The Dark Half - Stephen King

It had been quite some time that I had read Stephen King. Maybe I had lost my love for horror as a genre. Or maybe I just had too many other books to lap up. But either ways, point of the matter was that I had not read a Stephen King book since a long time; and that’s a shame, since he does have the claim to my favourite author’s title, along with P.G. Wodehouse of course.

The Dark Half was a book, highly recommended by a friend. And I had it lying with me for quite some time too. But that was the last Stephen King book that I had. So I never got the heart to read it, knowing that if I read it, I wouldn’t have any more Stephen King books left to read. So what I did, is that I got a couple of new Stephen Kings. So with the fear of running out of SKs out of my head, I finally picked up the book.

So… with the review.

One thing about SK books is that it’s very difficult to write a review without giving away spoilers. The protagonist, Thad Beaumont, in this book is a writer. (Why does that not surprise me) And while he has written some successful and some not so successful books under his own name, the books written under his pseudonym, George Stark, his so called dark half, have been runaway hits. The book is essentially about the battle between these two names, two identities, two halves. Apologies to Mr. King if I have downplayed the plot a bit. But wouldn’t want to narrate the synopsis of the story here. The battle is just not in the mind. It’s very, very physical. And no, the book is not about schizophrenia. It is as pure a horror novel as a horror novel can get.

The biggest challenge a horror writer faces, perhaps, is to make the horror believable. And it’s no easy, walking-on-the-cake, or sipping-the-ice-tea task. How do you convince a reader that the ghost is a pseudonym of a writer who doesn’t write under that name anymore? Stephen King has created some very unlikely, but believable ghosts, and with consummate ease, elsewhere. Remember Christine? And the hall of famer, The Shining? Here too, he does a fairly decent job of conveying the reality of the “dark half”. But the problem is that the ghost here is a very much a piece of clay at the disposal of the author. He has all the strengths the author decides to give him, and weaknesses that the author conveniently confers upon him. And scariness, though quite logical, feels somewhat forced. I guess there’s a limitation to a humanish ghost, regardless of how inhuman the author makes him out to be.

Though the book is not that scary, the story is quite all right. The characters are well built, and there’s a lot of chemistry between Thad and his wife, Liz. And the interaction between Thad and his dark half, George Stark is very well written indeed. The mind games are a delight to read.

The ending, though convenient, isn’t as lame as a priest coming and scaring away the ghost by holy water. The end is built up well throughout the book, all the way to the climax. And neither is it that predictable. And not that Stephen King was ever short on descriptive skills, but the climax is especially well described. And it actually makes your flesh creep under the skin while you read. So, maybe as a horror novel it is not quite that top notch. But as a fiction book it has its share of thrills and blood. You wouldn’t be bored with the story, but you also wouldn’t really be at the edge of your seat. Not a regret to read, but nothing too must-read about it as well.