If It Bleeds: Mr. Harrigan's Phone, The Life of Chuck, If It Bleeds, Rat
*#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*
Featuring the novella “The Life of Chuck,” now a feature film adapted for the screen and directed by Mike Flanagan (The Fall of the House of Usher, Doctor Sleep) and starring Tom Hiddleston, Mark Hamill, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Karen Gillan—a Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award winner!
From the legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary collection of four new “exceptionally compelling novellas that reaffirm [King’s] mastery of the form” (The Washington Post).
Readers adore Stephen King’s novels, and his novellas are their own dark treat, briefer but just as impactful and enduring as his longer fiction. Many of his novellas have been made into iconic films, including “The Body” (Stand by Me) and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” (Shawshank Redemption).
The four brilliant tales in If It Bleeds prove as iconic as their predecessors. In the title story, reader favorite Holly Gibney (from the Mr. Mercedes trilogy and The Outsider) must face her fears, and possibly another outsider—this time on her own. In “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” an intergenerational friendship has a disturbing afterlife. “The Life of Chuck” explores, beautifully, how each of us contains multitudes. And in “Rat,” a struggling writer must contend with the darker side of ambition.
If these novellas show King’s range, they also prove that certain themes endure. One of King’s great concerns is evil, and in If It Bleeds, there’s plenty of it. There is also evil’s opposite, which in King’s fiction often manifests as friendship. Holly is reminded that friendship is not only life-affirming but can be life-saving. Young Craig befriends Mr. Harrigan, and the sweetness of this late-in-life connection is its own reward.
“An adroit vehicle to showcase the…nature of evil” (The Boston Globe), If It Bleeds is “exactly what I wanted to read right now,” says Ruth Franklin in The New York Times Book Review.
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Community Reviews
I picked this up to read as brain candy while dealing with a series of medical appointments, and it served its purpose.
The first story “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” is a perfect little ghost story that’s both eerie and sweet — King is always so great a capturing the voices of children, and the relationship he sets up in this story between Craig and Mr. Harrington works really well.
“The Life of Chuck” was a really interesting story; I liked the nonlinear narrative, and the exploration of how worlds exist within us.
My least favorite was the title story, “If It Bleeds.” It was a bit predictable, and the main character had a lot of unexplained backstory from some of King’s previous books, so I felt like I didn’t really understand the characters. I felt like King could have done more with this one. But it was still readable.
“The Rat” had a very Twilight Zone vibe, classically spooky, exploring what happens when a hypothetical moral dilemma becomes real.
Not his best short fiction, but still lots of fun to read.
The first story “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” is a perfect little ghost story that’s both eerie and sweet — King is always so great a capturing the voices of children, and the relationship he sets up in this story between Craig and Mr. Harrington works really well.
“The Life of Chuck” was a really interesting story; I liked the nonlinear narrative, and the exploration of how worlds exist within us.
My least favorite was the title story, “If It Bleeds.” It was a bit predictable, and the main character had a lot of unexplained backstory from some of King’s previous books, so I felt like I didn’t really understand the characters. I felt like King could have done more with this one. But it was still readable.
“The Rat” had a very Twilight Zone vibe, classically spooky, exploring what happens when a hypothetical moral dilemma becomes real.
Not his best short fiction, but still lots of fun to read.
