One Street Wino = A "Beautiful Loser?". I Don't Think So .But Naomi Is Gorgeous!

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	• Four Past Midnight (Signet) Stephen King Signet, 1991 - 768 pages average customer review:based on 88 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Not Free SF Readre

Time-rip reverse flight new beginning.

A red-eye 767 trip has a small group of passengers awake to find that everybody else on the flight has disappeared, leaving a few trinkets and artificial body parts behind.

They come to the realisation that they just might not be in their own world anymore.

Thanks to having a pilot, a spook, and a level headed woman and author and a strange girl among them, they try to come up with a plan as to what to do.

An atmospheric adventure of creeping horror and heroism.

4.5 out of 5

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Factory-Second King

A criticism of Stephen King is he will try to make any object he sees into something spooky. "Family Guy" once had him pitching an idea about a possessed lamp, because he was all out of ideas and a lamp was the only thing in front of him at the moment. But usually he makes even threadbare ideas work, e.g. "Christine." Not always.

"Four Past Midnight" is a collection of four novellas, published in 1990. His previous novella collection, "Different Seasons," was one of his all-time best works, though all but one of its stories were not straight horror. "Four Past Midnight" is horror fiction, just not the most inspired kind. Three of the four, in fact, as so many reviewers point out here, carry the unwelcome tang of self-imitation, of King regurgitating ideas already explored in previous novels, perhaps pulling ideas discarded then as too lame or fanciful.

"Secret Window, Secret Garden" goes through the same paces as his novel "The Dark Half." King presents a writer accused of plagiarism over a long-ago short story by a strange, beady man who looks, King writes with atypical laziness, like someone out of a Faulkner novel. King draws what suspense he can from his unsteady protagonist and his accuser, but the story lapses into improbabilities and too-neat effects King would have shaken loose from one of his more disciplined efforts.

"The Library Policeman" is a variation on the theme King used in his novel "It" - man revisited by a dark specter from his past. I liked this novella more often than not; whether writing about Rotary Club dinners or drunken bums it has a real sense of life to it one enjoys with King, and the lost-in-time premise has its goofy-but-rich moments. The rape scene many complain of here is actually very realistic and honestly drawn, no mere cheap effect. It's still an "It" knockoff, but one I liked more than "It," if not as much as most of King's other work. My big caveat is it feels like a failed comedy that King gave up on because he didn't feel funny.

"The Sun Dog" is "Cujo" the mutt, weakest story by a wide chalk, about a boy with a Polaroid camera that only takes pictures of an angry dog. Yes, we get one vivid character in shifty Pop Merrill, but everything else in the story feels tired and forced, like the boy's man-to-man talks with his father, Pop's fascination for the strange camera, etc. King also runs on here; though "Sun Dog" is the shortest novella here it really should be much shorter. For several pages where we find ourselves in the mind of a store clerk selling Pop some film, King itemizing her mundane uneasiness as if he were cutting a diamond. The kid's send-off line to the dog will make any King fan groan.

Only the first story in this collection, "The Langoliers," comes off as original and focused. It lacks depth and has some dodgy moments, but the concept of the langoliers, termites of time, is one King really carries off despite any misgivings, and his lead-in to the horror itself, detailing an airline pilot's reaction to news of his ex-wife's death, shows why so many non-horror buffs love King, for the way he navigates the complexities of human emotion with surprising deftness.

I wouldn't give "Langoliers" five stars on its own, but its the one worthy addition here to his overall body of work, and together with the best moments of "Library Policeman" lift this book up to the level of a must for King fans and an okay read for everyone else.

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Very entertaining book!

Truth be told, I am not a great Stephen King fan. The first book I ever read from him was Desperation and, unfortunately, I did not like it. By nature, I am more into the Michael Crichton type of authors.

Nonetheless, about two or so years after reading Desperation, I was searching around for a book to read and came upon this by Stephen King, so I asked myself why not? I was pleasantly surprised by how well written and exciting the stories contained with this book are.

Let me break it down story by story.

1) The Langoliers - A fine story by any measure. I started reading this sometime in the afternoon and I simply couldn't put it down until I finished late in the evening

Not only is the premise of the story incredibly interesting, but the execution was well appreciated. The pace of the story and the character development (save for a few characters) left little to feel disappointed about, but the plot was especially deserving of praise.

Normally, it is advise that one saves the best for last but the Langoliers is hardly a small feat of story telling. Great story no matter how you look at it!

2) Secret Window, Secret Garden (SWSG) - Also a finely written story. Has a finely woven plot and I consider a great second read about finishing the Langoliers.

But as they say, even the best stories has its fair share of flaws. SGSW's most obvious flaws, at least for this reader, lies in the pacing of the given clues and the ending.

By the pacing of the clues, what I mean is how King spread out the clues to the final answer. SWSG contains an a very enjoyable mystery to solve and like any good mystery stories, the clues were given out accordingly. However, one of the most important clues in the entire story was not given (only slightly hinted at) until extremely late in the story. I felt this was a poor judgment

The other flaw was the ending. The ending, as some may say, was extremely obvious. I had correctly guessed it ¼ of the way through the story (lets just say it hit me as the answer). Nonetheless, King obviously didn't want readers to guess the answer too easily so he left a twist.

The twist, I felt, was another poor judgment. The twist, while not at all unpleasant, had a compromising effect on the rest of the story, I felt. The plot would have been a lot stronger and much more effective without it.

3) The Sun Dog - Let me tell you, the first time I read this story, I was terrified. It was an incredibly scary story.

Unfortunately, the same may not be said for everyone. The reason why it scared me so much was probably because it hit so close to home. I also recently purchased a camera and it is roughly the modern equivalent of what Kevin had. It almost even cost the same.

Despite this, however, I found that the story became increasingly silly near the end. Too illogical, so to say. Perhaps this was the story's greatest fault and, unfortunately, it made the story so much less appreciable than the previous two.

It may just be my opinion, but the ending words of the story was more comical than horror.

4) The Library Policeman - Sad to say, but I did not like this story at all.

To start off, I had thought the premise was interesting enough. Turning a library into a place of fear? Why not?

However, as I had suspected he would, King failed in succeeding in that task. It's not that making that library appear scary is difficult as I've seen some extraordinary storytellers done much more amazing things, but I suspected King would failed from his introduction.

From his intro, I had suspected King would attempt to make readers fear the librarian. As a person who have read many stories from many other authors who attempted to do the same, I can tell you that, for some reason or another, most can't seem to succeed in this task. Perhaps it's just me personally as I've been a fan of libraries and librarians for a long time, so perhaps I find it exceedingly difficult to imagine them in a frightening light, but nonetheless, I did not find it scary at all.

This one aspect ruined much of the story for me. Aside from that, however, I also find the protagonists very difficult to connect to. In the other stories, I was able to connect with many of the characters on some level if not a deep level, but in this story, I was not able to connect with anyone at all. Somehow, I see characters like Naomi and Sam to be more caricatures than actual humans. At so many points in this story, it became difficult for me to imagine them as real people and I was unable to immerse myself in the story like I did with the previous ones.

Finally, the last big complaint I have about the story is that I believe King placed too much trust in the shock value of one aspect of the story. Unfortunately, moreso for me, the subject matter is one in which I find little shock value in. King was obviously hoping this one aspect would make the readers uncomfortable and perhaps raise the terror value a notch or so, but I merely raised an eyebrow. I was surprise at the audacity alright, but shocked? Not so much.

It's a shame about this story as I had high hopes for it after reading the previous ones.

Anyway, concluding my review, I recommend this book to any readers looking for some stories to pass the time. I may not have liked one of the stories but the others were simply delightful!

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One Street Wino = A "Beautiful Loser?". I Don't Think So .But Naomi Is Gorgeous!

This is a collection of 4 short stories by King and they are all pretty terrible. My least favourite would have to be "The Library Policeman". In this story we have the "Obligatory King Beautiful Loser" named Dave Duncan who is a career drunk but it is not his fault that he he became a wino bum after getting involved with an oversexed librarian named Ardelia. I have been going to my local Library for over 40 years and I have yet to meet a Librarian who I would want to chase through a cornfield. Read the book if you want to know what I am referring too. Anyway back to the story.This Insurance Salesman is coerced into giving a speech and he borrows a couple of books from the Library to help him write it but he loses the books and instead of just paying a Replacement Fine Ms. Ardelia sets The Library Policeman onto him who is a pretty big scary guy. Along the way the Insurance guy falls in love with his stenographer named Naomi and we have a very good loking woman named Naomi on our TV screens here in Oz and if Naomi in the book looked as good as her I would fall in love with her too.I do grow weary of King portraying lowlifes and losers in a Romanticized Light as King seems to do Ad Infinitum and Ad Nauseam in his books but I do give it 5 stars because I liked the front of the hardcover edition.

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Excellent Detail

"Four Past Midnight" by Stephen King is a story of passengers on a red-eye flight that get stuck in a previous day. The story is well written with much attention to detail on the settings and the characters. The book does have flaws in the way the characters are developed and in my opinion it was a little over written when describing certain aspects of the characters. I also thought the book was too slow and showed very little progression from page to page. Although the book had problems in some areas it truly shined in others. The way King describes the characters and the settings was fantastic. The book also showed great progression in the later part of the first story as they were trying to get back to their own time. Overall the book was extremely well written but lacked in progression in the early parts of the stories.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

The scary story has never been the same since. An extraordinary quartet of full-length novellas: The Langoliers, Secret Window, Secret Garden, The Library Policeman, and The Sun Dog.

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