In the Tall Grass

My second of Stephen King's work of fiction (first of Joe Hill's), from the first minute to the last, this sinister, spine-tingling tale kept me engaged through my uninterrupted listen; King & Hill's writing in this was disorienting, paranoiac, and sharp. Of course, being hailed as the “king” of horror fiction for decades now, why would I be surprised? Add to this Stephen Lang's compelling characterizing interpretation of these characters, and In The Tall Grass seems to continue assuring me of the unsettling atmosphere I recall so masterfully painted in King's debut novel Carrrie, which I completed a couple years back for the first time. Speaking of characterization, I loved the stylistic dialect and word choices for these characters, helping grounding the story properly and realistically. The repetitive motif of limmericks was also and interesting touch that, from what I thought, acted as a sort of foreshadowing mechanic.

I don't really have any quarrels with the plot itself: again, it stayed gripping, had a satisfying pace given the genre, and wasn't eye-rollingly ridiculous considering the suspension of disbelief you'd grant from a story like this and an author like Stephen King―weird-ass stories are kinda his thing. This story's definitely compelled me to attempt King's own multi-story collections, namely Different Seasons and Graveyard Shift. Anyway, apparently there's a Netflix adaptation for this story, so I'm definitely gonna check this out and see how they compare, hoping its a fairly fateful adaption.