Product Description

Different Seasons contains four stories with an interlacing of horror that capture the dark corners of our times. In Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, a man convicted of a bloody murder lives in prison brutally ruled by a sadistic warden and secretly run by a con who knows all the ropes and pulls all the strings. He has more brains than anyone else in this sinister slammer, and a diabolically cunning plan of revenge that no one can guess until it's too late. And brace yourself for icy shock in three more stunning novellas of suspense. Four young boys come face to face with life, death and hints of their own mortality....A teenager becomes both the puppet and the puppet master of evil... A disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death. The greatest horror master of our time turns the screws of suspense to lock you into terrifying tension and nerve-tingling twists.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #85461 in Books
• Published on: 1993-05-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Different Seasons is a collection of four novellas, markedly different in tone and subject, each on the theme of a journey. The first is a rich, satisfying, non-horrific tale about an innocent man who carefully nurtures hope and devises a wily scheme to escape from prison. The second concerns a boy who discards his innocence by enticing an old man to travel with him into a reawakening of long-buried evil. In the third story, a writer looks back on the trek he took with three friends on the brink of adolescence to find another boy's corpse. The trip becomes a character-rich rite of passage from youth to maturity.

These first three novellas have been made into well-received movies: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption into Frank Darabont's 1994 The Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil into Bryan Singer's 1998 film Apt Pupil, and The Body into Rob Reiner's Stand by Me (1986).

The final novella, Breathing Lessons is a horror yarn told by a doctor, about a patient whose indomitable spirit keeps her baby alive under extraordinary circumstances. It's the tightest, most polished tale in the collection. --Fiona Webster

Synopsis
Four Stephen King novellas. "Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption" tells of unfair imprisonment and escape; "Apt Pupil" features a boy and a former death-camp commandant; "The Body" deals with loss of innocence; and in "The Breathing Method" a woman determines to give birth, no matter what.

Customer Reviews

Incredible Collection
Different Seasons is a collection of 4 novella's, each rather different but all incredibly well written. The four novella's are 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redeption', 'The Body', 'Apt Pupil' and 'The Breathing Method'.

The novella's are somewhat different to King's other work. The novella's do have undertone's of horror in them, but horror or the aim to scare the reader is not the point of the collection. Each of the novella's are full of emotion, humour and suspense - which helps create some of King's best work.

'The Body', later made into the popular 'Stand By Me', is my favourite of the novella's. It is a great story of friendship and growing up, which King writes well about in this and in 'It'.

Buy this now!! You won't be dissappointed!

Art of the Novella
Different Seasons is a collection of 4 novellas, each set in a different season. The stories do not interlink except for a few minor references to each other here and there.

The most notable thing that will first hit you upon reading is that none of the stories are horror, as you may have expected from Stephen King.
What you get are four beautifully crafted individual stories. However, it must be said that each story still does hint upon certain 'horror aspects', but I believe this to only be part of good storytelling and not King slipping into his usual typecast role. The final story 'The Breathing Method' has the strongest connection to horror, being very reminiscent of an Edgar Allan Poe story.

Three of the stories have been made into films, The Shawshank Redemption, The Body (Stand by Me) and Apt Pupil. So the likelihood is that you may have already seen at least one of the adaptations. Do not let this pass you up on reading Different Seasons. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption as well as Apt Pupil in novella form are far superior and enjoyable to their movie counterparts.

My personal favourite of the novellas in Different Seasons is Apt Pupil. The sheer human psychological torture and overall bleakness makes an outstanding read. It pushes far beyond what a film of our time would DARE to reference to. I should perhaps warn you of the bleakness you will find whilst reading it. But the human condition is a strange thing, and you will find yourself at times questioning why and how you are being entertained by reading it. Amazing.

Four out of four
Different Seasons is a collection of 4 novellas, and is notable for seeing King beginning to stretch away from writing just horror tales, though there is certainly enough macabre moments contained here to keep the more bloodthirsty fans happy. `Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption' tells the story of a wrongly convicted murderer and his escape from prison, seemingly a tale told so many times there's nothing more to add, but King transforms this into a beautifully moving character study. `Apt Pupil', while containing no supernatural elements, is certainly close to King's horror territory, being a disturbing a tale about a young boys blackmail of an ex-Nazi concentration camp commandant. A trifle overlong perhaps (this `novella' is around the same length of King's debut novel Carrie) but the bizarre double-blackmail relationship between the two characters is compulsive, and the dispassionate finale is memorable. `The Body' is undoubtedly the highlight of the collection, and certainly one of the best things King has ever written - a thinly-disguised childhood reminiscence fictionalised as a successful authors thinly-disguised childhood reminiscence - it captures brilliantly the coming of age from childhood to adulthood, and features some of King's best prose. Finally `The Breathing Method' is a back to basics old-fashioned horror story - all the basic tropes are familiar genre favourites: the mysterious gentleman's club where Lovecraftian things slither out of sight in upstairs rooms; the Victorian-style Christmas fireside ghost story - but King injects some modern-day grand guignol splatter horror to keep things fresh - slightly ridiculous, but good fun.

With four long stories in different genres, and every one in it's own way is successful, this is an excellent collection, and one of King's best books.