Screen adaptation

Among the stories included in this book, I think "Fair Extention" would make a great movie.

It tells us about Dave Street, a man with brain cancer, who has only a couple of months left. One day on his way home he notices a tent with a sign "Fair Extension". When he enters, the salesman, called Elvid (devil backwards) tells him that he sells any kind of extensions: money extensions, nose extensions, even life extension. So Dave thinks this man is crazy and wants to leave, but the salesman promises to cure his cancer for a week to prove it's real.

When Dave goes to a doctor he shocks everyone - the tumor is gone! Streeter returns to the Fair Extension and decides to make a deal with the devil. All he needs to do is to transfer 15 per cent of his monthly income to some charity fund and he also need to name a person he really hates to balance the scales of fate. This person turns out to be his best friend since school, Tom Goodhugh, who had more luck than Dave and became rich and successful.

After the deal is signed Dave returns home, his cancer is cured and moreover, his family gets more and more successful, while terrible things begin to happen with Tom Goodhugh's family. His wife gets cancer and dies in a month, his son who was a decent sportsman gets brain damage and becomes mentally challenged. Tom looses his money, his company and family. But Dave doesn't even feel guilty. He and his family are very happy and rich now, but Streeter isn't happy with what he already has, he wants more.

The whole story is very dark and gloomy. It could make a good noir movie. From the middle of the book the feeling of despair is rising. And the ending would look very good on a screen:

He turned to Janet and saw that she was crying. He tilted her chin toward him and solemnly kissed the tears away. That made her smile. 

“What is it, honey?”

“I was thinking about the Goodhughs. I’ve never known a family to have such a run of bad luck. Bad luck?” She laughed. “Black luck is more like it.”

“Life is fair. We all get the same nine-month shake in the box, and then the dice roll. Some people get a run of sevens. Some people, unfortunately, get snake-eyes. It’s just how the world is.”

She put her arms around him.

“I love you, sweetie. You always look on the bright side.”

Streeter shrugged modestly.

“The law of averages favors optimists, any banker would tell you that. Things have a way of balancing out in the end.”

Venus came into view above the airport, glimmering against the darkening blue.

“Wish!” Streeter commanded.

Janet laughed and shook her head.

“What would I wish for? I have everything I want.”

“Me too,” Streeter said, and then, with his eyes fixed firmly on Venus, he wished for more.

P.S. There's also a good trailer, made by a group of amateur directors:

Alternative ending

I would like to write about an alternative ending to "1922", because this story has some points that could probably change main character's life. The way he did it, Wilfred ended up in a hotel room of a city he couldn't stand, killed by both huge supernatural rats and guilt for his wife's and his son's fate.

In my opinion he didn't have to choose suicide as a solution to his problems. He could simply go to the police and confess. Of course he would get some penalty, but he wouldn't feel so guilty for what he has done because he would be punished for it.

But on the other hand, the events took place in 1920s, it was the time when most killers were sent to the electric chair, because it was a new kind of execution and the judicial system was experimenting with it. The main character himself thought about it:

"For the first time since Sheriff Jones had come out to the farm, asking his cheerful, no-answers-needed questions and looking at everything with his cold inquisitive eyes, the electric chair seemed like a real possibility to me, so real I could almost feel the buckles on my skin as the leather straps were tightened on my wrists and above my elbows."

Moreover, even if he managed to stay alive and go to prison, I think the rats would get him anyway, because it wasn't simply guilt that was haunting him, but some kind of curse or a divine penalty.

Cultural aspects

In all stories of this book the author refers a lot to the modern culture.


First of all the language of the characters in the first story has the style of the beggining of the XX century. It's mostly the language of farmers. But at the same time the main character of "1922" is an educated farmers who likes to read books in the evening after a hard day on a field.

"He set the lamp down by the book I had been reading: Sinclair Lewis's Main Street."

"It sounds to me as if she got as tired of you fellows as she did of me and the son she gave birth to. Said good riddance to bad rubbish. A plague on both your houses. That’s Shakespeare, by the way. Romeo and Juliet. A play about love."

Just like in most of Stephen King's books the events take place in the U.S.A. and all geographical places that are mentioned are real and can be found on a map.

For example,

"April 11, 1930 Magnolia Hotel Omaha, Nebraska"

The hotel still exists and is open for the customers.

"The next one was Marjorie Duvall's North Conway Library Card, and it had an address: "17 Honey Lane, South Gansett, New Hampshire."

Using Google Street View we can get even better understanding of the place.

As the heroine of the second story is a writer, it is full of references to  books and movies.

"A mile or so after passing the Colewich sign, Tess began to hear a low, rhythmic thudding that seemed to come up from the road through her feet. Her first guess was of H.G. Wells's mutant Morlocks, tending their machinery deep in the bowels of the earth..."

"She lay limp in his arms, feeling like a girl in a horror movie, the one who's carried away by Jason or Michael or Freddy or whatever his name was after all the other ones are slaughtered." 

It has references to some famous singers too:

"I’ll sing Bonnie Tyler’s hit record. I’ll sing “It’s a Heartache.” I’m sure I know the words, I’m sure they’re in the junkheap every writer has in the back of her…"

The third story mentions a lot of events that happened in the world:

"2008, what a year! China hosted the Olympics! Chris Brown and Rihanna became nuzzle-bunnies! Banks collapsed! The stock market tanked!"

"In 2009, Chris Brown beat the hell out of his Number One Nuzzle-Bunny after the Grammy Awards..."

"In June, Michael Jackson kicked the bucket..."

Big Driver

The main character of this story is Tessa Jean, a writer and a journalist of a local newspaper. She takes a ride to a writers' meeting in another town and, following her editor's advice to take a short cut, gets into a trap set by a rapist - the Big Driver. Almost dead, she manages to get home, and that night a new woman is born, a woman who decides not to go to the police, but to take revenge by herself and to save other possible victims in future.

In the calm morning light of a suburban Connecticut morning, the answer was ridiculously simple: an anonymous call to the police. The fact that a professional novelist with ten years’ experience hadn’t thought of it right away almost deserved a yellow penalty card. She would give them the location—the deserted YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU store on Stagg Road—and she would describe the giant. How hard could it be to locate a man like that? Or a blue Ford F-150 pickup with Bondo around the headlights? 

But while she was drying her hair, her eyes fell on her Lemon Squeezer .38 and she thought, Too easy-as-can-beezy. Because… 

“What’s in it for me?” she asked Fritzy, who was sitting in the doorway and looking at her with his luminous green eyes. “Just what’s in that for me?”

Armed with her Smith & Wesson Lemon Squeezer, she goes to her editor, a woman who sent her into the  trap, and finds out that she is Big Driver's mother, and that she was the one who planned it. Tessa kills her and finds the address of her son, who shares a truck company with his brother.

She goes to his house and waits, when the car shows up in the driveway, she decides to act, and when the truck stops she opens the doors and shoots the driver. But suddenly she understands that it isn't Big Driver, but his brother - Little Driver, as she calls him.

Then she goes to Big Driver's house and kills him too, but she feels guilty for killing an innocent man and decides to write a confession and commit a suicide, but her inner voice tells her to check Little Driver's house first. There she finds her purse that the rapist has stolen, with a dozen other purses. She burns the confession and heads for home.

In this story the concept of the Conniving Man is not expressed through characters' speech. The heroine has a habit of making up voices in her everyday life because she feels lonely. And when her personality breaks, her dark side talks to her through different inanimate objects around her, mostly through her GPS receiver, that she programmed to use the voice of her favourite writer. Unlike the old Tessa, her new personality is observant, calculating and confident. The moments she wants to stop or feels afraid, the voice persuades her that she's doing the right thing and provides a lot of arguments that she can't resist.

1922

The main character is Wilfred James, a farmer. The story is written as his confession. He says that he killed his wife, Arlette James and cozened his son into it. He did it for a piece of land that her father left her. Wilfred wanted to unite his farm and this land, but his wife wanted to sell it and move to a big city. He also says that after many years living together he started to hate her.

In this story the idea of the Conniving man is described for the first time.

"I believe that there is another man inside of every man, a stranger, a Conniving Man. And I believe that by March of 1922, when the Hemingford County skies were white and every field was a snow-scrimmed mudsuck, the Conniving Man inside Farmer Wilfred James had already passed judgment on my wife and decided her fate"

After doing the deed, Wilfred gets haunted by his wife, he has hallucinations and some strange things start to happen. His farm is attacked by huge rats that kill his cows and he believes that it is his dead wife who sends them to get revenge. His son Henry gets crazy and decides to run away with a neighbour's daughter and start a life of robbers, they begin to rob banks all over the state. But one winter day they get into an ambush and both of them get killed. When Wilfred gets the news he believes it is some kind of divine punishment and feels his fault in it.

A year after he has to sell the farm because he doesn't have money, and, has to move to a town, just like his wife wanted. There, he works as a librarian until one day he is found with his wrists bitten by rats in a hotel room and this confession on the table next to a gun that he was going to use to commit a suicide.

In my opinion the story has some common points with "Crime and Punishment" by Fedor Dostoyevsky. The main character is afraid that somebody could find out what he did. But unlike "Crime and Punishment", everything goes pretty well for the main character, he manages to hide his crime and nobody ever suspects him. He is also haunted and gets crazy like Rodion Raskolnikov. And I think that if you forget about supernatural elements in this book, the ending could be a simple suicide of a man who couldn't live with the burden of his deed anymore.

Even more vocabulary

shunt - отодвигать, перемещать
"The matress has been shunted aside."

cue - реплика
chuckle - посмеиваться
"It was a play, and this was my cue to look puzzled. Then to chuckle, because chuckling came next in the stage directions."

abscond - сбегать, скрываться
decamp - убегать, сниматься с места
flit - упорхнуть
"Absconded, Mr Lester. Decamped. Took French leave. Did a midnight flit."

avid - заядлый
"As an avid reader and student of American slang, such terms occur naturally to me."

riddance - уборка, устранение
"Said good riddance to bad rubbish."

contiguous - смежный, прилегающий
"...that piece of property, which is contiguous with Hemingford Stream..."

flutter - трепетать, развеваться
"There was a note fluttering beneath one edge."

badger - дразнить, изводить
"He tried to badger us, but he had nothing to badger with"

insinuation - намек
"The first time he asked a lot of questions, that really weren't questions at all but insinuations."

twitch - дергаться
bulge - выпячиваться, выдаваться
"His lips were twitching and his eyes were bulging."

More vocabulary

stagger - пошатываться
"He staggered toward the bed."

counterpane - стеганное покрывало
shroud - саван
"We rolled her up, making the counterpane her shroud."

ooze - сочиться
bloated - раздутый
"...oozing blood as a bloated sponge will ooze water."

quilt - лоскутное одеяло
"There was a quilt in the closet."

gorge - горло
"I fought with my gorge and lost."

murky - мутный, грязный (о воде)
"There was an echoing splash when it struck the murky water at the bottom."

siren - сирена
gooseflesh - гусиная коже
prickle - выступать, покалывать
"A high siren of laughter commenced behind me, a sound so close to insanity that it made gooseflesh prickle all the way from the crack of my backside to the nape of my neck."

stride - большой шаг
"I reached him in three strides and slapped him as hard as I could"

rustling - шуршание
"I had always found that quiet rustling a comfort."


bellowing - мычать
"Our few cows were bellowing, their morning milking hours overdue"

Vocabulary

cozen - обманывать, вовлекать

"I cozened him into it, playing upon his fears..."

brimstone - сера

"...brimstone-stinking emptiness full of lost souls like myself."

arrogance - высокомерие, заносчивость

"He was a biddable lad with none of his mother's arrogance..."

timidity - робость

"Your father's infected you with his timidity."

presume - осмелиться

"She looked at her son as a woman might look at a stranger who had presumed to touch her arm."

plump - ставить на что-то

latter - последний (из двух)

"When I consider the last eight years of my life I plump for the latter"

warily - осторожно

"She looked at me warily."

tipsily - подвыпив

"His mother rose tipsily..."

grasp - схватить

"She turned to Henry, grasped his arm, and spilled wine on his wrist."

weakling - слабак, неженка

"She expressed the opinion that feelings, like fairness, were also the last resort for weaklings."

constricted - стеснённый

ill-tempered - сварливый

"Coming through her thus constricted throat, those snores sounded like the growling of an old-tempered dog."

burlap - джутовый

"Go into the shed and fetch a burlap sack."

subside - затихать

"She subsided. Henry stirred and groaned."

My Second Book

This time I chose a book called "Full Dark, No Stars" by Stephen King. It's not a complete story but a compilation of stories that are based on a common idea. In my opinion the title means that there are no characters in these stories you can call positive. The book includes:

• 1922 
• Big Driver 
• Fair Extension 
• Good Marriage 

The genre is not rather horror like most of King's books but psychological thriller with some horror elements. You won't find any monsters here, people are the monsters. The idea of the book is that inside every man there's a dark side of his soul - the Conniving Man - the side that is sleeping and waiting for an occasion to wake up. And the characters of the stories get into such situations.

Cultural aspects

The story takes place in Miami, the state of Florida and a lot of places that are described can be found on a map, like South Beach, North Bay Village, names of streets, etc.

"In spite of living in Miami for most of her life, Rita still thought South Beach was glamorous."
"I moved up to 75 and roared past the turn for 79th Street Causeway, around the bend by the Publix Market..."

There are many descriptions of typical nature and scenery that help us to feel the location better.

"Full, fat, reddish moon, the night as light as day, the moonlight flooding down across the land and bringing joy, joy, joy. Bringing the full-throated call of the tropical night, the soft and wild voice of wind, roaring through the hairs on your arm, the hollow wail of starlight, bellow of the moonlight off the water."

And since Miami is a city situated on the Atlantic coast, Dexter likes to sail his boat to drive bad thoughts away.

"I took my boat out that night after work, to get away from Deb's questions and to sort through what I was feeling."


Author mentions many philosophical problems.
The main character reflects on the nature of human feelings and how sincere they are.
"I'm quite sure most people fake an awful lot of everyday human contact. I just fake all of it."


He also thinks about what's better for people who have incurable diseases.
Harry would do what was right, no matter how hard it was. But what did that mean in dying? Was it right to fight and hang on and make the rest of us suffer through the endless death, when death was coming no matter what Harry did? Or was it right to slip away gracefully and without a fuss?"

He also descibes unperfection of the judicial mechanism. 
"And so there it was. Case closed, justice done. It made a wonderfully ironic package; the appearance of danger and the lethal reality, so very different. Was I the only one who could see that Daryll Earl could not possibly be the killer? How many innocent people go to prison because of lack of evidence to defend them?"

USA Today Review

'Dexter' delivers dark, lively thrills 
By Carol Memmot, USA TODAY

If a serial killer could have one good quality, what would it be? How about he kills only evil people?

"Protagonist Dexter describes himself as "above suspicion, beyond reproach and beneath contempt. A neat and polite monster, the boy next door."

That is the premise for Jeff Lindsay's Darkly Dreaming Dexter, a dark and devious debut novel about Dexter Morgan, the serial killer with a heart. A blood-spatter expert and police-lab geek in Miami, Dexter slices and dices bad guys during his time off.

Despite what he does in his spare time, there's something charming about Dexter, who describes himself as "above suspicion, beyond reproach and beneath contempt. A neat and polite monster, the boy next door." And how can you hate him knowing that the people he dispatches to the next life are deprived of their chance to kill innocent people?

Lindsay makes us dote on Dexter and worry how he got to be this way. Something terrible happened when he was a child. His foster father, Harry, a cop, alludes to it, sometimes asking Dexter whether he remembers anything that happened to him when he was 3. Dexter can't remember. Harry knows something the rest of us don't and isn't surprised when he discovers a teenage Dexter has begun killing things.

"I know you're a good kid," Harry tells Dexter. "But what happened to you when you were a little kid shaped you. ... It's going to make you want to kill. And you can't help that." But Harry has advice for Dexter: "Choose what ... or who ... you kill ... There are plenty of people who deserve it, Dex." Harry's words direct Dexter's life. The handsome, smart young man with the "clean, crisp outside" who takes care of his sister, a Miami vice cop, and who was devoted to his foster parents now rids the world of very bad people. His job with the Miami-Dade police gives him access to information about criminals who can feed his need to kill. But when a new serial killer's MO seems uncomfortably similar to Dexter's, he worries that the killer is taunting him or that maybe he's committing the killings and doesn't know it.

Lindsay's tale is daring and unexpectedly comedic. The writing is lively and the plot steps away from the common ground in which many thrillers are rooted. When it comes to light, the tragic incident in Dexter's past rolls over us like a nightmare from which we can't wake up. Darkly Dreaming Dexter occupies its own unique space in the thrill-kill genre. That Lindsay is finishing his second novel means the dark and dashing Dexter will live to dream again.

I agree with the author of this review. The most important thing that makes this book interesting and  distinguishes it from ordinary novels is a good mixture between drama and detective story which has a lot of suitable humour.

The main reason that makes this book so popular is the main character, "a serial killer with a heart". The fact that he is the narrator of the story makes people understand that he isn't so violent every single minute. He wears a mask that is rather hard to keep if you aren't clever enough or if you don't know how to control yourself. He has to consider every little thing he does for his secret not to be revealed. And the tragic incident of his childhood makes readers feel sorry for him and understand his motivation, reveals why he has become what he is now.

Another reason is the problem of fairness of the punishment that modern society has chosen for the criminals that is described in the book. I think this problem can't be solved at all because people are not the ones who should determine the weight of the crime. As the judicial system is imperfect a criminal can always find a way to avoid the punishment through bribes etc. And since almost all the countries (that call themselves civilized) have banned death penalty it seems unfair to people who suffered from the criminals who just got several years of prison for killing their relatives that can't be returned.

Opinion about the story

As I already wrote in the beginning, the book mentions a very urgent problem: the division of people into good and into bad. Should we treat everyone equally because they are all human beings or according to their actions? But another problem that is described by the author is the trauma that can change person's behavior forever. Even an accident in the unconsicious (as most people think of it) childhood can damage one's personality.

On the one hand, Dexter's foster father tried to direct his violence against bad people, to use it for the welfare of the innocent people. But on the other hand he didn't fix the problem, he made it even worse. He allowed Dexter to kill people and the darkness inside him started to evolve. Probably if his father tried to help him forget that scene from his childhood, for example by psychological treatment, Dexter would become an ordinary man and wouldn't have to do the things his Dark Passenger tells him to do.

A summary of a few first chapters

Dexter receives a voicemail message from his sister Deborah, who asks for help with a new case she's working on. She usually uses his deduction when she reaches a deadlock. He arrives at the scene as a blood spatter analyst, but it turns out that there's no blood. The work of the killer seems so neat and professional to him, but what's worse it's so close to Dexter's methods and there's no evidence on the crime scene.

The specialists say that the body was frozen and Dexter thinks that the killer could use a refridgerator truck or something like that to be mobile. So he tells his sister to give an order to look for a suspicious refridgerator truck all over the city.

Meanwhile, Maria LaGuerta, the head of the homicide division thinks that she has found the serial killer. It is a guard of a hockey stadium where a new body was found. And though all the evidence shows that he was set up she closes the case to earn a good reputation.

The next night Dexter wakes up at 3 a.m. He has a foreboding that a new crime is about to happen. He has a suspicion that probably the Dark Passenger, his alternate personality, took over and Dexter himself is the serial killer he's chasing. So he decides to take a ride to drive bad thoughts away, but suddenly he sees a refridgerator truck honking him at the crossing so he decides to follow him. They go over the whole city but suddenly Dexter loses him. The next moment the truck appears out of nowhere and a rearview mirror hits the front glass of Dexter's car. He is so shocked that lets the truck get away though now he knows that it is the killer, as the police finds a new body not far away from that place.

After an interrogation as a witness, Dexter returns home and understands that someone has been there. He can't tell what's wrong but he feels that something has changed. After an hour of looking for something strange Dexter decides to cook something for dinner and finds a Barbie doll's head attached to his fridge. Now Dexter understands - the killer addresses to him personally, he wants to play with him...

A poster featuring main characters of the book

From left to right:

Vince Masuka - a lead forensics at the Miami Metro Police. Works with Dexter in the laboratory and in crime scenes. He is the closest person that can be called Dexter's friend.

Maria LaGuerta - a Lieutenant of the Miami Metro Police. A determined woman, head of the Homicide division. Has feelings to Dexter that often confuses him. Has a bad relationship with Dexter's sister Deborah.

Harry Morgan - Dexter's adoptive father. Was a highly-respected detective. Trained Dexter to direct his violence at criminals not to harm innocent people. Had a relationship with Laura Moser, Dexter's biological mother and police informant. Commited a suicide after he realised what a violent and professional killer he had created.

Angel Batista - a detective of Homicide Division. An honest man with a sense of justice.

James Doakes - a sergeant of Miami Metro Police. He is the only person who can see darkness in Dexter. He thinks that Dexter tries to seem ideal to everyone and suspects that he has a secret life.

Rita Bennett (sitting) - Dexter's girlfriend. Doesn't know anything about his secret "activities". Was introduced to Dexter by his sister Deborah.

Deborah Morgan - Dexter's younger foster sister, daughter of Harry Morgan. Doesn't know anything about her father's secret concerning Dexter. Became a police officer inspired by her father and always wanted to be a good detective like he was.

Dexter Morgan - the main character and the narrator. He is a forensics expert and blood spatter analyst of the Miami Metro Police, but has a secret life of a serial killer. Has a kind of alternate personality that he calls "the Dark Passenger", who makes him kill. A biological son of Laura Moser, who was violently killed when he was a boy. This psychological trauma made him a violent serial killer.

The picture features the main characters of the book. They are standing in front of Dexter's boat, that he often uses in his killings. The arm that protrudes from the boat symbolizes the secret that he is hiding from everyone around him.