There is no such thing as vintage King. He has broken all kinds of barriers with his writing. Expect the unexpected from Mr. King. A great collection. ( )

There's a lot to like about this collection of long stories. The opener, "Low Men in Yellow Coats," is set firmly in the Dark Tower universe but also a great standalone coming-of-age story. The remaining stories are about the Vietnam generation, both during the war and after it, and aren't necessarily the supernatural horror that King is known for. Of these, the most compelling are the title story and "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling," the last story, but the entire collection is very good writing and kind of a departure for King. ( )

The second Stephen King fiction I've read (Bag of Bones), there was a longing for normalcy among the characters. Bobby Garfield, a child in the first chapter and middle-aged by the last, is a long lasting character memory-wise. I'm told other characters like the extraterrestrial Ted recur in the Dark Tower series. Quite an engaging book I'm glad I read. ( )

Enjoyed this collection of stories more than I expected. The first story, "Low Men in Yellow Coats," is part of the Dark Tower canon, though the title story is King at his best as a writer.The movie took the name of the collection, but was based on "Low Men" alone. And it was terrible. ( )

Eh, no "real review" this time. This is an older book that has been reviewed a hundred times. Anyway, I wrote a llloooooonnnnng "What I thought".

I knew that, eventually, I’d give Stephen King another try. I was very near mortally scarred by reading The Stand when I was 12 or 13. Look people, I’ve never even seen a Friday the 13th or anything like that. The scariest movie I’ve ever seen is Silence of the Lambs. I was a restless sleeper for weeks after seeing The Blair Witch Project. As for books, I still get goosebumps when I think of Christina’s Ghost or Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls.

Suffice it to say, I’m a wimp.

Anyway, this book didn’t look to scawwy. It seemed to fall into the Non-horror-Stephen-King category (of which I’ve seen several movies…).This is technically a collection of short stories, but it reads more like a novel. A few characters wind a common thread between the five stories.

We begin with Low Men in Yellow Coats: it is 1960. Three friends; Bobby, Carol, and Sully-John; live in a pretty little suburb in Connecticut. Bobby has a new upstairs neighbor, a strange older man named Ted. Against Bobby’s widowed mother’s wishes, he and Ted become friends. Bobby was recently gifted an adult library card, and Ted guides him through the world of adult fiction. Bobby’s mother constantly worries that Ted is abusing Bobby…there’s definitely a very King-esque creepy-old-man vibe coming from Ted. But the strangest thing that Ted does is warn Bobby about “Low Men in Yellow Coats”, and tells him to be on the lookout for strange things in his idyllic, suburban neighborhood: lost pet signs, upside down car-for-sale ads, things like that. This story is a great example of another common Stephen King theme: boys coming of age.

One thing happened that I feel I have to mention – Ted, at one point, mentioned “The Gunslinger.” ‘The Gunslinger!’ I thought. ‘Like, the Dark Tower Gunslinger?’ A few pages later, the Dark Tower is mentioned. I slammed down the book. I know OF The Dark Tower. I know it’s a lengthy series of novels, and I very VERY MUCH do NOT want to get involved in a series right now. I went to my handy catalog and only picked Hearts in Atlantis up again after I’d ascertained that it was not one of the Dark Tower series. In fact, those two little mentions were all that was said of it. Someday, when I have the time to get involved with a series, I hope to find out why King mentioned it in passing in this book.

Flash forward to 1966. Peter Riley’s a freshman at the University of Maine. He arrives on the first day with a Barry Goldwater bumper sticker on his car, and leaves at the end of the year with a hand-drawn peace sign on the back of his jacket. In between, he plays a helluva lot of Hearts and flirts with the pretty girl he works with in the cafeteria dishroom, Carol from Connecticut. I liked this story the best of them all because, well, I wasted away a large chunk of my college years playing euchre. I know of what Peter Riley speaks.

Blind Willie Speaks finally takes us out of the 1960’s. Willie is a seemingly normal businessman in 1983 – but he is haunted by two incidents in his life: the senseless beating of a girl when he was a bully growing up in Connecticut, and what happened when he wound up in Viet Nam. What he does to cope may seem outlandish to some, but whatever keeps him going, I guess. This, and the following two stories, is far shorter and more snapshot-like than the first two.

Why We’re in Viet Nam is probably the shortest story, but the one that haunted me the most. Sully-John meets with a fellow veteran at a third’s funeral, and they speak of things that they can only talk to each other about. In particular, of the My Lai massacre: the Hearts-obsessed soldier and Mama-san the old Vietnamese woman that he killed. This story is of a deeply troubled man and the ghosts of his past. I loved it.

Finally, we get to “Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling”. At first, I was kind of annoyed at this sort of neatly-tied-up ending to the book. It does give resolution to a couple of the folks in the stories.

So! Stephen King: I enjoyed it. At some point, I’ll try another one. I think I’d like to read another one of his books when I have the time to really get into it and read large chunks at a time. This book was read in bits and pieces – I felt like I couldn’t really get sucked in when I kept being interrupted by LIFE. ( )