Product Description

A compelling and captivating collection - the first volume of stories from the international bestselling author in almost a decade.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81745 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-10
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
A new Stephen King book is always an event and Everything's Eventual--a collection of short stories that will be already familiar to King's die-hard fans--is a nicely timed appetiser for his next novel From a Buick 8.

Collected here are the stories published in the New Yorker and King's highly successful e-book Riding the Bullet and for those of you who haven't already seen them, it will be no surprise to learn that King explores a multitude of emotions and themes, from pure horror to simple everyday life. It's a very mixed bag but each and every one hits the mark as vignettes of a master storyteller who is equally at home with a short story as with 700-page blockbuster.

Particular standouts include the previous audio-only tales "LT's Theory of Pets" and "1408". Twists and turns abound and there are plenty of characters to love and loathe in equal measure. But King is at his best when writing about the nature of the human spirit and its enduring capacity for both good and evil--there is plenty here that explores both. --Jonathan Weir

Synopsis
In this eerie, enchanting compilation, King takes readers down a road less travelled (for good reason) in the blockbuster e-book "Riding the Bullet", terror becomes deja vu all over again when you get "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It is in French" and LT has a theory about pets which will make you stop and think before giving one as a present to a loved one - along with eleven more stories that will keep you awake until dawn Nothing is quite as it seems. Expect the unexpected in this veritable treasure trove of enthralling, witty, dark tales that could only come from the imagination of the greatest storyteller of our time.

About the Author
Stephen King is the bestselling author of more than thirty books of which the most recent are HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, DREAMCATCHER and FROM A BUICK 8. He lives with his wife, the novelist Tabitha King, in Bangor, Maine.

Customer Reviews

Good Stuff. Worth the moey.
All you could ever want from Stephen King is in here. Short stories demand the writer get straight down to business, and these stories are great. They're funny, gross, weird, and some of them are laced with sadness.

LT's Theory of Pets, for example, is laugh-out-loud funny, but the ending leaves a bitter taste in the mouth; and is quite a shock to the system.

1408 - famous now because of it's film adaptation - is a cracker.

In Autopsy Room Four, King jacks-up the tension to ridiculous levels, keeping the reader on edge to the very end.

There are many others to mention, but why bother? Just buy the book because it is worth the dosh.

Not As Many Crackers As Usual
Of the three King short story collections I've read now, Everything's Eventual has for me been the weakest, and this is largely due to the fact that there aren't as many real horror stories in it, and so there were less that interested me and which I enjoyed. Of course, this is probably at least partly to do with the fact that there are less stories in it, full stop, than his other collections, but the fact remains nevertheless.

The clear standout in this book, though, is 1408, a haunted-hotel story which has just been made into a movie. This story really gets to you; it's scary BEFORE the main character ever enters the dreaded room 1408, and after...absolutely terrifying. King is a genius when it comes to creating a sense of atmosphere, making the reader feel exactly as the character in the story does - which in this case is very frightened. It's subtle, psychological terror, but it really works, and it scared me more than The Shining ever did. One of King's scariest ever stories.

I also enjoyed The Road Virus Heads North, which features a painting that moves and changes. Very effective and again conveys a sense of fear with ease and sucks you right in. And as an added bonus there is The Little Sisters of Eluria. I'm a huge Dark Tower fan, so it was great to return to Mid-World and share another adventure with Roland. It's interesting, although it doesn't really connect too much with the series' overall mythos; rather, even though it is technically a prelude to the Gunslinger, it seems quite detached from it. But any time I can spend reading a Dark Tower-related tale is bound to be time I'll enjoy.

I tend not to bother with King's more literary, non-supernatural tales, but one story in here gets a special mention: Autopsy Room Four. A man is bitten by a poisonous snake and wakes up to find himself on an autopsy table. Completely paralysed, he struggles to find a way to let the doctors know that he is still alive before they start cutting into him. Again, King writes so vividly that you are quickly whisked into this poor man's head, where you begin to feel the panic and terror he feels as the wicked surgical implements are revealed one by one. The story has a nice ending.

Overall, I enjoyed this collection less than King's others, but that is probably only because there were fewer stories in it that in those others.

Now I need to get hold of a copy of Skeleton Crew. I'm desperate to read The Mist before it's released on the big screen next year.

The King has left the building
This collection of short stories makes me very sad. Not that there is anything wrong with it; King is a deeply competent writer, even now when he says he's giving up. And when competence, craftsmanship, the ability to write, is what shines out of an author's work, rather than the glorious story itself, then it's time to stop.

There are a couple of stories which I found unreadable. The Little Sisters of Eluria utterly failed to overcome my antipathy to the Dark Tower stories; like Westerns, it's a mythology to which I'd like to subscribe, but in practice find it way beyond self-indulgent. The Death of Jack Hamilton felt like a schoolbook exercise in historical empathy, to no purpose whatsoever.

On the positive side, the title story with its intriguing image of a boy casting coins down a drain and classic-King menace of technology, is unputdownable, though the cul-de-sac of the ending is sadly all too predictable. Autopsy Room Four -- is he dead? -- too retains some of the old suspense.

But mainly these stories are an all too vivid illustration that there are only a limited number of plots in the world. We have not one but two variations on a theme of 'it was all a dream', a Dorian Grey in reverse haunted picture, a Shining-like haunted hotel room and an 'I met the Devil' tale straight out of a thousand folklore collections. All of which are fine: you know, they pass a train journey, but they're nothing great, nothing - especially - that King himself hasn't done better elsewhere.

I met someone on a train once who read fat paperbacks and tore the pages out as she went, because, she said, who'd want to read those books twice? Now I know what she meant.