Heart of Atlantis by Stephen King →
Five stories in the Hearts in Atlantis revolve around the Vietnam War, a central theme in Stephen King’s generation.
“Low Men in Yellow Coats” is set in the summer of 1960. Bobby Garfield and his friends Sully-John and Carol, Bobby Garfield meet TedBrautigana,n who lives on the third floor of Bobby’s building. Ted hires Bobby to watch for mysterious strangers that he refers to as “low men” from another world.
One day, Bobby discovers his friend Carol has been beaten by three bullies with a baseball bat. He takes her to his apartment, where Tedmust removeeherershirttoo set her dislocated shoulder. Bobby’smothere,r Liz comes home and misunderstands the situation. She had just been raped at a real estate seminarandwass ready to think the worst.
Ted appears in some way connected to the Dark Tower and confesses to Bobby that he is being stalked by "low men" who work for The Crimson King. The Low Man captured Ted, and Bobby is given a choice to go with them to wherever they are taking Ted but decides to stay. Sometime later, Bobby receives an envelope from Ted filled with red rose petals (which surround the Dark Tower). He knows that Ted is once again free and has gotten away from the low men.
In “Hearts in Atlantis,” Pete Riley becomes involved with Carol at the University of Maine in Orono in 1966. The title not only is a metaphor for the romance but also refers to an ongoing card game that threatens to overwhelm Pete and his dormmates. Carol leaves school, joins a movement, and becomes involved with radicals and a bombing of a chemical laboratory that kills several people.
“Blind Willie,” set in 1983, Willie Shearman, who befriended Carol but held her down while she was beaten in 1960, had fought in Vietnam and remained haunted by both his actions toward Carol and what he witnessed during the war. His efforts to do penance for both involve begging as a blind Vietnam veteran in New York City, which makes him a lot of money, but he does go blind doing it.
“Why We’re in Vietnam” and “Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling” are the last two stories.
Sullyattendsafelloww soldier's funeral and reflects on the events in Vietnam, perhaps trying to answer the question of why,y but then dies of a heart attack.
In “Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling,” Bobby returns to Harwich for Sully's funeral. He finds Carol and a baseball glove sent to him by Ted.
Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King →
Gwendy is 12 years old and lives in Castle Rock, Maine. In 1974 every day, she climbs to the top of the stairs referred to as Suicide Stairs. One day she meets a stranger, Richard Farris, waiting for her at the top of the stairs. The man is wearing a small black hat, and even though she has never met him, he seems to know a lot about her and some of the things she wants.
Farris gives her a special wooden box with a lever attached; when you pull it, you either get unique chocolates that help you lose weight or silver dollars. The box has eight buttons. Using some of them causes good things, even losing weight which she needed to do.
When she eventually pushes one of the other buttons, terrible things happen. She also learns that one of the buttons, which is black, when pressed, will cause cancer. The story takes us through Gwendy’s childhood, high school, and beyond; the story tells of the time she spends protecting this box and how she learns of its positive and negative influences on the world she lives in.
Pet Sematary by Stephen King →
In the introduction to Pet Sematary, Stephen King tells his readers that when people ask him what he considers the most frightening book he has ever written, his answer is always Pet Sematary. He said when he had finished it, he put it away in the drawer, thinking he had finally gone too far.
King intertidally spelled Sematary wrong for two good reasons. First, it is realistic that the kids who put the sign up might have spelled it wrong, and second, it was King’s intentional use of realism, writing accurately to represent real life.
The story begins when Louis Creed, a medical doctor from Chicago, is appointed director of the University of Maine's campus health services. He and his wife Rachel, their two young children, Ellie and Gage, and also Ellie's cat named Church, move to the small town of Ludlow near the University.
Their new neighbor, an older man, named Jud Crandall, warns Louis and Rachel about the highway that runs past their house, which is frequented by speeding trucks explaining that it has taken the lives of many neighborhood pets over the years.
Jud and Louis quickly become close friends, and a few weeks after the Creeds move in, Jud takes the family on a walk in the woods behind their new home. He points out a path up a small hill and tells them it leads to a pet cemetery where the local children bury their pets.
Louis’s wife, Rachael is distraught just by the existence of the pet cemetery (the sign on the entrance says “Sematary”) so close, and it comes out that she is also very traumatized by even discussing death. She eventually explains that as a young girl, the early death of her sister Zelda had been a harrowing experience for her. Louis understands and blames her parents for leaving her alone with her sister at a young age.
It isn’t long before Church the cat wanders into the road and is killed. Ellie and her mother are not home, and Louis is beside himself at how his daughter will handle it. Jud, trying to help, talks Louis into taking the dead cat up the hill to the Pet Cemetery. The crude sign at the entrance says Pet Sematary, and according to a comment in the book, this is because the character would have been painted by kids taking their pets to be buried there.
Jud leads Louis beyond the Sematary to a higher place up the hill farther, and they bury the pet there and place rocks over the small grave. They return home, and Louis goes to bed. The following day when he awakes, the cat is in the house. He smells terrible and is tracking mud everywhere. The cat seems to have been resurrected, but he also seems different in many ways. Louis doesn’t tell his wife or daughter anything, and even though they notice many differences in how the cat acts, nothing is said except that the past love for the cat seems to go away.
The plot continues, and as you might expect, others die. As I read this book, I was about 3/4th the way through it, and I was not quite sure why Stephen King considered this his scariest book. At the same time, I could see what was coming and asked myself if I wanted to go through it. That isn’t an unusual feeling for many of King’s books. Forgive me for not giving a lot of details but be assured that if you like King’s genre, horror, dark fantasy, and supernatural fiction, you will not be disappointed.
Ok, I will give away this small detail. Cemetery vs. ’s Sematary is explained in the book as the result of kids having painted the sign. You will have to decide if you believe that or if you can think of some deeper meaning?
If It Bleeds by Stephen King →
Stephen King’s book is four new novellas: Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, The Life of Chuck, Rat, and the title story If It Bleeds.
The title for "If It Bleeds” comes from the newsroom axiom “if it bleeds, it leads.” In this story, Holly Gibney, who appeared, in Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch, and The Outsider, now is a private investigator working at the Finders Keepers detective agency. She was working on the case of a missing dog when she saw a report of a school bombing on TV. When she tunes in again to the late-night news, she realizes something is not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene. Soon, she will find that she is not the only one to suspect the reporter, Chet Ondowsky. A little background research suggests that Ondowsky’s being first on the scene at incidents of horrific carnage is no coincidence, and Holly wonders if the reporter might be deliberately causing the atrocities that have taken place.
The “Life of Chuck” is three separate stories linked to tell the life story of Charles Krantz in reverse, beginning with his death from a brain tumor at 39 and ending with his childhood in a supposedly haunted house. This might be worth rereading because it seems odd and takes some getting used to.
“Rat” is about a writer and a rat. The main character is Drew Larsen. We get to experience him bringing a book together, and King’s insights into that process make it very real; of course, we get to meet eventually the Rat, who asks some deep, thought-provoking questions about the price we’re willing to pay for personal success, and whether an old, sick person’s life is worth less than that of someone younger.
“Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” uses an Apple phone to set the stage for retribution from the grave. The question is whether the ghost is in the grave or the phone is connected to how supernatural forces set in-play events that punish those that have done wrong and reward kindness.
Stephen King sits down to read the first chapter of “If It Bleeds” for a YOU TUBE presentation and he refers to this Edward Hopper painting, “Room in New York” and he references the painting saying, Edward Hopper is known as the “Patron Saint of Social Distancing” see more in Art Review Section.
Also see more on Stephen King in Favorite Author Section
