Different Seasons
Stephen King, 1982
★ 4.36 from 227.3k ratings on Goodreads
Horror Mystery, thriller & crimeFantasy
Four novellas, only one of them horror, about prison, memory, and the friendships that make and break boys. Four novellas move from prison-yard endurance to boyhood friendship and moral dread, with a warm nostalgic voice that can turn unsettling.
Feels like nostalgia, hope and dread. About friendship, memory and freedom.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you want Stephen King working beyond straight horror, with memory and friendship carrying several stories. Be aware that some readers find the last novella weaker and the darker entries hard going.
Why read it
It gives you four distinct shades of King, from prison to boyhood to moral darkness, without requiring a whole novel's commitment.
A page from the book
The words that matter most are the ones we can't say.
The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear. What readers say
Readers often praise the collection’s emotional range—hope and friendship in one story, nostalgia and sadness in another, and disturbing moral darkness in a third. Some find the final novella weaker, and a few dislike the darker entries.
Stephen King.Different Seasons was published in 1982; three of its four novellas became films—Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and Apt Pupil.
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Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Different Seasons for me?
- You may like it if you want Stephen King working beyond straight horror, with memory and friendship carrying several stories. Be aware that some readers find the last novella weaker and the darker entries hard going.
- What is Different Seasons like?
- Four novellas move from prison-yard endurance to boyhood friendship and moral dread, with a warm nostalgic voice that can turn unsettling. Feels like nostalgia, hope and dread. About friendship, memory and freedom.
- What should I read after Different Seasons?
- If you liked Different Seasons, try Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (J. K. Rowling), The Hunting Party (Lucy Foley) and Bleachers (John Grisham).
A taste of the feed
How much changes when a choice stops being made for you?
It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew — and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents — that there was all the difference in the world.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince · J. K. Rowling
How little pressure it takes to find out what someone really is.
Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters. And sometimes you just get a strong sense about people, and you can’t explain it; you simply know it, in some deeper part of yourself.
The Hunting Party · Lucy Foley
A town that builds more seats than it has people.
Ten thousand seats up in the bleachers, for a town with a population of eight thousand. The math had never worked. But they piled in from the county, from out in the sticks where there was nothing else to do on Friday night. They got their paychecks and bought their beer, and they came to town, to The Field where they clustered in one raucous pack at the north end of the stands and made more noise than the students, the band, and the townsfolk combined.
Bleachers · John Grisham
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