Ich wollte schon länger mal was von King lesen, aber die langen Wälzer haben mich immer etwas abgeschreckt. Hier hab ich nun in einer Box seiner gesammelten Short-fiction die perferkte Heranführung gefunden. Der Plot ist sehr simpel. Vier Jungen um die 12 Jahre, bekommen mit, dass eine anderer Junge verschwunden ist. Zufällig hören sie wie andere darüber reden ihn gefunden zu haben, es aber nicht melden wollten. Da beschliessen die vier selbst dorthin zu gehen, und begeben sich auf eine Reise entlang einer Frachtbahnstrecke. An die Sprache musste ich mich zunächst gewöhnen. Small-town USA 1960 - da gibts viel Slang, wirkt aber nicht überladen und man versteht durchaus was gemeint ist. Die Charaktere und deren trotz nur knapp 180 Seiten Tiefgang haben mich sehr überzeugt. Die Beschreibung der Atmosphäre, die Figuren, die Entwicklung und auch die heftigen unangenehmen Themen haben die Geschichte äusserst glaubwürdig erscheinen lassen. Bin schwer beeindruckt! Wird sicherlich nicht das letzte sein, das ich von ihm gelesen habe.

Notes: - Stand By Me is one of my favourite movies since forever. I watched it multiple times and thought I was prepared for the book. But I wasn’t. - After finishing this book it’s fair to say that Stand By Me is probably one of the best book-to-screen adaptions ever. - this story is filled with heartbreak, nostalgia, emotions, grief, friendship and so much more - that makes it a horror story in more than one way - having the book written by the author from the pov of a writer who writes down his own story is genius - Chris and Gordie are breaking my heart - honestly everything I loved about the movie I loved even more in the book Quotes: - „I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 - Jesus, did you?“ - „Am I weird?" "Yeah. But so what? Everybody's weird.“ - „The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are things you get ashamed of, because words make them smaller. When they were in your head they were limitless; but when they come out they seem to be no bigger than normal things. But that's not all. The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried; they are clues that could guide your enemies to a prize they would love to steal. It's hard and painful for you to talk about these things ... and then people just look at you strangely. They haven't understood what you've said at all, or why 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.“ - „Speech destroys the functions of love, I think…If you speak to tell a deer you mean it no harm, it glides away with a single flip of its tail. The word is the harm. Love isn't what these…poets...want you to think it is. Love has teeth; they bite; the wounds never close. No word, no combination of words, can close those lovebites. It's the other way around, that's the joke.“ - „I wish to fuck I was your father!” he said angrily. “You wouldn’t go around talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was! It’s like God gave you something, all those stories you can make up, and He said: This is what we got for you, kid. Try not to lose it. But kids lose everything unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks are too fucked up to do it then maybe I ought to.“ - „Your friends drag you down. They’re like drowning guys that are holding onto your legs. You can’t save them. You can only drown with them.“ Later: „Teddy and Vern slowly became just two more faces in the halls […]. It happens. Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant […]. Some people drown, that’s all. It’s not fair, but it happens. Some people drown.“ - „Vern Tessio was killed in a housefire […]. Teddy went in a squalid car crash […] Chris, who’d always been the best of us at making peace, stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat […]. Chris died almost instantly.“

This was a really emotional read for me. Maybe that was because the story itself is so nostalgic that it actually felt like I was part of it, experiencing the summer of 1960 among Gordie, Chris, Teddy and Vern and finishing it on the last day of summer break, which is also when the boys return to Castle Rock from their character-shaping journey. It might have been because it felt so painfully real that it actually took me back to those easy childhood days when everything was peaceful and I didn’t have a single care in the world other than what I was going to have for lunch. Maybe it made me cry because of the fact that the character of Chris Chambers is tailored so accurately onto actor River Phoenix - who played him in the book’s 1986 adaptation "Stand by Me" three years later - that they are even united by a tragic and unfair death at the age of 23. Or, perhaps, it affected me so much because this coming-of-age story reminded me of my own mortality, showing me (a person who has difficulty adapting to changes) that this very change is natural and that everything: every phase, every friendship, every life is going to end someday, some sooner, some later. But I think the reason why "The Body" touched me as much as it did (including spilling thick drops of tears on the pages of my copy) is because everything in this story is so tragically relatable. However you might think that four friends walking for miles in the woods of Maine and getting themselves in great danger to find a corpse of a boy their age sounds absurd, it is not. It’s a story of self-discovery, trauma and coping, but most of all it is a story of friendship. A friendship that -maybe- you would wish a happy ending for but that you secretly know will never last. Kings storytelling is immersive and simply amazing, as always, the way he puts so much depth into every single character in very few pages is impressive, and I am certain that some day in the future, when I’m older, I will return to this story and be grateful to have read it when I was young, when it had the power to educate and shape me the way perhaps no other book has ever had or ever will. I will, without a doubt, repeat to cry my eyes out reading dialogue between Gordie and Chris, but in the end it will all be worth it to be taken back to that summer of 1960 in Castle Rock. 🛤️💌

The Body is my favorite story written by Stephen King, and perhaps one of my favorite stories of all time. After reading it during the course of two hours, I was left flabbergasted, enthusiastic and perturbed alike. King masterfully delved into the psyches of four young boys who are entering an adventure and have to overcome several obstacles. The movie adaption "Stand By Me" is critically acclaimed wherever you are looking, with all of the four child actors delivering amazing performances. The short story remains my favorite in comparison to the movie though, maybe because I've read it first and was so stunned by the characters. I can only recommend you not wasting your time with reading this short review anymore and instead running to read this.