Everything's Eventual

Verhalen

• Riding the Bullet (2000): Stephen King
• LT's Theory of Pets (2001): Stephen King
• In the Deathroom (2000): Stephen King
• 1408 (2000): Stephen King
• Lunch at the Gotham Café (2000): Stephen King
• Introduction: Practicing the (Almost) Lost Art (2002): Stephen King
• Autopsy Room Four (2002): Stephen King
• The Man in the Black Suit (1994): Stephen King
• All That You Love Will Be Carried Away (2002): Stephen King
• The Death of Jack Hamilton (2002): Stephen King
• The Little Sisters of Eluria (2002): Stephen King
• Everything's Eventual (2002): Stephen King
• The Road Virus Heads North (2002): Stephen King
• That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French (2002): Stephen King
• Lucky Quarter (2002): Stephen King

Inhoud

14 Dark Tales
The first collection of stories Stephen King has published since Nightmares & Dreamscapes nine years ago, Everything's Eventual 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, which attracted over half a million online 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 whose speciality is "Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Graveyards" or "Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Houses," 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.
Whether writing about encounters with the dead, the near dead, or about the mundane dreads of life, from quitting smoking to yard sales, Stephen King is at the top of his form in the fourteen dark tales assembled in Everything's Eventual. Intense, eerie, and instantly compelling, they announce the stunningly fertile imagination of perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time.

Bespreking

Excellent collection of disturbing stories

Although Stephen King is best known for his novels, he does master the art of short story writing quite well. Sometimes even these stories become strong competition for his other work. Take Riding the Bullet for example. When King published this short e-book on the internet in 2000 it attracted over half a million readers. This frightening little story is now being released as a major movie. So it is not surprising that every time a short story collection is published, I am eager to dive into it.

Everything's Eventual certainly delivers on expectations and includes everything a good collection needs. It contains fourteen well-written stories of the macabre, with numerous surprising twists and breathtaking conclusions. The strongest stories originate from a simple what-if question and evolve into an estranged situation of mayhem and emotional disturbance. Never will you be disappointed by the compelling imagination of the author.

In Autopsy Room Four, my favorite, a man awakens in a body bag, unable to move. A high school dropout with an unusual talent stumbles onto a dream job in Everything's Eventual, but soon he starts to realize he is part of an evil plot and comes face to face with his conscious. A cleaning lady receives more that a bit of luck when she finds some money in Lucky Quarter. In The Road Virus Heads North a horror writer buys a bizarre painting at a yard sale discovers that looks indeed do deceive. King did not forget to include a Dark Tower tale, in which Roland is attacked by mutants and trapped in a "hospital" run by The Little Sisters of Eluria.

This collection also contains short stories that were previously published in another format. Riding the bullet was published as an e-book. Lunch at the Gotham Café, 1408 and In the Deathroom form together the audiobook collection Blood and Smoke, published in 2000. Finally L.T.'s Theory of Pets was published as an audio recording of a reading King gave at London's Royal Festival Hall.