Product Description

Written by the author of "Carrie", "Salem's Lot", "The shining" and "Christine", this novel features Thad Beaumont, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who has developed a lucrative thriller-writing alter ego named George Stark. He stops being fun so Beaumont wants to kill him.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #193806 in Books
• Published on: 1993-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In 1985, 39-year-old Stephen King announced in public that his pseudonymous alter ego, Richard Bachman, was dead. (Never mind that he revived him years later to write The Regulators.) At the beginning of The Dark Half, 39-year-old writer Thad Beaumont announces in public that his own pseudonym, George Stark, is dead.

Now, King didn't want to jettison the Bachman novel, titled Machine Dreams, that was he working on. So he incorporated it in The Dark Half as the crime oeuvre of George Stark, whose recurring hero/alter ego is an evil character named Alexis Machine.

Thad Beaumont's pseudonym is not so docile as Stephen King's, though, and George Stark bursts forth into reality. At that point, two stories kick into gear: a mystery-detective story about the crime spree of George Stark (or is it Alexis Machine?) and a horror story about Beaumont's struggle to catch up with his doppelganger and kill him dead.

This is not the first time that Stephen King has written a dark allegory about the fiction writer's situation. As the New York Times writes, Misery (1987) is a parable in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his audience, which holds him prisoner and dictates what he writes, on pain of death. The Dark Half is a parable in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his creative genius, the vampire within him, the part of him that only awakes to raise Cain when he writes, the fratricidal twin who occupies "the womblike dungeon" of his imagination." --Fiona Webster

Review
'A writer of excellence...King is one of the most fertile storytellers of the modern novel' -- The Sunday Times 'King is unbeatable' -- Mirror 'Not since Dickens has a writer had so many readers by the throat!King's imagination is vast...one of the great storytellers of our time' -- Guardian

Mirror
'King is unbeatable’

Customer Reviews

Very Stephen King...very gory!!!
I read this a few years ago and the story has managed to stay pretty well intact in my mind. That shows that this is a good story.

It's about an author who, as a child, suffered with bad headaches. On examination, the doctors find that he has a growth in his brain. When they go in to operate, they discover the growth is actually body parts of what can only have been his twin. Somehow they have started growing and so they are removed.

Years later, Thad Beaumont becomes a very successful writer. But the books he writes are beginning to get him down as they all tell tales of a pretty nasty character. As well received as these are, Thad decides to retire the character and move on to other, nicer stories.

The character, George Stark, isn't happy about this and decides to stop Thad. How is this possible you might well ask? Anything is possible in the safe hands of King.

Then begins a truly horrifying tale of good vs evil as Thad comes to realise that George isn't just a figment of his imagination. He will do anything to protect his wife and twins, and George will do anything to stay a part of this world....

Another excellent book from one of the greatest storytellers
I have read a large number of Stephen King books and am yet to find a disappointing title. The Dark Half was excellent in the way King manages to base a story around such a small amount of characters yet still engages the reader from start to finish.

Another stand out point from previous novels I have read from King was the excessive gore used to describes the murders in the story. These however only manage to emphasise the scares and thrills contained in the plot.

For me it would undoubtedly have won a five star rating, if only the ending had been slightly more inspiring, but to be honest the rest of the book alone makes up for any slight let down.

joe hindley

King uses his own life as a basis for one of his best books!
Written shortly after Stephen King revealed his own alter-ego, The Dark-Half takes the pseudonym author idea to the worst possible case scenario! What would you do if your alter-ego came to life and started killing everyone close to you in a desperate bid to make you write the book which would save his soul. A great yarn and a wonderfully abstract view of the heart of schizophrenia. Read it and see for yourself.