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About The Book 📚

Title: Different Seasons

Author: Stephen King

Publication Date: first published 1982

Publisher: my copy, 2016 by Scribner

Genre: Short Story Collection (four novellas), Classic, Suspense, Realistic Fiction

Pages: 588

Setting: United States

Content Warnings: click here

Three Words That Describe This Book: tense, emotional, classic

My Review

› Different Seasons has 4 short stories, one for each season. These aren’t scary horror stories and are great for people who want to read Stephen King but don’t enjoy typical horror books. The cover shows a prison cell and tally marks, an obvious nod to the first story in the collection, Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. This is a classic book and movie. The adaptation makes some small changes, but both are a story of friendship, perseverance, and hope.

“There’s a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I guess – I’m the guy who can get it for you.”

“I’ve still got them, and I take them down every so often and think about what a man can do, if he has time enough and the will to use it, a drop at a time.”

“Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

Connections to Stephen King Multiverse
– mentions the mangler
– Shawshank is mentioned in other books

Apt Pupil brings us to the “Summer of Corruption” and a young man spending his days locked in a strange friendship with a nazi.

“He looked like the total all-American kid as he pedaled his twenty-six-inch Schwinn with the apehanger handlebars up the residential suburban street, and that’s just what he was: Todd Bowden, thirteen years old, five-feet-eight and a healthy one hundred and forty pounds, hair the color of ripe corn, blue eyes, white even teeth, lightly tanned skin marred by not even the first shadow of adolescent acne.”

“Todd is an extremely apt pupil”

Connections to Stephen King Multiverse
– mentions Andy from Shawshank
– The Shining (Denker)
– Room 217
– Connection to Night Shift

Next, we have Fall From Innocence: The Body which inspired the famous movie adaptation Stand By Me. A few years ago Stephen King said this was one of the top five favourite stories he’s ever written. It also is one of the inspirations for the show Stranger Things. This is a classic coming-of-age story about a group of four teenage boys who go on an emotional journey to see a dead body.

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

Connections to Stephen King Multiverse
– mentions Shawshank
– the boy who went missing is from Chamberlain, where Carrie takes place (which happens ten years after the events in The Body)
– Jerusalem’s Lot is mentioned
– Cujo is referenced when they compare the dog Chopper to Cujo
– There are a couple of side characters who are also in other short stories from Skeleton Crew
– Ace Merrill is also in Needful Things

Last we have A Winter’s Tale: The Breathing Method, a story-within-a-story about an older man who’s invited to join “the club” where men gather to tell each other horror stories. One of the horror stories told at the club is “The Breathing Method” which is about a woman who learns the breathing method to help her through childbirth – and things take a horrid turn.

“Homesickness is not always a vague, nostalgic, almost beautiful emotion, although that is somehow the way we always seem to picture it in our mind. It can be a terribly keen blade, not just a sickness in metaphor but in fact as well. It can change the way one looks at the world; the faces one sees in the street look not just indifferent but ugly….perhaps even malignant. Homesickness is a real sickness- the ache of the uprooted plant.”

Connections to Stephen King Multiverse
– the club is also mentioned in The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands from Skeleton Crew
– some think this club is a portal and may even be in The Dark Tower

APPEAL FACTORS
Storyline: action-packed, character-driven, intricately plotted, issue-oriented, open-ended
Pace: medium
Tone: emotional, angsty, bittersweet, feel-good, heartwrenching, hopeful, nostalgic, quiet, reflective, dark, bleak, disturbing
Humour: funny, offbeat, sarcastic
Writing Style: well-crafted dialogue, candid, compelling, descriptive, engaging, incisive
Character: authentic, awkward, brooding, complex, flawed, likeable, relatable, sarcastic, well-developed

› In the past I have given a rating out of ten and converted that to a star rating, but I’m no longer giving a star rating here on my blog. I will continue to do that on Goodreads and The Story Graph.

› With incredible characters and intriguing plots Different Seasons is my favourite short story collection by King and some of my favourite stories I’ve read.

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