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bacase 's review for:
Different Seasons
by Stephen King
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
This short story collection had 3 out of 4 works turned into major films. Naturally I haven't seen any of them though. Anyway, let's get into it.
Shawshank Redemption: 4/5. Generally very good, but feels a bit like a rough draft for the Green Mile (1996). The plots are fairly different with Shawshank having 0 supernatural elements, but similar settings, themes, and narrators leave the two works too similar for the same calendar year. I just felt Green Mile was more satisfying but maybe that's just because I read it first.
Apt Pupil: First off... wtf. Like... It's good but also... I didn't need to read it. It's called Summer of Corruption and it is a lot of that so... I don't know how you would even rate it. It IS really good... But vile.
The Body: 5/5. My favorite in the collection. This is the story Stand By Me is based on and I thought both how good of a story it was and how boring of a movie it would be lol. Steven King really shines when writing children, at least boys. He captured the essence of stupid confidence and childhood fear together so well. The characters feel real without shying away from real life problems. I enjoyed the dialogue and how colloquial it was for the region and time period. Overall, just really liked it.
The Breathing Method: 3/5. This one is fine. The story is two sections, the story of the breathing method and the story of where the MC hears the story. The whole thing I read in an hour or two. It feels like a campfire story in that it's very simple and mildly spooky. The setting where the MC hears the story is very interesting but more to intrigue than is it really explored. I'm not super familiar with King's full works so maybe he does use the setting concept in another work (and if so I want to read that one for sure)
As with any short story collection, some are better than others. Although this was published in the middle of his career, it seems he wrote all of these stories fairly early which I find fascinating. I thought the overall theming of the stories to the seasons/book as a whole was very crisp and well done. 4 to 4.5 out of 5
Shawshank Redemption: 4/5. Generally very good, but feels a bit like a rough draft for the Green Mile (1996). The plots are fairly different with Shawshank having 0 supernatural elements, but similar settings, themes, and narrators leave the two works too similar for the same calendar year. I just felt Green Mile was more satisfying but maybe that's just because I read it first.
Apt Pupil: First off... wtf. Like... It's good but also... I didn't need to read it. It's called Summer of Corruption and it is a lot of that so... I don't know how you would even rate it. It IS really good... But vile.
The Body: 5/5. My favorite in the collection. This is the story Stand By Me is based on and I thought both how good of a story it was and how boring of a movie it would be lol. Steven King really shines when writing children, at least boys. He captured the essence of stupid confidence and childhood fear together so well. The characters feel real without shying away from real life problems. I enjoyed the dialogue and how colloquial it was for the region and time period. Overall, just really liked it.
The Breathing Method: 3/5. This one is fine. The story is two sections, the story of the breathing method and the story of where the MC hears the story. The whole thing I read in an hour or two. It feels like a campfire story in that it's very simple and mildly spooky. The setting where the MC hears the story is very interesting but more to intrigue than is it really explored. I'm not super familiar with King's full works so maybe he does use the setting concept in another work (and if so I want to read that one for sure)
As with any short story collection, some are better than others. Although this was published in the middle of his career, it seems he wrote all of these stories fairly early which I find fascinating. I thought the overall theming of the stories to the seasons/book as a whole was very crisp and well done. 4 to 4.5 out of 5