My Dark Half.


For the first time in a good eighteen years, I’m reading a novel by Stephen King.

He’s an author that - despite being widely respected and responsible for the plot-lines of countless films - I wasn’t sure if I might have grown out of, having been synonymous with my time as a teenager. For some reason, horror’s a genre that's often latched onto by people of that age; I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because you're approaching early adulthood and crave the gentle rebellion* of acting older than you actually are.

Not that King solely writes horror; while his books often have a dark psychological or paranormal tinge, they’re not all as disturbing as ‘It’. They just happened to be the examples of his work I was first drawn to; devouring the likes of 'Misery', 'The Dark Half', 'The Shining', 'Pet Sematary', 'The Stand' and 'Needful Things' when I was probably younger than their target audience.

The one I’m currently reading is Revival, which I picked up from the library last week and has already drawn me in. I’d forgotten how effortlessly he writes; apparently, his style doesn’t just suit 'hormonal me'. I mentioned I was reading it to my friend Steve when we met up tonight and he started waxing lyrical about King’s multi-layered series ‘The Dark Tower’. Maybe I’ll get around to that one day - though at eight books and 515, 738 pages, it might be something to dip in and out of.

*Not the 60s TV series with the bear and all those fan-propelled boats.

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