“If It Bleeds” is just okay as it is - though it should be noted that the majority of the story takes place in December 2020 and was written long before the pandemic, so it’s weird to read a story set in the recent past that doesn’t involve lockdowns and such. However, it would be nice, too, if King could figure out new ways to include her in a story that doesn’t involve serial killers and shape-shifting monsters. It is nice to see her growing as a character, and one hopes that King will return to the well, so to speak. That said, I suppose it’s nice to finally have a Gibney story where she is, more or less, the sole heroine of the tale - not sharing the limelight with male characters that would keep her neuroses in check.
Since it is kind of the “go-to” story of the batch, let’s begin with “If It Bleeds.” While there’s a supernatural angle to the novella, would I be spoiling anything to say that it hews a little too closely to the plot of The Outsider? As such, it seems to be a rather watered-down sequel. With more than 60 books in his published docket, he should feel that he no longer owes readers anything.) (There’s a part of me that, when faced with reading a recent mediocre King story or novel, wishes the guy would retire. While there are no stories in If It Bleeds that are all out terrible, they seem to have King to be running mostly on autopilot. Alas, I found that most of the stories in this collection, save for the final tale “Rat,” to be either subpar or mediocre by King’s standards. (In fact, “If It Bleeds,” the story, is a sequel to The Outsider, though it is missing at least one of its major characters.) That story is probably enough to get even a fence-sitting King fan to want to read this book.
However, the more important question is … is If It Bleeds any good? Notably, it contains a story about Holly Gibney, a character from King’s Bill Hodges Trilogy and the stand-alone novel The Outsider. Still, it’s four stories and we all know that King likes that number.
Suffice to say, If It Bleeds seems to be playing loosey-goosey with the concept of what makes a novella a novella. This is a collection of four novellas, though the first two stories in the book are perhaps short enough to be considered novelettes more so than novellas, and the titular story “If It Bleeds” is long enough to be almost a short novel. King’s latest book, If It Bleeds, is no different. Ever since publishing Different Seasons in the early ’80s, every time that King publishes a novella collection, you can be guaranteed that it will contain exactly four new stories. It seems that Stephen King is infatuated with the number four.
0 kommentar(er)
