Book Review: "The Dark Half" by Stephen King

I have read an awful lot of Stephen King over the years and to this day, I have never gotten over the reading experience of Salem's Lot when I was a teenager. It was basically being viscerally frightened by something I knew could not be true - but I was scared anyway. It set me up for life when it came to my horror addiction, it also made me wonder about what actually made people scared. It got me interested in othering and that is what I find The Dark Half is mostly about in some weird way. Othering and pain. I ended up basing a lot of the work I did on my degrees on these ideas and in a way, it was mostly thanks to the experience of reading Salem's Lot. As I read The Dark Half recently, I am reminded of those times in my life where I came to those conclusions about myself.

The Dark Half is one of those books which bases itself on pain and othering. About a man who wrote books under a pseudonym for a time and then, revealing himself and killing off the pseudonym, it is partly based in Stephen King's own time of writing under a different name and seems to be a response to being 'outed'. Thad writes under the name 'Richard Stark' so that he may explore different genres without, as he puts it, 'having the New York Times Book Review breathing down (his) neck'.

Unfortunately, the psuedonym does not exactly want to die and, when in a physical entity seems to embody all the worse attributes that Thad himself had: recovering alcoholism, smoking, a bad temper and much more. It becomes even more unfortunate when Thad's fingerprints start appearing at crime scenes though he assures the sheriff that he has nothing to do with the murders. Each murder is of someone close to Thad himself and the linger doubt over the actual death of a pseudonym hangs over his head.

Sometimes, the truth is a lot stranger than fiction and sometimes, science cannot even explain what is happening. In this visceral headache of a horror by Stephen King, we see the battle between good and evil ensue under the realms of what appears to be the same human being - or maybe it isn't the same human being at all.

There are certain things that you have to pay attention to in order for this book to have its desired effect. First of all, pay attention to two characters called Wendy and William. They are two babies and are twins, they also happen to be the children of Thad and his wife. There's a scene that stands out where Wendy open and closes her hand in a style of a baby's wave and then William goes and does the exact same thing. There are many instances like these where one twin will do something and the other will do the same thing without there being any obvious connection between the two events. It makes for some great connected reading. Another instance is when Thad is having that nightmare about his wife being killed and he tries to pick her up but she just disintergrates in his hands - there is something there that I won't tell you about because it may spoil some further plot points.

All in all, this is another 5/5 for Stephen King and I'll be damned if I ever read something by him that is not a straight 100%. I love his books and his storytelling techniques of building worlds around characters. I also love the way he creates atmosphere without even trying. But I think that the one thing I love the most about his writing is the fact that he believes thoroughly that all our own fears, ghosts and poltergeists live within us and we must battle them - this creates a somewhat more realistic version of horror than the typical haunting and works pretty well where this book is concerned. With a striking prologue and first few chapters, this book lays claim to being one of Stephen King's best novels. But then again, I say that about all of them, don't I?