O turno da noite - Night Shift

by Stephen King | Horror |
ISBN: 0451126564 Global Overview for this book
Registered by jimmyweb of Macedo de Cavaleiros, Bragança Portugal on 2/22/2007
Buy from one of these Booksellers:
Amazon.com | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon DE | Amazon FR | Amazon IT | Bol.com
1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by jimmyweb from Macedo de Cavaleiros, Bragança Portugal on Thursday, February 22, 2007
livro em portugues

Night Shift is a collection of twenty short stories written by horror master Stephen King. Most of the stories date from quite early in his three-and-a-half-decade-long writing career (in fact, some of them predate his commercial success by several years). Most likely because of this, many of the pieces are little more than sensationalistic pulp-magazine shockers, though a few rise above the rest as more thoughtful inquiries into human nature, foreshadowing some of King’s later masterpieces. Below is a quick synopsis and evaluation of each of the twenty stories.

Jerusalem’s Lot
Written as a collection of letters from a man named Charles Boone to a friend called Bones, this story continues the eerie plot of King’s novel ’Salem’s Lot, a book about vampires taking over a New England town. In this story, we read about the experiences of Mr. Boone as he investigates the strange occurrences in and around the seemingly abandoned town. While the story will hold some interest to readers of the novel, the letter-writing format gets old after the first half of the lengthy story.

Graveyard Shift
Abused workers in a hellish mill take revenge on their sadistic foreman by abandoning him in a subcellar inhabited by huge rats. This quick-moving story is good right up to the end, where the implausibility of the premise distracts from the otherwise tight writing.

Night Surf
This story seems to take place during the events of King’s masterpiece The Stand. As the world is slowly dying due to the accidental release of the “Captain Tripps” super-flu virus, a group of teenagers on an unnamed beach reflect on their lives and the new world. The tone is nostalgic, but the absence of any plot or likeable characters makes the story a rather dull read.

I Am the Doorway
Hardly an original concept—an astronaut returns to earth to gradually discover that his body has been possessed by some malevolent extra-terrestrial force. The story is told in the first-person, and after a somewhat convoluted opening, it becomes quite interesting. The ending
is predictable but satisfying.

The Mangler
A true slasher story with a demon-possessed machine rather than a demented human as the antagonist. Reminiscent of King’s Christine and From a Buick 8, where evil cars terrorize the residents of small towns, this story recounts the possession and attempted exorcism of a malevolent washing machine. If you like senseless violence for the sake of senseless violence, with a little genuine human terror thrown in for good measure, you’ll like this one.

The Boogeyman
King has always been a master of the surprise ending (though after thirty years, some of the surprises seem a bit stale). In this story a psychology patient tells his compassionate doctor a horrifying tale regarding the demise of his family due to the incredible presence of a boogeyman in the children’s closets. As the story unfolded it reminded me of “Suffer the Little Children” from King’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection. It’s a very interesting exploration of a father’s grief with an unfortunately disappointing ending.

Gray Matter
An interesting take on the unfortunate fate of an alcoholic who drinks a very bad bottle of skunky beer. The descriptions are quite disgusting, which means they must be effective, since that was apparently King’s goal here. Not a pleasant story, but it’s well written.

Battleground
One of my favorites from this collection. A cross between Dean Koontz’s Tick-Tock and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, this story recounts an epic battle between a professional hitman and a band of voodoo-animated toy soldiers. It’s a great story, complete with a delightfully unexpected twist at the end.

Trucks
Another evil cars story—though in this case it’s trucks, and instead of terrorizing a town they take over the world. A fun twist on apocalyptic literature.

Sometimes They Come Back
A classic ghost story with a splash of the demonic. When a schoolteacher’s dead childhood tormentors show up again in his classroom, he is forced to take drastic action to resolve the situation. The story’s conclusion seems to impart a moral of sorts: summoning demons for one’s own purposes is not necessarily a good idea.

Strawberry Spring
Strikingly similar to “The Boogeyman,” but better written and with a much better ending. This story explores the evil lurking within us that we ourselves are blissfully unaware of.

The Ledge
Another of my favorites. A wealthy and arguably insane businessman makes a wager with the young tennis pro who has been sleeping with his wife. If the tennis pro, who is also the narrator, can make it all the way around the top of a high-rise building on a five-inch-wide ledge, he will escape forty years in prison for a trumped-up dope charge.

The Lawnmower Man
An interesting if somewhat macabre look at alternative lawn mowing techniques. Suffice it to say that the lawn isn’t the only thing that gets mowed.

Quitters, Inc.
King evidently wrote this story either while or just after quitting smoking. Overcoming an addiction is a difficult—and for some, impossible—proposition. That’s why Quitters, Inc. was founded. It’s a company that assists smokers in kicking the habit once and for all. Backsliding is not unexpected—but neither is it unpunished. This is a great story, though I would stop short of ascribing any theological significance to it, as some have attempted to do.

I Know What You Need
What would you do if you found the one person in the world who truly understands everything about you? Would you be suspicious? Would you fall in love? Or maybe both? There are plenty of stories out there about resorting to the dark arts to win a would-be lover’s heart. This story explores in a compelling and realistic manner what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that kind of attention.

Children of the Corn
This horror story managed to pique the interest of a generation and became the foundation of a movie franchise. After six films the premise is no longer fresh, but the original story still packs a solid horror punch.

The Last Rung on the Ladder
This is a sad story about broken dreams and unrealized expectations, about the hopes of childhood being squashed by the stark reality of adulthood. There’s nothing horrible about it except for the horror of the human condition. It’s well written but rather depressing.

The Man Who Loved Flowers
One of the worst stories in the book. It starts out well enough, but it seems like the author got tired of the premise halfway through and just gave up. The last page is a prime example of “telling” (rather than “showing”) the events that are supposed to comprise climax of the story.

One for the Road
Another ’Salem’s Lot spin-off, with a Maine blizzard added for extra chill.

The Woman in the Room
Another depressing story, and another of my least favorites. Here King analyzes euthanasia (a.k.a. matricide, in this tale) in an ineffective and unenjoyable story. Like Clint Eastwood’s movie Million Dollar Baby, some would probably call this story precient and ahead of its time; I simply found it dreary.

This collection was not my favorite from King. It’s his earliest short-story book and in my view the least cohesive. Still, there are some definite bright spots. Looking back, it’s not hard to see how this book contributed to King’s early and phenomenal success.

Are you sure you want to delete this item? It cannot be undone.