This novel was very unsettling to me on many levels. A child is abducted, but the small community which is her home, never seems to get involved. There are childhood secrets alluded to, there are references to another abduction, there are secrets in the dark woods - but I NEVER felt a connection.
Rhonda, the protagonist, witnesses a large, white rabbit take a child from her mother's car, seat belt the little girl in, drive off - and she does nothing! She doesn't try to intervene, she doesn't scream or dial 911. She doesn't even get the license plate number!! The story seemed to go nowhere after that and I had the plot and ending figured out in the first twenty pages.
When a plot is weak I look for redemption in the characterization, lyrical writing, historical fact - something, anything. In this novel I was disappointed at every turn. "It's not fun to read a 'whodunit' if you know who did it by page 30." - Quill and Quire.
- Promise Not to Tell
- Dismantled
Full Dark, No Stars - Stephen King
"Like 'Different Seasons' and 'Four Past Midnight', which generated such enduring films as 'The Shawshank Redemption' and 'Stand By Me', this last book proves Stephen King a master of the long story form."
There are four long stories in this book and three of them play on the psychosis in our own minds when we do or see or experience something inherently evil. "Fair Extension" is the shortest tale and also the funniest. Making a deal with the devil saves Dave Streeter from fatal cancer. It also provides him with rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment for his oldest and best 'friend'
I get totally lost when reading Stephen King and am living the life of each very real character in each extraordinary circumstance. This book, a Christmas gift, was just the thing to read and leave the cold and snow outside. As King says, "Bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do - to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street." Maybe that is why I'm such a fan of Stephen King - it's good writing and it's how I believe people will act, or react. Like King, I believe that “Nobility most fully resides not in success but in trying to do the right thing...and that when we fail to do that, or willfully turn away from the challenge, hell follows."
This is a GREAT whodunit and great escapism from winter. Each of the four stories is very different and a wonderful read on a cold, windy winter afternoon. I have already passed my copy on.
- The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
- Bag of Bones
- Misery
Who Knew?
'A Good Marriage' - the last of the four tales, in Full Dark, No Stars, is especially interesting in the light of Canada's own new serial rapist/ lingerie freak/ murderer - Colonel Russell Williams. Was his wife of 20 years aware of her husband's crimes? Is the wife in the story innocent?
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