubie Marston, the dead guy from the novel Salem's Lot who hanged himself in his house; the same house that would be the setting for most of that book's horrific events which follow.

The train trestle is new to me, but King may have used it in something I haven't read. Truth is, I can't help but wonder if this story, or many of its elements, are qausi-autobiographical. I don't know enough of the author's history to say, though I've read a fair amount of his works. To be honest, this piece is the weakest of the four (that I've read so far) in my opinion. Not that it isn't interesting, but the mish-mash of familiar themes coupled with the juvenile language (an f-word almost every other sentence, and plenty of other crudity) and difficulty in sympathizing with the main characters as well as you do in some of King's better stuff leaves this one off my recommendation list.

Update: Found out this one is the basis for the film Stand By Me, which I have never seen, but have heard good things about. Interesting. To re-state, it (the novella) just didn't do that much for me. Oh well.

I'll have to find time to watch this movie, one of these days.  To see if it is any better than the short story it is based upon.  Sadly, I was not really impressed. / Source: Wikipedia.org

The Breathing Method: At last, a bit of familiar territory. Well, sort of. You see, The Body was familiar, but also too familiar. Does that make sense? What I mean is, The Breathing Method has enough spooky around the edges - a quasi-horror story, if you will - to make it recognizable to someone who has spent most of his time in King's parlor (if you'll forgive the turn-of-phrase) just looking at the scary/spooky decorations instead of admiring the sheer craftsmanship. Granted, as I have said before, I think King has talent. But where he truly shines is in spooky, and The Breathing Method alludes to spooky in enough places to feel like familiar stomping grounds.

The story revolves around a telling of a tale on a cold winter evening. The tale is told in a men's club, a sort of old boy's affiliation, with mystery surrounding it. However, the subject matter is fairly mundane up until the end. A young woman is having a baby out of wedlock, which in the period the story-teller is covering is still pretty taboo - the 1930s (this story is actually a person relating another person's story, which is a trip in and of itself). The doctor who is telling the tale becomes quite fond of the young woman, and then has to attend to her delivery under extremely adverse circumstances. I'll leave the details for those who wish to read the tale themselves. I'll say that it isn't King's best stuff, as it does stay as close to the idea of the book being "straight" stuff as it can. However, it still was more interesting to me than The Body.



The author, Stephen King. How's that for a twist?  I usually put the author's photograph near the beginning of the review, but this time, it's at the end. / Source: sporeflections.files.wordpress.com

The downside on The Breathing Method? The recording I was listening to was a poor one, with numerous skips in the tale that left holes that were tough to fill in. I don't even know the way the story ends. The man narrating it goes to ask the club butler something, and then the recording skipped and... well it's like when I was watching Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds all over again. I had recorded that film off late night TV as a teenager - and when the pivotal scene came when the young heroine is creeping up the stairs with noises in the attic, just as she goes to open the door and see what is going on, the recording stopped! Talk about a twist for me. I still haven't seen the end of the movie to this day. I've had people tell me how it ends, but somehow the un-ended movie is more thrilling to me than the actual conclusion might have been. I'll never really know. At least not until I actually break down and watch it, that is.

So, for Different Seasons, you get a three pretty good ones, and one mundane (in my opinion). Overall, not King's best short story collection that I've read. But it was decent, and worth the read if you are a King aficionado.

Learn more about Different Seasons, by Stephen King, On Amazon.com


The parting comment:

Source: LOLSnaps.com

Speaking of different seasons.  That kid has a career as an artist.  He really knows how to tell the truth and yet totally convey something that's polar opposite in meaning.