Juste avant le crépuscule

Pretty good selection of short stories. Some more gruesome, gross, intriguing or twisted than others. Slightly regretting cooking and eating during the last (toilet related) story. I enjoyed the happy, or maybe rather the 'good guy' winning, endings some of them had.

I had this book here for a while, and decided to go out of my league and read a book of his. Of course it didn't disappoint, and what was I thinking not reading a Stephen King book for awhile? Shame on me. I must read his more often as they are very intriguing, with interesting plot lines.

Once gain Stephen King shows that he really has an uncanny knack for extricating suspense and horror from the smallest mundaneness of everyday life. Truth be told I'm a huge fan of his short story collections over and above his more well known long form writing (with the exception of the Dark tower series!) and Just After Sunset is yet another fantastic collection of scares that will keep you reading from the first page until the last.

This was an uneven collection, with some stories that weren't close to being horror. My favorite story in this collection was "N" but I also enjoyed Stationary Bike even though it was borderline horror. I felt several of the stories too closely tied to the events of 911, which has become a cliche in horror already.

Okay, more like a 3.5 star book, but you still can't give .5 star reviews yet. Started off with a short story that I liked, and then went downhill from there for 2 or 3 stories. I was seriously starting to have my doubts about Mr. King and his prowess for writing the short story. It seemed like Joe Hill had sucked up all the good short story writing ability for [b:20th Century Ghosts|373915|20th Century Ghosts|Joe Hill|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1200579663s/373915.jpg|1049073]. But it got a LOT better. My breakdown:

Willa: Good. Nice, new take on subject matter that's been done before.
The Gingerbread Girl: Ugh. Think Dean Koontz's "Intensity" compressed into 50 pages or so.
Harvey's Dream: I think Outer Limits or some show did a half hour ep on this (or a similar) pretense that King himself had written. Felt tired and old.
Rest Stop: Think King's "The Dark Half" but with George Stark as a good guy and only 20 pages long.
Stationary Bike: This is where the book starts to skyrocket, although I had read "Bike" in another collection (not SK collection though) when it was first published.
The Things They Left Behind: Wow. Excellent. One of my favs. And dealing with such an emotional subject too.
Graduation Afternoon: Better than I would have imagined if you told be the subject matter prior to reading.
N.: WOW. Best of the bunch. His notes at the end of the book didn't mention this at all, but I TOTALLY pictured a Lovecraftian monster with the helmet-head.
The Cat From Hell: Another good one. Now I know why I'm a dog person.
The New York Times At Special Bargain Rates: Idea of the "phone call" mixed with the "Harvey's Dream" premonition is what that Outer Limits was like. This didn't feel stale though.
Mute: Very, very creepy. Good, even though I figured something weird would happen at the end.
Ayana: Didn't see the extended unnatural parts coming in advance. Liked it.
A Very Tight Place: Ok. Would have been better if he was a witch.

Just After Sunset was a good collection of short stories. However, if you follow all of Stephen King's work most of the stories will sound familiar. Every story in this book has been published elsewhere. The only story that hasn't been published according to Wikipedia is N. But this was released on the Internet as a serial podcast. I was disappointed only because I had already read 80% of the stories. I really wish that the fact that they had all been published had been mentioned in the introduction or next to the story in the table of contents. I felt cheated.