I'm green da ba dee da ba da...no, wait, that's BLUE!
I'm green da ba dee da ba da...no, wait, that's BLUE!
Member since:07.03.2003
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"At midnight comes the point of balance. Of danger. The instant between two beats of a heart, an alternative reality can slip through, like a blade between the ribs, and switch you into a new and terrifying world.
Four Past Midnight: four heart-stopping accounts of that moment when the familiar world fractures beyond sense, the fragments spinning away from the desperate clutching reaches of sanity…"
As the blurb suggests, Four Past Midnight is another spine-tingler from Stephen King. The edition I have runs to nearly 1000 pages, so it does look a bit off-putting at first. However, as it's spilt into 4 separate stories, it does make it less intimidating.
One Past Midnight: The Langoliers. This story finds 10 people from all walks of life on an aeroplane heading from Los Angeles to Boston, including: an aeroplane pilot; a blind girl heading to Boston for surgery; a Jewish music student and a mysterious English gentleman.
Part way through the flight they wake to find all of the other passengers, and flight crew have inexplicably vanished. What has happened to the other passengers and the crew? What are the langoliers? Will they all survive the journey? Well, I'm not going to tell you! This story definitely had me gripped right from start to finish and is definitely the best part of this collection. Running to nearly 300 pages, this story could almost be published as a novel in its own right.
Two Past Midnight: Secret Window, Secret Garden. Morton Rainey is an author, whose books have just started to hit the best-sellers lists. He is woken from a nap in the middle of the day by a man on his doorstep accusing him of stealing his story. The man, John Shooter, leaves Morton a copy of his manuscript, and out of curiosity Morton reads it and discovers it is virtually identical to a story he initially published in an obscure magazine years ago. Morton starts to investigate John Shooter, and finds strange things start to happen to him- a pet is killed, a house is burned down. Is John Shooter behind it all or is it down to someone else? This story took me a little while longer to get into, but the end was definitely unexpected!
Three Past Midnight: The Library Policeman Sam Peebles is a Realty & Insurance salesman in his own company, dreaming of owning a Mercedes. Brought in at the last minute to give an after dinner speech at his local Rotary club, he heads to the local library to do a bit of research. There he meets the formidable librarian, Ardelia Lortz, who threatens him with the Library Police if he fails to return his books on time. (No fines here!) Ardelia Lortz is not all she seems, and after returning to the library a week later, Sam discovers the library isn't all it seems either. Does Sam get his books back before the library Policeman can get him? What exactly is Ardelia Lortz up to? Again this took me a little while to get into, and again I was surprised by surprise twists near the end.
Four Past Midnight: The Sun Dog For his 15th birthday Kevin Delevan receives a Sun 660 Polaroid camera, which he coveted over all his other presents. Naturally, he starts to play with the camera and takes his first photograph. The anticipation builds as the machine whirs and spits out the first photograph, the family waits with eagerness. The photo doesn't come out quite right, so he takes some more. But something's not quite right with these either, no matter what he points the camera at it takes exactly the same picture. Kevin take his camera to local 'fix-it man' Pop Merrill. Between them they take more photographs, but there's something sinister about the contents of the photos, something almost supernatural. What is it the camera's capturing? Why does Pop continue to take photographs even though he knows there's something completely wrong with the camera? Another story that took me a little while to get into, I think King definitely used the best story first! There was some anticipation built in this story, as it takes King a while to reveal what the photos contain.
Overall, an ok book. The first story kept me captivated for a while, and if it was a stand-alone novel I'd definitely buy it & read it again, but as a collection I think it will just gather dust on my bookshelf.
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I saw the film version of The Langoliers - I'd never realised it was one of King's!
pdoyle007 03.05.2006 11:10
good review, reminds me a little of the Bachman books which was 4 mini-ish stories bound together. Just starting 'The Stand' now, although only reading it during daylight hours :)
Apr 24th, 2006
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