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    Finn
    Finn
    Finn
    Ebook35 pages32 minutes

    Finn

    By Stephen King

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Meet Finn. From all appearances he’s just a regular Irish kid, living in an Irish city, but he’s exceptional in one way: He’s wildly unlucky. He was dropped at birth and nearly ripped in two by a lightning strike. Never mind the cherry bomb that blew off one of his toes when he was five or that fall from the monkey bars at age seven that left him with a broken arm. His grandmother promises his fortunes will change, that God owes him, but what are the chances of that when the author of his fate is legendary storyteller Stephen King, the undisputed master of the macabre, eerie, and plain terrifying?

    King sets the scene: Finn is nineteen, walking home alone at night after necking with his girlfriend. He’s exhilarated and aching with what it means to be young and alive. Then bam: Another kid who’s dressed suspiciously like him, who, in fact, looks a lot like him, runs smack into him. This is weird enough, but moments later, while he’s still rubbing a scraped elbow, a van pulls up and two men jump out and grab him. A hood is thrown over his head, there’s a needle in his arm, and he’s out. He wakes in a cell, the captive of men who think he’s got answers to give them about a briefcase full of plans, about blueprints and some bomb factory, and they are willing to go to great—and painful—lengths to get what they want from him. It’s got to be a case of mistaken identity, or is something far more sinister going on? And far more absurd?

    As the young man tries to save his skin, he travels through existential and psychological crises that are a signature of King’s stories. No one knows monsters—imagines monsters—like the creator of It, The Outsider, Pet Sematary, and countless other mind-bending and timeless bestsellers, but in Finn he targets a peculiarly twenty-first-century monster: men so consumed by spy and war games that they twist reality to suit their purposes. As darkly funny as it is deeply unsettling, this latest story from King pokes some serious fun at “the luck of the Irish”—or in fact counting on any kind of luck when the machinations of a few bullies and madmen can so easily and tragically upend the lives of the innocent.

    Editor's Note

    Humorous and chilling…

    King’s taut psychological short story about the kidnapping and torture of an innocent young man is at once darkly humorous and utterly chilling. “Finn” is a cutting commentary on the dangerous consequences of toxic masculinity, conspiracy theories, and the glorification of spy games.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEverand Originals
    Release dateMay 25, 2022
    ISBN9781094444963
    Author

    Stephen King

    Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes the short story collection You Like It Darker, Holly, Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. 

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    Reviews for Finn

    4/5

    390 ratings41 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Twisted story with twisted characters...a a a a a a
    • 1/5
      Absolute garbage. Stephen King is obviously going senile putting out this trash. Wow... amateur garbage. He's done ..retire dude. Now! Sad very sad
    • 4/5
      It's nice to read some Stephen King that is a bit outside of his usual bag of tricks. This was an entertaining short story that left me wanting much more. Most short stories do leave me wanting more. Any King fan should feel right at home with this quick read.
    • 3/5
      I really wasn’t a fan of this. I thought since it was a special publication only for Scribd that it would be… MORE. It was well written, as all King stories are, it beyond that, it just didn’t satisfy me. The only thing it succeeded in doing was making me more grateful for my own not-as-bad-as-Finn’s luck.
    • 2/5
      I am not sure what to make of it. It's well written but the closing confused me.
    • 5/5
      If you have ever had a seemingly never-ending run of bad luck, read this very short story and take heart. Or not.
    • 4/5
      An engaging read, but fairly ambiguous. I would have liked it to be a little longer
    • 5/5
      ;Finn is one of Stephen King's short stories that he had finished.
    • 5/5
      Very Good. A novella well worth the thirty odd pages it's printed on.
    • 5/5
      Entertaining. Left me thinking about the book for several days after reading.
    • 2/5
      Did not understand it, was thinking of some twist or revelation in the end.
    • 3/5
      The book itself is a quick read but the story is twisted but it was written by Stephen King so it was expected.
    • 5/5
      As all short novels I keeps you wondering at the end. I love that about these stories of him. This one was a bit tough at some scenes, but it was really interesting.
    • 4/5
      Yeah, most of us diehard fans would read a telephone book if written by Stephen King. We liked the detail and characterization he always provides to even the shortest outing. [SPOILERS] Even enjoyed the call-back to "Incident at Owl Creek Bridge" which we've coincidentally (?) been talking about recently. But damn it man, we're invested in Finn! Don't leave us hanging! The real or Memorex trope is a tired one!
    • 4/5
      Good short story , kept me interested the whole way through . Too much left unexplained is the books only downside
    • 5/5
      Stephen King!...what can i say. An interesting and compelling quick read.
    • 4/5
      A humorous book. I was glued to it. It made me laugh many times.
    • 5/5
      I never regret picking up a book or a short story by Mr. King. Remarkable as ever and always a pleasure to read.
    • 4/5
      I liked this book! Finn is effected by an enormous amount of bad luck! But when he's mistakenly kidnapped, his bad luck has him praying for death! But luckily, Doc and Pando had a change of heart and set him free!

      I listened to this book three times on May 26-27, 2022, and read it once on May 29th, 2022.

      Kellen Boyle did a fantastic job performing this story! I thoroughly enjoyed his narration.
    • 5/5
      Excellent suspenseful mistaken identity story about the guy in the wrong place, wrong time.
    • 4/5
      4.5 Stars!!!
      Quick & great short read about a guy with terrible luck who gets involved in a case of mistaken identity.
    • 4/5
      it was a good story, and it was different from some of his other storys
    • 5/5
      I can not tell a lie. I love everything Mr. King writes and though this certainly is a departure from his ordinary horror it is nevertheless terrifying in its own way.

      I don't want to spoil anything for anyone but the villain in this could easily be mistaken for a world leader convinced of something that everyone else knows is not true. No there is nothing political at all in the book.

      This is only my view and if I wasn't such a news nerd I probably would not have thought of this comparison at all.

      Grab a cuppa settle in and enjoy the story. Finn is a delight even if you're not a horror fan.

      This short story is full of what Stephen King does best which is profiling people while pointing out not only their deepest flaws while at the same time contrasting those flaws with that tiny bit of goodness present in the most conniving hearts.

      A true delight.



    • 5/5
      Brillliant short (by Mr Kings standards - very short!) story. An interesting concept of a guy that's not just down on his luck but only every receives BAD luck. Great fill a small gap in a long day.
    • 5/5
      It’s Stephen King…duh it’s good!! I very much enjoyed it!
    • 5/5
      SK has done it again. Took us down a path and left us to choose where to proceed, left or right. He allows us to choose Finn’s ending, if only in our own minds. But I won’t today. I’m a-gonna leave that one for another day.
    • 4/5
      Great story! Enjoyed the setting, the musical references, the interaction between the bad guys, and most of all, the main character's bemused attitude toward his streak of bad luck.

      I tried the audio. The reader's accent was cool, but not his smarmy tone of voice. He should've gotten more serious after the kidnapping and torture began. So I bailed on that and read it the proper way.

      I wonder why Stephen King describes Mr. Ludlum as "grizzled." He has white hair, not greying. Does "grizzled" mean something else in the UK?

    • 5/5
      Other than the limited availability of this story, I loved it! King never disappoints.
    • 5/5
      Highly enjoyable, but I've always been a big fan of short stories.
    • 5/5
      Poor Finn Murrie...if it wasn't for bad luck, he'd have no luck at all. This is a very quick read and has a typical Stephen King ending, you have to use your imagination!!!

    Book preview

    Finn - Stephen King

    FINN HAD A HARD GO of it from the very beginning. He slipped through the hands of a midwife who had delivered hundreds of babies and gave his birthday cry when he hit the floor. When he was five, there was a house party next door. He was allowed out to listen to the music (Shane MacGowan blasting from pole-mounted portable speakers) on his side of the street. It was summer, he was barefoot, and a cherry bomb thrown by an exuberant partygoer flew up, arced down with the stub of its fuse fizzing, and blew off the baby toe on his left foot.

    Wouldn’t have happened again in a thousand years, his grandma said. Also: God must have wanted that toe for an angel.

    When he was seven, he and his sisters were playing in Pettingill Park while Grandma sat on a nearby bench, alternately knitting and doing one of her word search puzzles. Finn didn’t care for the swings, had no use for the seesaws, could not have cared less about the roundy-round. What he liked was the Twisty, an entrancing curlicue of blue plastic twenty feet high. There were steps, but Finn preferred to climb the slide itself on his hands and knees, up and around, up and around. At the top he would sit and glide to the packed dirt at the bottom. He never had an accident on the Twisty.

    Stop that awhile, why don’t ya, Grandma said one day. You’re always on that old Twisty. Try something new. Try the monkey bars. Show me a trick.

    His sisters, Colleen and Marie, were on them, climbing and swinging like … well, like monkeys. So, to please Grandma, he went on the monkey bars and slipped while hanging upside down and fell and broke his arm.

    His teacher that year, pretty Miss Monoghan, liked to end each day by saying, What have we learned today, kiddos? At the urgent care, while having his arm set (the lollipop he was given afterwards hardly seemed adequate compensation for the pain), Finn thought what he’d learned that day was Stick to the Twisty.

    At fourteen, running home from his friend Patrick’s house in a driving thunderstorm, a stroke of lightning hit the street directly behind him, close enough to char a line down the back of his jacket. Finn fell forward, hit his head on the curb, suffered a concussion, and lay unconscious in his bed for two days before

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