The first collection of stores Stephen King has published since 'Nightmares & Dreamscapes' nine years ago includes one O. Henry Prize-winner, two other award-winners, four stories published by 'The New Yorker' and 'Riding the Bullet', King's original e-book that attracted over half a million on-line readers and became the most famous short story of the decade.
'Riding the Bullet', published here on paper for the first time, is the story of Alan Parker, who's hitchhiking to see his dying mother but takes the wrong ride, farther than he ever intended. In 'Lunch at the Gotham Café', a sparring couple's contentious lunch turns very, very bloody when the maître d' gets out of sorts. '1408, the audio story in print for the first time, is about a successful writer who speciality is 'Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Houses' or 'Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Graveyards' and though Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel doesn't kill him, he won't be writing about ghosts anymore.
And in 'That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French', terror is déjà vu at 16,000 feet.
***
It's so dark that for a while - just how long I don't know - I think I'm still unconscious.AUTOPSY ROOM FOUR
***
(Hodder & Stoughton, I January 2002, hardback, 432 pages, bought from AmazonUK)
***
***
I've read Everything's Eventual many times most recently in 2017. Some of the stories are amazing and some are really good. There are also some that have been adapted for the screen. I like the fact the stories are all different and not all of them are horror stories. The best stories are The Little Sisters Of Eluria, Everything's Eventual, The Road Virus Heads North, Lunch at the Gotham Café and 1408. It was a pleasure to revisit this. I'd recommend this book.
***
I'm currently reading through the lists of books with some connection to The Dark Tower from Stephen King's own website, https://stephenking.com/darktower/connections/. According to this link the connections between The Dark Tower and Everything's Eventual are:
- AUTOPSY ROOM FOUR: DERRY, MAINE: Derry Maine, which is the setting for many Stephen King stories and novels is mentioned in the Dark Tower novels. Derry also appears in "Autopsy Room Four."
- EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL: EARNSHAW, DINKY: Like Ted Brautigan, Dinky Earnshaw is one of the Breakers who allies himself with Roland's tet in The Dark Tower. MR. SHARPTON: Dinky mentions him in The Dark Tower. SKIPPER BRANNIGAN: In Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla we are told he is one of Henry Dean's friends. In Everything's Eventual, he torments Dinky.
- THE LITTLE SISTERS OF ELURIA: "The Little Sisters of Eluria" is a prequel to the first volume of the Dark Tower saga. Roland's beloved city of Gilead has fallen to the Good Man's forces, and the Gunslingers have been slaughtered at the Battle of Jericho Hill. Roland is now a lone wanderer, searching for the trail of the elusive sorcerer known as the Man in Black. On a hot day during the season of Full Earth, Roland enters a deserted town in the Desatoya Mountains. The town is called Eluria, and it is empty except for a lame dog, a drowned boy, and the eerie sound of tinkling silver bells. As Roland searches for the town's missing inhabitants, he is attacked by the slow mutants known as the Green Folk. Our unconscious hero is rescued by an itinerant band of female healers who call themselves the Little Sisters of Eluria. But Roland's rescuers are not what they seem, and our gunslinger must fight their narcotic potions to stay awake, and alive.
- THE ROAD VIRUS HEADS NORTH: DERRY, MAINE: Derry Maine, which is the setting for many Stephen King stories and novels is mentioned in the Dark Tower novels. Derry also appears in 'The Road Virus Heads North'
