They said it was the best thing he’d written (Stock Image) (Image: Getty)
Stephen King has written a lot of amazing books that have left people gobsmacked, confused, and questioning everything about their lives.
Known predominantly for his works, he’s also branched out to crime, thriller, science-fiction, and more, and fans lap up everything he produces. When you think of your favourite book, you likely automatically think of ‘IT,’ or ‘The Green Mile’ – something that’s been made into a film and is seriously popular.
But one man was so enamoured with one book in Stephen King’s 2024 short story collection that he said it was the best thing he’d ever written. Taking to the Stephen King forum, he warned people that there would be spoilers in his post for various books – but he poured his heart out on the thread.
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“Finished You Like It Darker last night, and if this turned out to be King’s last work, I gotta say that I couldn’t think of a better story to go out on than this, as The Answer Man has one of the most mature and profound endings I’ve read from him,” he gushed.
He continued: “The rest of this post will tread into spoilers of The Answer Man, Pet Sematary and Revival.
“The Answer Man is an entry into what I am going to call the existential grief saga that exists in a lot of King’s work, particularly Pet Sematary and Revival. Pet Sematary was written by a much younger King and is bleak AF. It’s message can be summed up as ‘Chaos and Despair underly all of life. Love and meaning are temporary illusions.’
“Revival is a bit more subtle than Pet Sematary, and while most read it as bleak, I always thought there was more of a silver lining of hope in that story. That is, Jacobs has damned himself via his loss and grief that ossified into hatred towards life itself. The afterlife Jamie sees is maybe the afterlife once hope is lost. But if Jamie maintains hope, perhaps there is something better still to await him on the other side.”
But it was the Answer Man that truly resonated with him, as he shared: “The Answer man treads similar territory. ie, man suffers great loss and seeks knowledge/power not meant for him. However, it ends with the protagonist transforming his anguish into charity towards others, which he is able to achieve through recognising that others always have it worse. This, to me, is something that King at 75 can convey it an effective way, but *perhaps* did not within him when he wrote Pet Sematary at 30. The ending of The Answer Man, for my money, is the pay-off to the bleakness of Pet Sematary. Yes, you may suffer terribly, yes it is unfair, yes you will never get over it… but all is never truly lost.”
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He continued saying, “At the end of the story, the answer man confirms that there is a heaven and a hell, that there will be reunion with loved ones, that it can be beautiful but also awful, etc.
“In short, he says that there is much more left to be experienced on the other side, not all of it bad. In fact, he straight up confirms there is a ‘heaven’ (which I do not ever remember a King story doing, but could be wrong).
“Anyway, my thoughts are jumbled, I’ll need to think on it more, but I really dug this story and felt like if it had to be King’s last (and I assume it won’t be), it would be a really great way to go out,” he concluded.
Stephen King does, in fact, have a book coming out in 2025, namely Never Flinch, which is scheduled for release on May 27, 2025. It will be a horror novel that continues the Holly Gibney universe, a character who we were originally introduced to in the Mr Mercedes series.
In the comments of the thread, one wrote: “You Like It Darker was great as a whole, but I think this one is gonna stick with me for a long time.”
Someone else pointed out that Stephen King started writing Answer Man when he was 30, and finished it when he was 75.
“Yes!!! Definitely one of his most humane, beautiful pieces! I was kind of legit sobbing at the end of it,” A Redditor agreed.