At least, I managed a pretty terrific pair, and completed half of my intended 4-in-a-row (the second row) on the Bingo card.
(Book featuring ice cream or summer foods)
Ice Cream by Helen Dunmore (2000)
These 18 pieces are quite varied: a few have historical settings, two are written in the second person, and several return to the life of Ulli (a recurring character from Love of Fat Men), a Finnish teenager who faces an unexpected pregnancy. Even the slight-seeming ones are satisfying slices of fiction. The title story and its follow-up, “Be Vigilant, Rejoice, Eat Plenty” advocate sensual indulgence, which I guess is the reason for the cover image – which I couldn’t decide whether to hide or flaunt as I was reading it in public.
Often, there is a hint of menace, whether the topic is salmon fishing, raspberry picking or the history of a lost ring. “The Clear and Rolling Water” has the atmosphere of a Scottish folk ballad, which made it perfect reading for our recent holiday to Scotland. “Leonardo, Michelangelo, SuperStork” and “Mason’s Mini-break” stand out for their dystopian and magic realist touches, respectively. In the former, couples are only allowed to conceive via state- sanctioned services; in the latter, an arrogant Booker Prize-winning author is patronizing when he meets a would-be writer while on holiday in Yorkshire.
Two of my favourites were “The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife” and “Swimming into the Millennium,” which might have been written by Helen Simpson. All are of a high standard, and though they don’t fit together per se and mostly won’t stay with me, I really do rate Dunmore as a short story writer. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury) 
(Book from a genre you rarely read)
Pet Sematary by Stephen King (1983)
I’d only ever read King’s On Writing and worried I wouldn’t be able to handle his fiction. I could never watch a horror film, but somehow the same content was okay in print. For half the length or more, it’s more of a mildly dread-laced, John Irving-esque novel about how we deal with the reality of death. Dr. Louis Creed and his family – wife Rachel, five-year-old daughter Ellie, two-year-old son Gage and cat Church (short for Winston Churchill) – have recently moved from Chicago to Maine for him to take up a post as head of University Medical Services. Their 83-year-old neighbour across the street, Judson Crandall, becomes a sort of surrogate father to Louis, warning them about the dangerous highway that separates their houses and initiating them with a tour of the pet cemetery and Micmac burial ground that happen to be on their property. Things start getting weird early on: Louis’s first day on the job sees a student killed by a car while jogging; the young man’s cryptic dying words are about the pet cemetery, and he then visits Louis in a particularly vivid dream.
The family surname is no coincidence. “I believe that we go on,” Louis says when Ellie asks him about what happens when we die. “But as to what it’s like, I have no opinion.” So King interrogates what it would be like for the dead to go on literally instead of just figuratively in the remembrance of loved ones. Would bringing the dead back be a cure for grief or a horrible mistake? This sleepy New England town harbours many cautionary tales, and the Creeds have more than their fair share of sorrow. Rachel witnessed her sister’s death from a long illness when she was just a child and has always repressed her memories of it.
Louis is a likable protagonist whose vortex of obsession and mental health (“He walked the balance-beam of rationality”) is gripping. As can be the case with genre fiction, King prioritizes readability over writing quality, though I did pick out an occasional glistening metaphor. It doesn’t get gruesome or schlocky until right towards the end. In the last quarter, which I read on the long train ride home from Edinburgh, I couldn’t get the book closer to my face or the pages turning any faster. It helped that it was a beat-up small-format paperback. When we arrived into London I was about six pages from the end and it was so frustrating to have to wait until I got on my next train to read the rest.
This also counted towards one of my low-key ongoing challenges: reading works published in my birth year. I could imagine the Eighties stylings of an adaptation, especially Rachel’s power suit and pumps when she’s on her race-against-the-clock flight and road trip. I did find the book dated in some of its Murakami-like descriptions (“The … double doors were set into a grassy rise of hill, a shape as natural and as attractive as the swell of a woman’s breast”) and cringey sex scenes, and I wondered if King would get away with using imagery of the Windigo these days. Still, on this evidence, I’ll seek out more of his classic horror – do give me your recommendations. So long as they’re this addictive (and no scarier), I’m game. Pet Sematary was sterling entertainment, but also surprisingly poignant. A message I took away: you just have to live with the pain of loss, not fight it or deny it. “When it started not to hurt, it started not to matter.” (Little Free Library) 
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
I read Ice Cream long before becoming a short story fan because of Dunmore’s writing. The stories haven’t stayed with me but I’d read them again.
That final sentence makes me wonder about trying King who I’ve never read but the landscape description not so much.
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I’ve still not found a Dunmore novel that I really get on with (though I’ve only tried a few) but her short stories and poetry have been very reliable for me.
I never thought I’d be a King fan but this was a pleasant surprise and I’m certainly willing to try more.
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Hah, that hilly simile is really something, but no indication of King’s talent. He’s all about character for me. (And his reading rec’s in the back of On Writing reveal that too.)
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Like you, I rate Helen Dunmore. And like you (were) I’ve never read a novel by Stephen King. You’ve persuadedme to give him a go.
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Hurrah!
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Hooray, glad you finally read some good ones! I love print horror but have a much lower tolerance for horror films. I’ve historically struggled with Stephen King’s novels because I find them overlong and self-indulgent, but I like lots of his short fiction.
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This was just over 400 pages (which counts as a doorstopper for me these days) but didn’t feel that long at all. Length would be a concern for me with some of his others. Trying his short fiction is a great idea! Do you have a particular collection you’d recommend?
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Hmmmm, not really, which is why I didn’t flag one. I loved ‘Children of the Corn’ and I think there are some other good pieces in his collection Night Shift, but I’ve tended to find them scattered about in anthologies. Even with short fiction, he’s a bit hit and miss for me!
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So pleased you enjoyed your first Stephen King! I’d recommend trying IT, which is about the same vintage as Pet Sematary. It may be scarier, but it depends on what you find scary. I wrote quite a lot about it here, if you want to have a look: https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2017/05/27/it-by-stephen-king/ The Shining is also good-era King, and pretty different from the film.
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You make it sound awesome! (All I knew about it previously was a scary clown.) The length does give me pause, though. I’ve not seen the film of The Shining so that might be a good option. I noticed the phrase “Salem’s Lot” used in Pet Sematary and wondered if that meant the books were connected or if it’s just a Maine setting he recurrently uses.
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I read IT as an ebook, which weirdly helped—it was impossible to be intimidated by the size! I think there’s a general geographical area in Maine that’s Classic King Land, including Salem’s Lot and Derry, but I don’t think the books are directly connected (though I may be wrong!)
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I was struggling to come up with a single rec, but Elle’s idea of It is terrific! It does look formidable (though the older editions look a little shorter) but I’ve never heard anyone complain about the length unless they struggled with the dual timeline, but you’re used to that (and they’re both solid): it moves. But I will say that you have to wait for the Scary in PS, and you get the Scary pretty quickly in It (you might even know the scene from various references tho, so it might not actually scare you too much). There’s also a persistent library theme: bonus!
There are links between many of King’s books, besides the shared settings of Castle Rock (there’s a good wikipedia article on that “town” which reveals the subtle ways he interweaves, and eleventy billion Reddit threads about other interconnections).
I remember Ice Cream fondly, but don’t remember any specific stories.
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Wow, you are brave (I mean reading horror, but maybe reading short stories, too, ha). I’ve often thought that for as much as I enjoyed his On Writing, I should give his horror a try. Just might yet, thanks.
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You might surprise yourself by enjoying it!
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I’ve read quite a few of Dunmore’s novels but never her short stories. Must rectify that.
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They are such solid short stories. I definitely recommend.
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Well done reading a Stephen King! And reading books from your birth year is quite challenging when you’re born in the 80s, so good work there. I still have 80s gaps in my really not concentrated on Reading the Century!
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I actually have a decent stack of 1983 stuff awaiting me, including a Raymond Carver short story collection. I’m less excited about the first Discworld novel.
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Awesome! I don’t see too many people trying the BINGO, though it’s a simpler one than usual, with many you can do with only 4 titles
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It’s a fun challenge; thanks for adding it in this year!
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[…] was born in New Zealand and grew up in Sheffield, won the Ackerley Prize for this memoir. (After Dunmore and King, this is the third in my intended four-in-a-row on the 20 Books of Summer Bingo card, fulfilling […]
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[…] was high, with 10 books I rated 4 stars or higher! Along with the above and Beautiful Ruins, Pet Sematary and Storm Pegs were overall highlights. I also managed to complete a row on the Bingo card, a fun […]
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[…] he’ll be her prisoner until he’s completed a sequel that’s to her satisfaction. Compared to Pet Sematary, the only other King novel I’ve read, this was slow to draw me in because of the repetitive […]
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