In her first solo outing, she spots a reporter covering a school bombing. She’s one of the few characters, aside from the Dark Tower saga, that King has kept returning to and it’s clear he’s attached to her. ‘If It Bleeds’ is the main attraction in every sense of the word, headlining the book and reuniting Constant Readers with Holly. It’s a positive message that, like 2018’s Elevation, is needed in these troubled times. In an afterword, King explains that it’s a three-act structure about the life of Chuck, “presented in reverse order, like a film running backwards.” As the world around him crumbles, King explores the idea that in each of us there is a world containing multitudes. King seems to carry this pseudo-technophobia over into ‘The Life of Chuck,’ which opens “just before the Internet went down for good.” At least that’s the premise for a head-scratcher of a story that is arguably the most ‘different’ thing that King has done to date. After all, it has a teen boy calling his iPhone 5C a “high tech Del Monte can” and concludes that “I think our phones are how we are wedded to the world. Indeed, it’s hard to pick a single tone in this short with an unclear motivation on the part of any of the main players.įilled with anachronisms, and a young character who feels like he stepped goggle-eyed out of the 50s into the 21 st century, it’s seems to be King’s own wistful musing about making America great again.

So, it’s not only well-travelled territory for the author, but also starts to show a few signs that the 72-year-old writer may no longer have his finger firmly on the pulse of society. Even the narrator is a writer looking back on his salad days. It plays like kind of Twilight Zone episode filtered through King’s own Apt Pupil and Gwendy’s Button Box. When the elderly man passes away, he finds that he can still send his wishes to his friend via the phone tucked away in his funeral suit. Harrigan’s Phone’ is arguably the most traditional of the shorts, where young Craig reads to the eponymous Harrigan, a former tycoon with a minor aversion of technology. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch) and features Holly Gibney, who also appeared in The Outsider. Harrigan’s Phone,’ ‘The Life of Chuck’ and ‘Rats’ – are standalone pieces, while the titular story follows King’s Bill Hodges novels ( Mr.

Like Different Seasonsor Full Dark, No Stars, this latest collection is made up of four parts. Yet the crossover hits like The Body (Stand by Me) and Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption have often come from his short stories and novellas, a tradition followed by IF IT BLEEDS. Stephen King has published more than 60 novels, many of which have permeated the public consciousness in their many iterations.

Holly gibney if it bleeds