WARNING: in order to fully digest the book, this review bleeds into spoiler territory.
Stephen King has published more than 60 novels, many of which have permeated the public consciousness in their many iterations. Yet the crossover hits like The Body (Stand by Me) and Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption have often come from his short stories and novellas, a tradition followed by IF IT BLEEDS.
Like Different Seasons or Full Dark, No Stars, this latest collection is made up of four parts. Three of them – ‘Mr. Harrigan’s Phone,’ ‘The Life of Chuck’ and ‘Rats’ – are standalone pieces, while the titular story follows King’s Bill Hodges novels (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch) and features Holly Gibney, who also appeared in The Outsider.
‘Mr. Harrigan’s Phone’ is arguably the most traditional of the shorts, where young Craig reads to the eponymous Harrigan, a former tycoon with a minor aversion of technology. When the elderly man passes away, he finds that he can still send his wishes to his friend via the phone tucked away in his funeral suit.
It plays like kind of Twilight Zone episode filtered through King’s own Apt Pupil and Gwendy’s Button Box. Even the narrator is a writer looking back on his salad days. So, it’s not only well-travelled territory for the author, but also starts to show a few signs that the 72-year-old writer may no longer have his finger firmly on the pulse of society. Indeed, it’s hard to pick a single tone in this short with an unclear motivation on the part of any of the main players.
Filled with anachronisms, and a young character who feels like he stepped goggle-eyed out of the 50s into the 21st century, it’s seems to be King’s own wistful musing about making America great again. After all, it has a teen boy calling his iPhone 5C a “high tech Del Monte can” and concludes that “I think our phones are how we are wedded to the world. If so, it’s probably a bad marriage.”
King seems to carry this pseudo-technophobia over into ‘The Life of Chuck,’ which opens “just before the Internet went down for good.” At least that’s the premise for a head-scratcher of a story that is arguably the most ‘different’ thing that King has done to date. In an afterword, King explains that it’s a three-act structure about the life of Chuck, “presented in reverse order, like a film running backwards.” As the world around him crumbles, King explores the idea that in each of us there is a world containing multitudes. It’s a positive message that, like 2018’s Elevation, is needed in these troubled times.
‘If It Bleeds’ is the main attraction in every sense of the word, headlining the book and reuniting Constant Readers with Holly. She’s one of the few characters, aside from the Dark Tower saga, that King has kept returning to and it’s clear he’s attached to her. In her first solo outing, she spots a reporter covering a school bombing. Holly’s instincts tell her that he’s not what he seems and has a chance to road test the assertiveness she’s been working on.
I could be really picky and suggest that if you haven’t read The Outsider, there’s a good possibility that many of the intertextual references will go sailing over your head. Yet as a Hodges/Gibney devotee, this was like slipping on your favourite t-shirt. It’s a solid supernatural thriller with an action finale that leaves the door wide open for more Holly adventures, with the possible connections to another King creature more solidly connected to this psychic vampire.
‘Rats’ is perhaps the most perplexing of the bunch. Like many of King’s protagonists, the lead here is another writer. Having spent a career in short stories, a sudden idea for a western spurns him to head off to the family’s cabin in the woods. Defying advice from the weather bureau, his wife and the flu that’s brewing as fast as the coming storm, he ploughs on into writing his first novel. A rescued rat offers him a Faustian bargain: is it his fever talking or something more supernatural.
So, an isolated writer is offered success in return for the death of someone he knows. Naturally my mind turned to The Shining. Apart from being significantly shorter and with seemingly lower stakes, it culminates in a series of rat puns – and some of those are truly frightening.
As a collection, it’s a mostly satisfying group of stories that are sure to please all but the most critical of King fans. As a Constant Reader (or an Inconstant one if you prefer), I’m still amazed that King continues to play with the form as much as he does. Yet as the title implies, if it bleeds it leads: and King has been leading for a long time.
2020 | US | WRITER: Stephen King | PUBLISHER: Scribner (US), Hachette (Australia) | LENGTH: 448 pages | RELEASE DATE: 21 April 2020
