Stephen King's "Just After Sunset"

It has been far too long since my last blog review, sorry for the delay.

If you like scary stories based in realistic settings, this is a great book for you. Some scary stories are ghostly, others are ghoulish, but some are uniquely realistic and carry a degree of coherence with the everyday world we move about in. Stephen King's "Just After Sunset", is one of these books. His work touches on nuances of everyday life that are just as haunting as the horrifying events that take place in his stories.
To tell a story well one must place emphasis on the detail, the characters, the plot and the rhythm with which everything moves together. King accomplishes this feat while simultaneously creeping out his audience with what seems like a never ending supply of frightening stories. I have read two books by him now, the first perhaps his most well known the infamous "IT", later made into a feature film was an incredibly intricate and detailed story that was woven together tightly and efficiently. I thoroughly enjoyed reading "IT" and "Just After Sunset" met and at some points exceeded my the expectations after reading "IT".
The book "Just After Sunset" consists of a number of short and not so short scary stories based in New England and largely in Maine. If you are a fellow Mid Atlantic resident this close to home aspect of King's writing makes things seem even more real.
The stories create scary situations out of seemingly normal lives, situations and aspects of society. A man develops an acute case of obsessive compulsive disorder which leads him to take part in a ritualistic series of observances of a deserted field in the Maine countryside. Another protagonist becomes severe addicted to an illusory world of stationary biking he creates in his basement complete with a video projection screen which takes him into a schizoid mental break. The stories go on and on, they break apart families, delve into personality types and point to potential rifts in the fabric of New England and American culture and society that lead its citizenry astray and afoul of common mores and behaviors.
King is a master of creating disaster inside the nuance and the microscopic. His stories don't tell of giant beasts roaming the earth or aliens inhabiting the skies waiting to strike us down; they speak to everyone, to the everyday person who has lived and experienced a degree of mystery, strange circumstance and the occasional nightmare.
"Just After Sunset" is glimpse into the possibilities of King's mind and the deeply troubling potentials that lie therein. This is a good read one story at a time or for the more focused reader who reads a complete work then move to the next.