I avoided getting this novella when it was first published - at thirteen quid for a long short story I thought it was overpriced. Having come down to £6, I pulled the trigger.
I felt sure I knew what it was about - a middle aged woman who has a box full of buttons, right? Wrong. The central character is a chubby 12-year old girl, trying hard to lose weight following hurtful comments at school, when she encounters a gentleman called Richard Farris. Regular King readers will know that men with the initials RF are bad news. Farris gives Gwendy a box equipped with 8 buttons and 2 levers, with vague instructions about what the buttons do: not good things. The levers are simpler - one dispenses small chocolate animals which essentially suppress the appetite for things which put on weight (oh for a supply of those!), the other dispenses mint condition 1821 silver dollars. Gwendy makes her way through the next 20 years using the levers constantly to start off with then far less so, and not using the buttons at all, except...
This is a whimsical little story, over and done in a couple of hours reading. Gwendy is a likeable protagonist, and the button boxes mysteries always lie ahead of where the story is at any particular moment.
King's stories in recent years have been rather dark-hearted: this one is, on the whole, fairly light and positive except for two very dark moments. I liked this one a lot.