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.
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
398 ratings44 reviews
What our readers think
Readers find this title to be a quick and twisted read, with some confusion about the ending. While some reviewers were disappointed and found it to be garbage, others enjoyed the suspense and mistaken identity storyline. The book is well-written and entertaining, but some felt that it left too much unexplained. Overall, it is a short story that keeps readers engaged and wanting more, making it worth a read for fans of Stephen King.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I've been reading King for years. This book was great, I don't love all of his work but this one love.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If you’re familiar with Stephen King’s work, you should get it and see the connections/parallels/questions that make this short story great.
If you’re not so familiar, it might seem odd, perhaps frustrating or unfinished. To this group, I suggest reading more of his work. The more you read, the more you understand. And the more you will appreciate the open endings…they make you think in a way you never thought you could. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pure zen... I got my needed break as indicated in the dedication
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twisted story with twisted characters...a a a a a a
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It'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.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I 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.
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