Different Seasons by Stephen King

Four spine-chilling stories by the grand master of the supernatural, stories with an interlacing of horror that capture the ever-growing dark corners of our century.

"Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" - a compulsive and bizarre story of unjust imprisonment and escape.

"Apt Pupil" - a golden schoolboy and an old man with a hideous past join in a dreadful union.

"The Body" - four young boys venture into the woods and find life, death... and the end of innocence.

"The Breathing Method" - a macabre story told in a strange club of a woman determined to give birth - no matter what.

Though only the last story is truly a “horror” story, the stories tell of different horrors: the horror of being imprisoned for a crime you didn’t commit, the horror of the concentration camps, the horror in facing ones mortality, and, lastly, the horror of the supernatural.

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is very close to the movie, so it wasn’t hard to “see” what was going on. And even having seen the movie several times, I still enjoyed the story.

Apt Pupil is probably my favorite of the four. And also the longest, which may be part of the reason. The reader gets to know the characters more thoroughly, their descent, past and present, fully realized.

The Body was interesting, though probably the least horrifying.

With The Breathing Method I wasn’t sure which was more horrifying, the woman’s fate, or what it is the teller of the tale has gotten himself into.

Altogether, four strong stories that are well worth reading.





Mount TBR 2023 Book Links

( Mount TBR 2023 Book Links 1-40 )

41. The Power by Naomi Alderman
42. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
43. Day Zero (Sea of Rust #0) by C. Robert Cargill
44. Dog Days by Ericka Waller
45. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
46. The Passage (The Passage #1) by Justin Cronin
47. Kallocain by Karin Boye, Gustaf Lannestock (Translator), Richard B. Vowles (Introduction)
48. The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) by M.R. Carey
49. Different Seasons by Stephen King







Set in the past

1. The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
2. Different Seasons by Stephen King (three of the four stories are set in the narrator's past)