More than Just a Horror

Title: Different Seasons
Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Signet
Publication Year: 1983
Rating: A

My respect for Stephen King solidifies more and more with each of his works I read. Prior to reading any of his horror stories, I read his memoir On Writing, an awe-inspiring glimpse into the mind of one of America’s most successful authors. Next I read The Stand, which I have reviewed here. Different Seasons is my third encounter with King’s work.

Different Seasons is a compilation of four novellas, two of which you may have seen recounted before in the movies Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me. Each story contains simple, charismatic characters. Each story exposes a brutality of sorts, but also includes tenderness and friendship, sometimes in the oddest of places. King brilliantly places “Apt Pupil,” whose main character is a thirteen-year-old boy obsessed with the atrocities of the concentration camps and whose only friend is an ex-Nazi general, next to “The Body,” a story of four lovable thirteen-year-old boys on a summer adventure. These stories are book-ended by first a story about starting a new life, the last a story about a grotesque and early death.

One of my favorite aspects of the book is the personal words from the author in the Afterword. He discusses what it was like falling into the role of horror writer. He brings to the reader’s attention how the novellas included in Different Seasons – “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” “Apt Pupil,” “The Body,” and “The Breathing Method” – were a break from his usual material. Yet each contains something horrific.

King explains how each of these stories came out of him after finishing one of his novels, and “it’s as if I’ve always finished the big job with just enough gas left in the tank to blow off one good-sized novella.” I’m always fond of glimpses into the minds of my favorite writers. And although these stories may have been created with “just enough gas left in the tank,” these stories are still incredible.