So this review will be a little bit different from the usual as in that I'm not reviewing any story in particular, but instead I'll be reviewing Stephen King's 1978 short story collection Night Shift. This is not a Stephen King novel; rather, it is a collection of twenty short stories written by King and published in different magazines. Because I don't have a singular story to focus on, I'm going to break the book down into groups. Before I get started though, here are the stories:
- Jerusalem's Lot
- Graveyard Shift
- Night Surf
- I Am the Doorway
- The Mangler
- The Boogeyman
- Gray Matter
- Battleground
- Trucks
- Sometimes They Come Back
- Strawberry Spring
- The Ledge
- The Lawnmower Man
- Quitters, Inc.
- I Know What You Need
- Children of the Corn
- The Last Rung on the Ladder
- The Man Who Loved Flowers
- One for the Road
- The Woman in the Room
GROUP 1: Stories 1-4
The first four stories are simple, basic horror fiction clichés. They deal with vampires, mutated rats, deadly viruses, and alien invaders. They're very much cliché horror fiction themes that you would have seen in the 1800's when the concept was first being created/established. Despite all that, they don't feel old-fashioned or clichés. Stephen King's classic talent in building up the suspense of the story works extremely well here. The buildup to the final monsters work so well in creating the horror portion of the stories. Specifically, the characters' thoughts really create a creepy, unnerving atmosphere as they approach the monsters they are about to face. Because King presents these characters' thoughts so well (a specific talent of Mr. King's that I haven't even been able to mimic), the final payoff of what are objectively silly and overdone concepts by today's standards. King's ability to create suspense and tension in his works I think seriously worked perfectly in these stories.
GROUP 2: Stories 5-8
The next five stories are the very popular, gory-slasher horror stories. It wouldn't be Stephen King without some gruesome descriptions of people dying, and Night Shift isn't void of them, thankfully. These stories are definitely the gruesome slashers that we love and expect from King (meaning that there are a lot of gruesome deaths), but they are all supernatural-based, with a possessed laundry press, the boogeyman, a people-eating monstrous blob, and toy soldiers that come alive. In these stories, King focuses on the gruesome natures of these stories, describing in detail the deadly killings that ensue, and this is a great example of his talent as a horror author.
GROUP 3: Story 9 & 10
The two stories Trucks and Sometimes They Come Back are sort of transitional pieces. These stories combines the previous stories of supernatural & gore horror with the next set of psychological horror stories. Trucks is a story about a group of people who get cornered in a diner by trucks that have become sentient (a silly concept yes), and this feels like a traditional King novel; while there are some very gory scenes of people being slaughtered by the automobiles, there is also a huge amount of psychological horror going on as the humans begin to break down under the pressure of the situation. Sometimes They Come Back was my favourite out of the two, as it was definitely more psychological out of the two, and the slow breakdown of the lead's psyche as he was haunted (literally) by the ghosts of his past was so fascinating and frankly pretty scary to read about. This is interesting because while it utilizes the gory and supernatural elements of the first portion of stories, but also contains large elements of the next set of stories, psychological horror.
GROUP 4: Stories 11-15
The next five stories are very much psychological horror. All of the stories focus on a singular character very closely, rather then multiple characters. More than anything, they are, of course, focused heavily on the mind; characters' thoughts on specific events or actions are directly shown, and therefore creates the image of an unreliable/biased narrator, and this is indeed shown in Strawberry Spring where the strict following of the narrator's thoughts is a crucial element to the story, and it reaffirms the concept of an unreliable narrator by the ends as the most major plot twist directly involves the existence of an unreliable narrator. The other four stories also focus on a singular character and heavily on their thoughts throughout the story. I really liked these stories in particular, not only because of a general interest in psychology, but also because it reminded me heavily of The Shining, which is one of my all-time favourite King novels that also focuses quite a bit on psychological horror.
GROUP 5: Stories 16-19
The last set of stories are "human" horror stories. Continuing from psychological horror, the next four stories also focus usually on a single human being or at least emphasizes the humanity in characters and also deals with "human" themes, the one interconnecting theme being loss. In each story, the main focal character deals with the loss of someone significant (so there is psychology mixed in there as well), but its main attribute is the humanization of the characters and the extreme pathos you feel for the characters as a result. Another big element of the stories is that at the start, they feel very cheerful and happy, but takes a very drastic turn in the last few pages as the mood shifts completely into depressing territory, and it's in these parts that you can fully feel Stephen King's immense talent as an author, as reading these particular stories really force you to go through a roller coaster of different emotions from happiness to extreme depression, and the fact that King manages this in less then fifty pages and still tell a complete story so unlike his usual novels is genuinely very, VERY impressive.
GROUP 6: Story 20
The next final story is a culminating-themed horror story. It blends psychological horror with a "human"-focused story, describing each thought and movement of the characters in unsettling agony. It's hard to describe it, but the story deals with the mortality of human life and the psychological consequences it can have. Because it feels so much more realistic then any of the other stories, The Woman in the Room is EXTREMELY difficult to get through because everything in can feel too familiar in a horrifying way to many people. While it wasn't familiar to me, the entire concept of the story is definitely something that could happen to me (or anyone else in the world for that matter), which genuinely terrified me unlike any of the other stories, and while it's not what you would expect of a "horror" story, I am not exaggerating when I say it is a deeply horrifying tale that really gets you thinking about life and death, a rather deep topic, and the fact that it provokes thoughts is what really makes this story a clear winner out of all of the others.
Overall Thoughts
I seriously loved this collection of short stories. While there definitely is a bit of a bias due to my love of works of Stephen King in general, there is still no doubting that King is an extremely talented author who I don't doubt could do just as good writing any genre of novels (perhaps except for romance...) as he takes an extreme amount of talent in order to write a coherent story with characters, plots(s), and theme(s) in less then fifty pages, and make it good. Every story in this collection is so gripping and terrifying (in different ways) that really draws you in. What's even more fantastic is King's uncanny ability to write compelling characters that entrances you to become genuinely interested in their well-beings and that just adds to the impressive list of King's abilities: creating and developing compelling, likeable characters in a span of fifty pages or less, something that I have always loved about King; characters have always been my favourite portion of a good story, and Stephen King never has a shortage of them. Almost every character he creates manages to be relatable or at least VERY likeable or even just very interesting in one way and I can never go a few pages into one of his novels without feeling sympathy for a character, and he nails this portion in Night Shift.
Overall, Stephen King's Night Shift gets an indisputable 5/5.
So, my next posts will be spaced apart more then usual. I have a lot going on right now so I can't guarantee weekly posts from now on. While I'll try for bi-weekly posts, I can't really promise that either. But at any rate, for my next few posts, you will be looking at reviews of films, starting with a certain rock & roll legend, Mr. Reggie Dwight. As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!
