But what’s most unsettling about If It Bleeds is something subtler than these big-ticket horrors, something that speaks to a new kind of darkness in the world.

Oh, the novellas contain familiar tropes-a haunted memento, a slow-motion apocalypse, a shape-shifting mass murderer and a deal with a devil. As sirens blare outside my Brooklyn window and the headlines grow more apocalyptic by the day, I might start working my way through King’s backlist. But I wouldn’t begrudge any reader refuge in familiar pleasures, least of all now. It’s a little disappointing, then, that the two remaining pieces in the volume feel more like retreads of conventional material. 'The Life of Chuck' is one of the oddest, most affecting stories I have read in a very long time. And the stories he was telling - about the seductions and corruptions of technology, the extremes of beauty and depravity in even the most ordinary life, the workings of a universe we can never entirely understand - were somehow exactly what I wanted to read right now. The straightforward cadences of King’s voice, paired with his signature sit-down-and-let-me-tell-you-a-story style, were immediately soothing. Then my eye fell upon If It Bleeds, the new collection of novellas by Stephen King. They weren’t speaking to a mind-set recalibrated by the crisis. Even my old favorites now seemed to come from another world. But nothing seemed right for this moment of uncertainty verging on unreality. Avoiding the call of my Twitter feed, I dragged myself from bed and cast an eye over my to-be-read pile. One night in the first weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, I found myself jolted awake at 2 o’clock in the morning, shaking with adrenaline and dread. The resulting work shouldn't be as refined or have as much depth and detail as it somehow does. He has often referred to his work as the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries, and while that might indeed be the case, it perhaps more resembles the work of a sculptor who uses an axe instead of a chisel. King’s work at its best is masterfully accessible, and so it is here in If It Bleeds. If the collection has any sort of an Achilles heel, it might be King’s occasional tendency to overplay his hand when writing the ethnic, racial, or age-related idiom of certain characters. Is it horror? Is it magical realism? Is it literary fiction? Or do each of the three stories carry their own identifier? The jewel in the crown of 'If It Bleeds,' however, is the titular novella. Unlike the other novellas in the collection, 'The Life of Chuck' defies narrative categorization. In addition to the expected supernatural horror themes, the four novellas.are undergirded, to great effect, with more earthbound fears. There’s.a notable thread of simmering anxiety woven throughout that feels very current.

Stephen king if it bleeds review