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nj-classifieds.net - Just After Sunset: Stories
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List Price: $28.00
Our Price: $13.39
Your Save: $ 14.61 ( 52% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Scribner
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781416584087
ISBN: 1416584080
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2008-11-11
Publisher: Scribner
Release Date: 2008-11-11
Studio: Scribner
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Yawn
Comment: Stephen King waffles, Stephen King burbles.
Stephen King could write a lot better if he halved the number of words.
The stories are not even especially scary.
The story of the running woman who sees a murder and then gets chased but escapes in the end.
And????
And silly stuff like the cat that supposedly causes accidents that kill people.
Its OK if you're 12 I guess.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fascinating reading
Comment: Stephen King again proves that he can mesmerize readers with his graphic imagination and story-spinning skills. JUST AFTER SUNSET, which plumbs an astonishing range of genres, gives fans everything they've come to anticipate from him. As the author explains in his introduction, he has been away from the short story game for a while. His last collection, EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL, was published more than six years ago. In fact, King tells us, he feared he had lost his knack entirely. But serving as an editor for one of the annual BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES reinspired him.
King starts us out gently with "Willa." David is surprised to discover that his fiancée, Willa, left the Amtrak station where they and a group of fellow travelers are stranded. When he decides to ignore the others' advice and go look for her, he finds her where he would most expect to find her --- or at least that's the way it seems at first. The plot twists in a manner that both shocks and (on second thought) feels entirely logical.
In "The Gingerbread Girl," Emily begins running compulsively in an attempt to deal with an unbearable tragedy. She runs from her husband, landing in her father's "conch shack," a summer cottage on a Florida Key. She continues to run, run, run, just as fast as she can. And while she does, she marvels that the area has been taken over by the wealthy who have built McMansions everywhere. The huge homes are mostly deserted in the summer since their owners use them to get away during winter. But when she can't resist taking a peek behind the gate of one monstrosity, she is stopped in her tracks.
A husband recounts a nightmare in "Harvey's Dream" that begins slowly --- but watch out for that inevitable kicker. In "Rest Stop," a mild-mannered professor answering a late-night call of nature interrupts a nasty scene of abuse in a roadside restroom. Who can he call for help?
Expect to experience vertigo while reading the brilliant "Stationary Bike." Richard Sifkitz explores a world within a world that makes him wonder which Russian nesting doll he's really living in. In the somehow ultimately comforting "The Things They Left Behind," how can a survivor cope when the possessions of co-workers killed on 9/11 persistently appear in his home? Definitely less reassuring is "Graduation Afternoon," in which Janice's worries about status and her wealthy boyfriend get a whopping dose of perspective.
In "N.", therapist Johnny Bonsaint's sister wonders why and how he died, especially after she reads his disturbing notes on one of his patients. "The Cat from Hell" is a classic horrorfest, featuring one particularly unforgettable scene.
King displays his romantic side as well as his fascination with what comes after death in the quiet "The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates." A priest has never heard a confession like the one he listens to in "Mute," while one explanation for miracles weaves through "Ayana."
Try though they might, readers will never forget the plight of poor Curtis Johnson, who is trapped in "A Very Tight Place." (I'm not easily grossed out, but this story has to be the most disgusting thing I've ever read. [I suspect King will take that as a compliment, especially since I still could not stop reading.])
Readers won't want to skip over the author's notes at the end of JUST AFTER SUNSET, in which King explains how each story came to him. His ingenuity makes for fascinating reading --- a kind of dessert after devouring a deliciously disturbing 13-course dinner served up by a master creator.
--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon
Customer Rating:
Summary: King Rewards His Constant Reader
Comment: Are you a Stephen King fan? Do you enjoy his weird, sometimes perverse sense of humor? If so, "Just After Sunset" should be right up your alley. Stephen King has been at the top of my must read list since I first stumbled upon "Carrie" and "Salem's Lot" many many years ago. He has become a cultural icon since those days with so many best sellers, movie and television tie-ins that his name has become synonymous with horror and supernatural fiction. King has mastered many story formats including novels, novellas, serializations, audios, long ranging epics, internet fiction, and, of course, short stories.
In the introduction to "Just After Sunset," King mentions how the structure of a good short story differs from a novel and how managing issues of character development, backstory, and time-frame have to be "minituarized" to make things work. Those Constant Readers among us who have devoured everything he has published are sure to have wished, at times, that some of his more wordy and extended efforts had been miniturarized by 50 or 100 pages. That is why he characteristically is so good in his short story compilations such as "Skeleton Crew" and "Night Shift". While "Just After Sunset" is not up to the level of the two previously mentioned collections, it is still a worthy read of 13 King tales ranging from "The Cat From Hell" written in 1977 to "N.", his most recent creation.
I have always considered King's greatest gift when he is really "on" to be his ability to paint word pictures in the reader's mind...he can in a few words or allusions create a picture of which he writes immediately in the reader's consciousness, often making it seem almost like a movie in one's mind. I think that is one significant factor that explains why so many of his works have been translated into screen productions of one sort or another. A great deal of what happens in the stories in "Just after Sunset" is cerebral in nature which forces the reader to decide if the protagonist is plain crazy or prophetic when no one else listens such as in "N." and "The Things They Left behind".
Make no mistake, King can still evoke a sense of horror or dread in his reader in a matter of paragraphs sometimes. "The Gingerbread Girl" and "Harvey's" Dream" quickly engulf the reader in growing horror. I rated "Just After Sunset" with 4 stars only because I have previously read many of the stories in this compilation previously in other venues...but I do highly recommend it to the Constant Reader or to anyone else who might want to get their feet wet with a little vintage King.
Customer Rating:
Summary: He's BAAAACCCKKK!
Comment: What It's About: A compilation of short stories by Stephen King, drudged up from the horrifying yet fascinating shadows of his mind.
Why I Picked It Up: I'm always first in line for a Stephen King book. He's a classic favorite who never disappoints, but who, unlike many best-selling authors today, can put together a story--or series of stories--that stick in your mind long after you close the cover.
What I Liked: A lot of horror authors pick either the supernatural side of horror or the "human monster" side, and stick with their choice. King skips effortlessly across the line, from ghosts to wife-beaters and strange angel-like spirits to millionaires with homicidal hobbies.
What I Didn't: Most of the stories were either brand-new or recycled from King's magazine-writing days in the seventies. I don't mind the really old recycles; lets face it, either you weren't born or literate yet, or you had no idea who King was in those days. However, one story, Stationary Bike, was recycled from another compilation King published just a few years ago, Everything's Eventual. I felt gypped; I don't want to pay twenty dollars for a hardcover book to read stuff that I just spent twenty dollars to read in 2002.
What Was Different: Having followed King for years, I find it interesting how his characters have aged. He's no longer writing about people in their thirties and forties; he's writing about retirees, people with bad hips and trick knees and high cholesterol. The best thing? I just turned 28 today, and I'm still hooked.
Overall: If you're a big King fan, definitely go out and buy this to add to your collection. If not...well, maybe get it from the library. It was good, but probably not the kind of good where you're going to read it over and over again. Cover's pretty, though. Three-and-a-half Cheez-Its out of Five.
Jacquelyn Sylvan
Author, Surviving Serendipity
www.sylvaniamania.com
Customer Rating:
Summary: Underwhelming
Comment: Stephen King is one of the most successful living authors in America, writing iconic masterpieces of horror such as "The Shining", "Salem's Lot", "The Stand" and "Cujo", among others.
What these works have in common is the ability to find the macabre and horror in everyday situations involving common people, and his best works are long and often rambling affairs that lead one gradually into the center of the fantastic and/or supernatural elements.
I've never really cared much for his forays into "mainstream" fiction, such as "Misery". Further, even some of his more recent "horror" has seemed diluted compared to his classics - "Duma Key" and "Cell" come immediately to mind.
However, being a lover of anthologies, I thought I'd give "Just After Sunset" a spin. I have to say I was very disappointed.
The stories seem small without any real payoff at their ends. I found "N." to be totally predictable after just a couple of pages, in addition to highly annoying in the repetitive detailing of the character's obsessive/compulsive actions. I was skipping paragraphs and even pages at a time, not a good thing in a short story.
There wasn't any real "horror" involved, as far as I could tell. I suspect that if these stories had been submitted for publication without the "Stephen King" label attached, they'd have been returned with a polite letter of refusal.
There was a time a couple of decades or so ago when a King short story collection was a promise of a smorgasbord fright-fest. Evidently, those days are gone.
Anyway, it sure didn't work in this compendium.
I'll give it the extra star for Lifetime Achievement, though. So, two stars.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Stephen King -- who has written more than fifty books, dozens of number one New York Times bestsellers, and many unforgettable movies -- delivers an astonishing collection of short stories, his first since Everything's Eventual six years ago. As guest editor of the bestselling Best American Short Stories 2007, King spent over a year reading hundreds of stories. His renewed passion for the form is evident on every page of Just After Sunset. The stories in this collection have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, Esquire, and other publications. Who but Stephen King would turn a Port-O-San into a slimy birth canal, or a roadside honky-tonk into a place for endless love? A book salesman with a grievance might pick up a mute hitchhiker, not knowing the silent man in the passenger seat listens altogether too well. Or an exercise routine on a stationary bicycle, begun to reduce bad cholesterol, might take its rider on a captivating -- and then terrifying -- journey. Set on a remote key in Florida, "The Gingerbread Girl" is a riveting tale featuring a young woman as vulnerable -- and resourceful -- as Audrey Hepburn's character in Wait Until Dark. In "Ayana," a blind girl works a miracle with a kiss and the touch of her hand. For King, the line between the living and the dead is often blurry, and the seams that hold our reality intact might tear apart at any moment. In one of the longer stories here, "N.," which recently broke new ground when it was adapted as a graphic digital entertainment, a psychiatric patient's irrational thinking might create an apocalyptic threat in the Maine countryside...or keep the world from falling victim to it. Just After Sunset -- call it dusk, call it twilight, it's a time when human intercourse takes on an unnatural cast, when nothing is quite as it appears, when the imagination begins to reach for shadows as they dissipate to darkness and living daylight can be scared right out of you. It's the perfect time for Stephen King.
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