I admit this without a scrap of shame - in fact I revel in it. I am a complete Stephen King fan-girl! My brother gave me King’s vampire opus Salem’s Lot when I was 13 and I have been hooked ever since. He is the only author whose next book I await with bated breath and he rarely disappoints. Granted, some books are better than others, but with a catalogue of over 70 works, that is hardly surprising. Even when he’s below par, he still has that distinctive style, that familiarity, those recurring themes that make you think he is talking directly to you, his ‘constant reader’.
Why do I love Stephen King’s books so much? He writes about people and their flaws better than any other author I have read. He takes ordinary people, places them in extraordinary situations and lets it all play out. What emerges is usually quite strange, typically with a twist of horror or the supernatural thrown in, but not always. He is America’s pre-eminent writer of horror fiction but has thrown his net much wider to embrace fantasy (the Dark Tower series) and science fiction (11/22/63).
Some people are quite snobby about King’s writing. To anyone that has any about doubts how well he writes, I would strongly recommend reading his book On Writing which is not only a memoir of his craft but also a guide for aspiring writers. I would also recommend it to anyone thinking about doing or currently undertaking an English degree.
King excels at writing short stories and has written several that are so good that they have been made into films, most notably The Shawshank Redemption. It was nominated for seven Oscars in 1994, including one for its director Frank Darabont (executive producer of The Walking Dead). Shawshank currently holds the top spot on the Internet Movie Database ‘Top 250 Films of All Time’. However, the most well-known film adaptation of King’s work is The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson. King famously hated it because he thought Kubrick had ignored essential themes that appeared in the book but the film is an acknowledged horror classic. King has written a sequel to The Shining called Doctor Sleep which comes out on 24th September. I can’t wait!
The Stand, King’s apocalyptic tale of good versus evil made it to number 53 in the BBC’s ‘Big Read’, a 2003 compilation of the UK’s top 100 novels. While I love this book, at over 1000 pages long, it is a doorstopper! For anyone looking for something less daunting, I would recommend Different Seasons, the short story collection that not only contains Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption but also The Body which was made into a wonderful film called Stand by Me, starring River Phoenix.
The Guardian is currently running a series online called Rereading Stephen King. James Smythe, author, journalist and super-fan is rereading every book written by King in chronological order and posting his thoughts on each one roughly every three weeks. It is a fantastic way to get into King and the comments following each post are excellent!
I could go on and on about Stephen King (and quite frequently do - just ask my long-suffering colleagues) but I will conclude by saying that he sounds like a pretty good guy in real life as well. He has recently pledged to pay a third of the estimated $9m cost of refurbishing his local library in Bangor, Maine. That makes him alright in my book!
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Mrs Osafo