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Different Seasons [Mass Market Paperback]

Stephen King (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (144 customer reviews)
Price: CDN$ 8.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
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Different Seasons (1982) is a collection of four novellas, markedly different in tone and subject, each on the theme of a journey. The first is a rich, satisfying, nonhorrific tale about an innocent man who carefully nurtures hope and devises a wily scheme to escape from prison. The second concerns a boy who discards his innocence by enticing an old man to travel with him into a reawakening of long-buried evil. In the third story, a writer looks back on the trek he took with three friends on the brink of adolescence to find another boy's corpse. The trip becomes a character-rich rite of passage from youth to maturity.

These first three novellas have been made into well-received movies: "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" into Frank Darabont's 1994 The Shawshank Redemption (available as a screenplay, a DVD film, and an audiocassette), "Apt Pupil" into Bryan Singer's 1998 film Apt Pupil (also released in 1998 on audiocassette), and "The Body" into Rob Reiner's Stand by Me (1986).

The final novella, "Breathing Lessons," is a horror yarn told by a doctor, about a patient whose indomitable spirit keeps her baby alive under extraordinary circumstances. It's the tightest, most polished tale in the collection. --Fiona Webster

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144 Reviews
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4.4 out of 5 stars (144 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Read This and Tell Me He's Not The Master, Dec 10 2003
This review is from: Different Seasons (School & Library Binding)
I have no patience anymore for people who say, "Stephen King is not much of a writer." How can they say that? Because he is succesful? Because his books sell? Because he has chosen horror (primarily) as his genre? Please read this collection of short works (4 novellas? 4 longish short stories?) and tell me that he is not the master. Yes, he has written some loopy stories at times; yes, he has written books that seem self-undulgent or just plain weird. But if you read these classic scribblings (Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, The Breathing Method, Apt Pupil, The Body), you will begin to see why Stehpen King is the most successful writer who has ever lived: (success = every book he has ever written is still in print, still on the shelves, and this goes way back to Carrie in 1973-74; he has earned over a billion dollars in sales, not counting film royalties). Read these stories and you will begin to see the first of the two particular talents he has in abundance: humanity. He writes HUMAN characters. He knows PEOPLE. He can put a mirror up to the human condition like the best literary writers. His second talent is that he can and does tell a story. This is how he gets under the literary writers' collective skins and surpasses them and everybody else in the marketplace. In short, he is successful because he has the talent of the literary writers and he has the plot ambition of the popular writers. He's the writer who has it all. All hail, the master! I am proud to be numbered among his fans.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars How do you silence a King critic? Give him Different Seasons, July 26 2006
By Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Different Seasons (Mass Market Paperback)
For all those who doubt the fact that Stephen King is one of the all-time great masters at the craft of writing, there is Different Seasons. If nothing else, the doubters should at least acknowledge King's important contribution to reviving the lost art of the novella. King has always said he would write, whether he ever sold a single book - and I think that is completely true. He didn't write these four novellas with publication in mind; each one was written immediately after the completion of a best-selling novel - and each one just sort of sat there after it was finished. What, after all, can a modern author really do with manuscripts too long to be short stories and too short to be novels? Eventually, the idea came to King to just publish them together, with a title that speaks to the fact that these are not the author's usual blood-dripping, creepy-crawling horror stories. In doing so, he not only gave us four of his most captivating works of fiction, he showed a whole new generation of readers the vast, inherent power of the novella.

Three of these four novellas are even better-known than many of King's best-selling novels - due in no small part to the movie adaptations that followed in their wake. It all started with the film Stand By Me - which was not marketed as an adaptation of a Stephen King work of fiction. This was a smart move, considering some of the weak adaptations of earlier King novels. I can only guess how many impressed moviegoers were shocked to learn that Stand By Me was adapted from King's novella The Body. It's a story of four boys who set off to see a dead body, that of another kid hit by a train; their adventure makes for an extraordinary coming-of-age story. It is, in fact, a story about childhood, founded upon a mysterious event in King's own early days (he supposedly saw a friend hit by a train when he was four years old - but there has always been some question as to whether or not this is true); The Body feels autobiographical, and it truly does recapture the essence of childhood and the maturing process into adolescence. I like to think of The Body as a fantastic warm-up to King's later novel It, which captures the essence of childhood almost perfectly.

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption gave birth to Shawshank Redemption, the most critically acclaimed and popular of all King movie adaptations. I think the movie is even better than the novella (largely due to Morgan Freeman), but everything that shines in the movie is here in the novella. An innocent man, convicted of killing his wife and her lover, gives new meaning to the term patient resolve - and has a profound effect on some of his fellow prisoners. I think it's the ultimate prison story, as it shows us the good and the bad of prison life and imbues its characters with a humanity rarely seen in prison-based stories. It's just a stellar piece of writing.

Apt Pupil is my favorite, though, and it finally, after years of fits and starts and rumors, was made into a film in 1998. The movie did make some changes to the original storyline, but it was a vastly underrated film that truly embodied the spirit of King's original novella. The most horrible things can oftentimes be the most fascinating. I know I've always been fascinated by everything that took place in the Third Reich. The teenager in the story, though, is obsessed with those atrocities, and that obsession turns into something increasingly disquieting and dangerous when he discovers a former Nazi living under another name in his neighborhood and blackmails him into telling him all the "gooshy" details of his part in the Holocaust. Apt Pupil is one of the most impressive psychological studies of evil I've ever read.

The Breathing Method sort of gets lost in the shuffle. It's shorter than the other novellas and has never been adapted for film. I really like this story, though. It has a classic fireside story feel to it, hearkening back to the likes of Poe, with its mysterious gentlemen's "club" and emphasis on story-telling. The particular story we are privileged to hear about is in some ways rather ridiculous and certainly quite melodramatic - yet it works extremely well. The novella was dedicated to Peter and Susan Straub, and I think it shows the obvious influence of horror maestro Straub from top to bottom (which, to my mind, is a good thing).

The Breathing Method supplies the theme that serves as a sort of mantra for the entire collection: It is the tale, not he who tells it. The story is everything, and the author is sort of a literary midwife who helps the birthing process along. I heartily believe that many a King critic would fawn over Different Seasons if they read it without knowing who wrote it. This book is a perfect introduction for those yet to experience King for themselves - these are, for the most part, mainstream works of fiction that reveal a master storyteller at work.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The proof that Stephen King is a great writer..., Jun 13 2004
By JR Pinto (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Different Seasons (Mass Market Paperback)
Different Seasons is perhaps the best Stephen King book with which to initiate the neophyte who says, "He can't be a good writer - he writes HORROR." This is King's first, greatest take on the mainstream. Each of the four offerings could be textbook examples of the perfectly written novella. Not coincidentally, this book has inspired three of his best movie-adaptations.

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption: Yes, even if you have seen the movie, you should read this. It tells the story of how an innocent man is able to keep hope alive in prison.

Apt Pupil: This, it can be argued, is really a monster story; the monsters however are all too real. A teen-aged boy obsessed with the holocaust discovers his own pet Nazi in the neighborhood.

The Body: The inspiration for the wonderful film Stand by Me, it is a heartbreaking coming-of-age tale and the power of friendship.

The Breathing Method: The book's one true horror story. I won't try to attempt to explain what it is about.

In the Afterward, King commits his worst sin by famously referring to his own work as "the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and a large fries from MacDonald's." Not only does that cut himself short, it is an insult to us, his readers, who think his stuff is pretty darn good. Want proof? Read these stories.

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 		 Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Four great non-horror King novellas
"Different Seasons" is not your typical King horror novel. It is a compilation of 4 novellas (short stories). Three of the stories were eventually made into movies. Read more
Published on May 3 2004 by Michael Weiser

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book
The book, A Diffrent Season, is a really exciting book with a good balance of love and baseball. It is about a girl who wants to play baseball, and how the baseball star and a... Read more
Published on Oct 24 2003 by a student

4.0 out of 5 stars This Book is A Beautiful Work of Art
This book was a wild, and intense ride, and helped me look at things a a very different way. I understood (from the afterword) King's need to write something other than horrer. Read more
Published on Oct 3 2003

5.0 out of 5 stars Four terrific tales from a master storyteller.
If you've never read Stephen King before, this book is an excellent place to start, as it will show you that King is much more than just a "horror" writer. Read more
Published on Sep 11 2003 by Beth Cholette

5.0 out of 5 stars The Body is Amazing
In the book, Different Seasons, I read the 3rd story, "The Body". Even, though I put my age as 12, i am 13. Read more
Published on Sep 8 2003

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best....
This collection of stories has to rank as my favorite. Most people have seen the adapted movies: Stand by me; The Shawshank Redemption; and Apt Pupil, but the stories offer much... Read more
Published on April 29 2003 by Charles J Horne

4.0 out of 5 stars A Different Spin from King
Be forewarned that this is not your typical horrors from King. In this compilation of 4 novellas, King proved that he is not just the King of Horrors. Read more
Published on April 21 2003 by azmi21

5.0 out of 5 stars He's my favorite living writer and this is his very best
When I was a boy I, too, had a treehouse and some of my best memories are of long summer afternoons in my treehouse with a box full of comic books, and my favorites were always... Read more
Published on Mar 29 2003 by Joseph Townsend

5.0 out of 5 stars Among King's better books
Not your typical collection of King horror stories, "Different Seasons" shows King's versatility at delivering high entertainment without resorting to more standard scare tactics... Read more
Published on Mar 24 2003 by Avery Z. Conner

4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars for Four Stories
I really liked three of these stories. I started with Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption because like a lot us I thought the movie was really, really good. Read more
Published on Jan 26 2003 by Stacey Cochran

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