Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - Different Seasons

Reviews tagging 'Racial slurs'

Different Seasons by Stephen King

10 reviews

joshkiba13's review against another edition

dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Four novellas 😎

"Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" - I was surprisingly underwhelmed my this one. The film is one of my favorites of all time, but the novella seemed so much less intimate; much more distant. I didn't get that sense of hope and triumph that the film gave me.

"Apt Pupil" - By far the darkest and most grotesque work I've read by King, but it was such an alluring and interesting story watching a boy become corrupted by morbid curiosity and obsession.

"The Body" - I read this by itself back in January and really enjoyed it. King has come out and said that this story (minus the device of the body) is pretty autobiographical, so that makes it cool when you look at these 4 young boys maturing and coming into their own. Gordie comes to love telling stories, and I was so touched by Chris's grappling with who he wanted to be versus how he was expected to be.

"The Breathing Method" - I read this one in one sitting (only ~70pgs). Such a simple concept: men gathering by a fire to tell stories (or "tales"). An aged doctor tells a haunting story of a birth that widened my eyes and dropped my jaw.

King states in his Afterword that even if stories he writes aren't "horror" per se, elements of that genre always slip in, which rings true with these four stories. I was touched, I was disturbed, and entertained. I love these words with which he ends his Afterword: "I hope that you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do---make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know." -Stephen King

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mmadill227's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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sareena's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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americattt's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark reflective tense

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

"Even if I'd known the right thing to say, I probably couldn't have said it. Speech destroys the functions of love, I think that's a hell of a thing for a writer to say, I guess, but I believe it to be true. If you speak to tell a deer you mean it no harm, it glides away with a single flip of its tail. The word is the harm. Love isn't what asshole poets like McKuen want you to think it is. Love has teeth; they bite; the wounds never close. No word, no combination of words, can close those lovebites. It's the other way around, that's the joke. If those wounds dry up, the words die with them. Take it from me. I've made my life from the words, and I know that is so."

favorite short story: the Body

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thecatsmum's review against another edition

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Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

If you're new to Stephen King, and you ask for recommendations on what to start with, this is likely going to be one of the first you're given.

I'm not going to tell you that this collection of four novellas are bad or should be avoided. Two are excellent, one is pretty good, and one is awful. They are all graphic and disturbing.

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption and The Body are great and have been adapted into what are now classic films. The novellas are much more explicit than the films, so check the content warnings. The Breathing Method is a classic gothic feeling King tale. The less said about Apt Pupil the better.

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cate_with_a_c's review against another edition

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3.0

Not really impressed by this set of Novellas but the Body had some good parts to it.
My main critique is that in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, the way Andy is revealed to be Black is really bad. The story itself is 113 pages and on page 100 Red (who is white Irish guy) says Andy was a good n word.
I’ve read a lot of King and he is not afraid to use slurs especially for certain time periods when it’s more accepted but wow it looks like he really just wanted to use it right before the story wrapped up. It added nothing to the novella.

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