Book Review: Full Dark, No Stars (Part 4 of 4)

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King (Scribner, 2010)


Today's Review: A Good Marriage

In King's previous novella collections, the fourth piece has been the weakest in the lineup (cf. The Breathing Method, The Sun Dog), and A Good Marriage proves no exception.  The premise is interesting enough: happily married housewife Darcy Anderson stumbles across evidence that her loving and mild-mannered husband of over two decades has a "secret life" as a serial rapist/killer (the novella raises the unsettling question: "Does anybody really know anybody?").  Unfortunately, the narrative is slow to develop, and requires a lot of backstory to establish the history of Darcy and Bob's relationship.  Time is also needed to set-up the moral dilemma presented by Darcy's terrible discovery, and King perhaps is guilty of bringing readers too deep inside the protagonist's head (tracing her thought processes so thoroughly that the plot lags).  Darcy's ultimate decision about how to deal with Bob is not very surprising or moving, and the long anticlimax further diminishes the impact of A Good Marriage.  The narrative might have been more compelling had King decided to play more with the strange, supernatural explanation that Bob offers for his misdeeds.

Before closing the discussion of the book, I should also give mention to the Afterword.  As in many previous volumes, King's commentary entertains no less than the fiction itself.  The story notes (or more properly, the novella notes) here brim with insight, and King's last line makes for a wonderful, sardonic clincher.

Overall, Full Dark, No Stars is a strong quartet (I would rank it ahead of Four Past Midnight and just behind Different Seasons).  Both 1922 and Big Driver are brilliant yarns, and represent some of the finest work King has ever done in the novella form.  This grim collection is indeed full dark, but it's hardly devoid of stars.