Book Notices | You Like It Darker by Stephen King

Stephen King, You Like It Darker

Amazon   Stephen King’s You Like It Darker is a collection of 12 titles—seven previously published short stories and five novellas. Looking back over the table of contents now, those that stand out for me as memorable are the novellas. The book starts with “Two Talented Bastids,” which I appreciated as a story with a simple central idea that sustains a lengthy narrative in an interesting way. “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” has a great premise: What happens if a guy dreams about a dead body in a place he’s never been, and the dream turns out to be true? But my favorite story in the collection is probably the last one, “Answer Man.” Interestingly, King explains in his Afterword that he’d started and abandoned “Answer Man” in the late 70s, returning to it only after his nephew found the manuscript and convinced him it was worth finishing. I’m glad he did because it’s a sweet story, ultimately, and its ending scene is simply perfect.