★★★★★ | Horror | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
An amazing collection of early short stories. My favorite — because of the utter difficulty I had in reading it — was The Ledge. The story involves the protagonist having to climb over a balcony railing on the 43rd floor of a luxury apartment building onto a 5″ ledge that he must use (without handholds) to climb around the entire building. Gusting winds and pecking pigeons make him stagger and sway, along with his antagonist who is there watching and taunting him. Mr. King tapped directly into my singular fear. I had to stop reading at different times and remind myself that it was fiction. I am sure my blood pressure was spiking. I tried to close my eyes a few times, but it’s awful hard to read with your eyes closed. What a storyteller!
I have to give this book my highest rating because of the sheer quality of the individual stories and how many have been made into subsequent movies.
Having a breakdown was like breaking a vase and then gluing it back together. You could never trust yourself to handle that vase again with any surety. You couldn’t put a flower in it because flowers need water and water might dissolve the glue.