Everything’s Eventual, Stephen King

Another book of short stories that aren’t his best work, but there are a few gems in there. More on the side of horror… which is fine… that is his forte, though I gravitate to more deep inner conflict pieces. I enjoyed Lunch at the Gotham Café about the disintegration of a maitre d’ in front of a divorcing couple and the man’s blatant distrust of the competence of others and how we can all relate to that; LTs Theory of Pets with those unexpected shifts in tone, away from humor and toward sadness; The Man in the Black Suit about a boy who goes fishing and has an encounter with the devil, as we all face in life at one time or another; a lonely man in All That You Love will Be Carried Away who plans on killing himself in a road-side hotel in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, but then has a change of heart… and for the long haul… I’m routing for him to pull through. The last two were the best….Riding the Bullet, about a college boy hitchhiking his way back from college to a hospital to see his mother who had a stroke…and get’s in the car with a man he knows has already been dead a few years. The choices we make on life and death and the consequences behind them; Lucky Quarter about a maid who is left a quarter tip. The dreams we have, for ourselves, for our children… they are the same. Just some have more ‘luck’ than others. Lucky… so lucky, all of us.