Apt Pupil: Different Seasons - Softcover

King, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451197127 ISBN 13: 9780451197122

Publisher: Signet, 1998

Synopsis

Todd Bowden is an apt pupil. Good grades, good family, a paper route. But he is about to meet a different kind of teacher: Mr. Dussander. Todd knows all about Dussander's darl past. The torture. The death. The decades-old manhunt Dussander has escaped to this day. Yet Todd doesn't want to turn him in. Todd wants to know more. Much more. He is about to learn the real meaning of power--and the seductive lure of evil.

This acclaimed collection of four novellas by Stephen King also includes "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" (basis for the Academy Award nominated film The Shawshank Redemption), "The Body" (inspiration for the motion picture Stand By Me), and "The Breathing Method."

About this title

Review:

Different Seasons (1982) is a collection of four novellas, markedly different in tone and subject, each on the theme of a journey. The first is a rich, satisfying, nonhorrific tale about an innocent man who carefully nurtures hope and devises a wily scheme to escape from prison. The second concerns a boy who discards his innocence by enticing an old man to travel with him into a reawakening of long-buried evil. In the third story, a writer looks back on the trek he took with three friends on the brink of adolescence to find another boy's corpse. The trip becomes a character-rich rite of passage from youth to maturity.

These first three novellas have been made into well-received movies: "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" into Frank Darabont's 1994 The Shawshank Redemption (available as a screenplay, a DVD film, and an audiocassette), "Apt Pupil" into Bryan Singer's 1998 film Apt Pupil (also released in 1998 on audiocassette), and "The Body" into Rob Reiner's Stand by Me (1986).

The final novella, "Breathing Lessons," is a horror yarn told by a doctor, about a patient whose indomitable spirit keeps her baby alive under extraordinary circumstances. It's the tightest, most polished tale in the collection. --Fiona Webster

About the Author:

Stephen King, the world's bestselling novelist, was educated at the University of Maine at Orono. He lives with his wife, the novelist Tabitha King, and their children in Bangor, Maine.

About this edition

• Publisher: Signet
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0451197127
• ISBN 13: 9780451197122
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512