Review: You Like It Darker by Stephen King
Half a century after his highly successful first work, the author’s latest collection of novellas and short stories shows that he still has the ability to keep readers hooked
Septuagenarian American writer Stephen King has entertained millions for decades. He debuted with Carrie (1974), the bestselling story of revenge revolving around a schoolgirl with telekinetic powers, which catapulted him to instant stardom. Sometimes referred to as the ‘King of Horror’, the prolific author is equally popular for his crime, suspense, fantasy and science fiction.

You Like It Darker, a collection of novellas and short stories, has been published half a century after his highly successful first work. In the afterword, King informs readers that the book’s title was inspired by the Leonard Cohen song, You Want It Darker and apologizes for switching the central verb with another one. King’s loyal fans, some of whom have been following him for decades, will certainly like these stories.

King has mastered the art of writing short fiction and this collection offers an interesting mix of previously published and unpublished stories in a range of genres including tales about the paranormal, horror, shock, crime and mystery.
The Turbulence Expert, a reminder that many of us are anxious during air travel, portrays an unusual professional who ensures that aeroplanes that experience turbulence complete their journeys safely. Here, King ventures into the unknown to highlight the known, something that we rarely remember after disembarking from the plane.
The impressive opening story Two Talented Bastids is about a mediocre son and his famous father, who has an equally well-known friend. The father, an author, and his painter buddy go on a hunting trip. Both of them encounter the supernatural, which results in inspired creative outcomes. The protagonist concludes memorably: “It’s all right to want what you can’t have. You learn to live with it. I tell myself that, and mostly I believe it.” That is understandable, because the son is an ordinary man.
The best and the longest inclusion is Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream, a police procedural with a distinct King flavour. The titular protagonist, who works as a high school custodian, has a life-changing psychic flash. King’s description of his experience is terrifying: after all, the man sees a mongrel that has eaten the flesh of a dead human’s palm that is sticking out of the ground. The plot changes direction after what Danny sees in the psychic flash – it is a nightmare – repeats itself in real life. Who killed the dead woman buried in the ground? Danny becomes the suspect as investigators seek an answer. The story that starts with a paranormal experience gathers momentum after it mutates into a crime thriller. The highlight here is King’s characterization of Danny and Frank Jalbert, an experienced investigator and arithomaniac, an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that compels individuals afflicted by it to count the number of times they perform any action and even things around them. Jalbert is more interesting, both because of his OCD and how relentlessly he pursues Danny to establish that he is the killer. The climax is as dramatic as the plot twist, making the novella unputdownable.
Rattlesnakes will find fans instantly, both because of the novella’s strengths and because it is the sequel to the horror novel Cujo(1981) featuring a rabid Saint Bernard dog that, King wrote during his battle with alcohol addiction. The story marks the return of Vic Trenton and is set in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. The elderly Vic meets a widow, who believes her long-dead twins are alive. Her sudden death is followed by a string of scary and otherworldly occurrences. A well-crafted work, the supernatural merges with the real seamlessly in Rattlesnakes.

You Like It Darker has quite a few stories with great endings, but none of them is as shocking as the last few moments of The Fifth Step. Nothing prepares the reader for the climax of this story with two central characters: a retiree and a stranger, who introduces himself to the former in a park as a salesman trying to complete his Alcoholics Anonymous programme. The stranger requests the elderly person to listen to his confession of wrongdoings, one of the steps in the programme. The characters in The Fifth Step are people of the kind one can meet anywhere, making the ending particularly disturbing – and brilliant.
A weak plot crash-lands Willie the Weirdo, the only disappointing story in this impressive collection that will appeal to hardcore King fans and even those relatively unfamiliar with his brand of storytelling. It is, in short, a gem of best selling fiction.
Biswadeep Ghosh is a journalist, author, and teacher. Among his books is MSD: The Man, The Leader, the biography of former Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni.
