If It Bleeds

 

If It Bleeds – Stephen King

A collection of four novellas, or “short” stories.  I believe this is probably the fourth or fifth release by King with such a structure.  This isn’t to be confused with his releases (again, there have been four or five) that contain about 15 stories - the average story consisting of about 25 pages.   This collection of only four stories or so gives the tales more page space, so it allows them to breathe better, and perhaps the reader will remember these stories several years after they’ve read them.

King usually succeeds with this model. Of course, the public is very fickle with Stephen King, and even his biggest admirers will admit that he quite often fails to deliver. I’m sure my opinion of these stories would be shared by some, but opinions of his works are usually all over the place.   Of the four stories here, I enjoyed three of them. They weren’t earth shatteringly great, but they were entertaining, easy to digest, and all had a sense of weirdness and creepiness that King is most known for in the literary world.

The three stories I enjoyed were about a cell phone, a dying world, and a….er…..rat…..I guess.  There’s not much else that I can comment on other than to say I enjoyed the stories. They were all a tad creepy, but overall a lot of fun with an occasional impulse to laugh.  Sadly, the fourth story, the one with the same title as the book, is the one that I didn’t enjoy. It was also about twice as long as the rest of these stories. My instincts, though, tell me that many of King’s readers probably enjoyed it a lot better than I did.

The novella “If It Bleeds” is yet another Bill Hodges story. Of course, those who know Bill Hodges know he’s long gone due to pancreatic cancer. One of his assistants, Holly Gibney, has been promoted to the senior role of main protagonist. After the Bill Hodges trilogy of books, Gibney was the star of a later work by King called “The Outsider”.   Gibney has a lot of fans; including King himself. He says so in the conclusion of this collection. Unfortunately, I wish I could say the same.  I’m a bit tired of her and her cohorts. I enjoyed the Bill Hodges trilogy, but even those grew thin over time. So I was less than enthused to see the same group of characters pop up once again.

It must also be said that one really needs to read those three-plus-one books before they tackle this one. There are too many references to those stories (“The Outsider”, in particular.)  One wishes that there would be a disclaimer on the front cover of this book with a warning not to waste one’s effort reading this thing unless they have first read the other four.  Imagine if you tried to read “The Dark Tower Part 6” before you read the first five.  Would you be a tad lost?  I think you would.

Then there’s the fact that Stephen King tends to fluctuate his style depending on the story he’s writing. This isn’t necessarily a good thing. I’ve commented before than King is a great storyteller, but he seems to lack sufficient knowledge when trying to write characters having simple dialogue with each other. I find such interactions a tad unbelievable, and it can wear on you after a while.  With Holly Gibney, he also has the tendency of not knowing when to put up a stop sign that prevents every single detail from his brain making its way to the printed page.  Example: Consider this entry from the story:

“Holly orders out to Domino’s – a small veggie pizza and a large coke. When the young man shows up, she tips according to Bill Hodges’ rule of thumb: fifteen per cent of the bill if the service is fair, twenty per cent if the service is good. This young man is prompt, so she tips the full amount.”

Now, I think it would be just as effective to simply say:

“Holly orders a veggie pizza from Domino’s.”

I’m sure every English teacher I ever had would say the same thing.  When a reader has to deal with this for almost 200 pages, you can see how one can feel a tad worn out when one has to read so much with so little of actual action.  Again, though, this doesn’t seem to affect King when he wrote his other three stories. So why does writing about Holly Gibney give him such OCD tendencies?

A good collection overall though.  This is what I expected; good and bad.  Most King readers will find multiple things to like here, and maybe have some minor gripes such as the ones I listed.