I felt like re-visiting this collection of four dark and disturbing novellas of varying quality, all centred around the themes of justice, complicity and retribution.
I first read it more than ten years ago and had formed pretty much the same impressions then as I did now. The book feels a bit like a sandwich, with two somewhat weaker if still entertaining stories bookended by two stronger ones, with the last novella, A Good Marriage, especially outstanding. It in fact might be one of my favourite things King has ever written, and probably the main reason this book has survived my book culls.
The opening novella, 1922, is distinctly different to the rest: it’s set in Nebraska rather than King’s native New England, in the relatively distant past, and is the only story here told in the first person. Our narrator is a small farmer named Wilfred James, who writes his confession while holed up in a hotel a long way from home. His crime is the murder of his shrewish wife Arlette, who wished to sell the family farm so that they could move to the city. Wilfred manages to talk his fourteen-year-old son into killing Arlette, but her grisly and revolting death is only the beginning as dire consequences are visited upon Wilfred and his younger accomplice.
I found 1922 even more compulsively readable than first time around. There’s a hint of supernatural to this tale, but you’re never sure if the vengeful haunting is for real or if it exists solely in the narrator’s disturbed, guilt-ridden imagination. I forgot many details of the novella and how far-reaching and tragic the impact of the murder is. Also, just about any story becomes more creepy when rats are thrown into the mix!
Big Driver is the story of Tess, writer of popular cozy mysteries about crime-solving knitting ladies. On the way back from a book club event, she takes a shortcut on a recommendation, and ends up brutally raped and almost killed by the Big Driver of the title, a towering mountain of a man. Like most of the protagonists in this collection, Tess finds herself split, with a darker self or New Tess emerging after the horrific experience she decides to keep a secret. The excruciatingly detailed aftermath of the rape is followed by Tess’ Old Testament-style revenge quest, which is efficiently done but is perhaps too predictable and drawn out. It just managed to keep my interest, but this novella was easily my least favourite.
Fair Extension belongs to the supernatural sub-genre I’ve always had a soft spot for, the classic Deal with the Devil. The Evil One here comes masked as mysterious Mr Elvid, and his newest customer is Dave Streeter, who has incurable cancer and mere months or weeks left to live. Mr Elvid offers him a life extension that – what else – comes with a catch: the misfortunes placed on Streeter must be transferred onto somebody else, someone he knows and hates in his personal life (a North Korea dictator won’t do).
Mr Elvid is a fairly silly creation, but this dark story of jealousy and festering resentment has a certain pull, until it arrives at the conclusion that feels kinda abrupt and disappointing. I think the story meant to say something profound about degradation of a soul and never-ending hunger for more, I’m just not convinced it pulled it off. Unlike Big Driver it at least has brevity on its side.
The final novella restores the balance with a harrowing story of Darcy Anderson, an ordinary woman in her forties who’s enjoyed a long, ordinary marriage to her very ordinary husband Bob, an accountant and coin collector. One day, while Bob is away on a business trip, Darcy finds something unexpected in the garage that leads to the only conclusion: her husband is a serial killer with a long trail of victims over the decades. Darcy is terrified, not only of what Bob might do to her if he finds out, but what the outside world would do to her family if it was revealed that Darcy slept next to a monster all these years. Would they believe that she was an unsuspecting innocent, or would they assume the worst?
A Good Marriage is a very simple idea brilliantly executed, with some brutal twists and turns and a very realistic, sympathetic heroine. It does a marvellous job playing on the fear that we might never know the full truth about those closest to us. I wished that all the stories in this collection were as strong, but it was still fun to go back to, though next time I might bring along something less gruesome as a beach read.
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