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| Source: Amazon.com |
From the book’s cover (actually this synopsis is from StephenKing.com):
Carrie was the odd one at school; the one whose reflexes were always off in games, whose clothes never really fit, who never got the point of a joke. And so she became the joke, the brunt of teenaged cruelties that puzzled her as much as they wounded her.
There was hardly any comfort in playing her private game, because like so many things in Carrie's life, it was sinful. Or so her mother said. Carrie could make things move--by concentrating on them, by willing them to move. Small things, like marbles, would start dancing. Or a candle would fall. A door would lock. This was her game, her power, her sin, firmly repressed like everything else about Carrie.
One act of kindness, as spontaneous as the vicious jokes of her classmates, offered Carrie a new look at herself the fateful night of her senior prom. But another act--of furious cruelty--forever changed things and turned her clandestine game into a weapon of horror and destruction.
She made a lighted candle fall, and she locked the doors...
Synopsis:
I’d wager that most people have at least heard of Carrie, either in book or movie form, as the classic scene of the awkward young woman getting crowned as prom queen and then shortly thereafter drenched in pig’s blood seems fairly iconic in western culture. So giving a synopsis seems a bit redundant, on the surface. But after reading the book, there is a lot more to it than just that one classic horror moment. I’ll do my best and attempt to give a brief overview of what doesn’t come to mind when most people think of Stephen King’s first published novel, Carrie. How am I gonna do that? Well, I’m going to “borrow” somebody else’s good synopsis of the book (hey, it worked with Star Wars: Darth Plagueis, my current most read review).
From James Smythe of “The Guardian,”
The book itself is the story of Carrie White, a high-school student with latent – and then, as the novel progresses, developing – telekinetic powers. It's brutal in places, affecting in others (Carrie's relationship with her almost hysterically religious mother being a particularly damaged one), and gory in even more. By the end of the novel, there's a pretty impressive body count, and it's a body count you don't necessarily see coming given the general tone of the novel. Or, bluntly, given the character of Carrie herself.
Structurally it's a really weird one, with a standard Kingian third-person narrative voice interspersed with extracts from other media: newspaper reports, autobiographies of characters, transcripts of police interviews, that sort of thing. It's not a structure that entirely works, as the extracts are still slightly too close to King's standard narrative voice, and are often the worst (read: slowest) parts of the novel. While still reeling from the excitement of some of the third-person sections – particularly the classic prom scene – being dragged somewhere else entirely and presented with an often less-interesting viewpoint isn't always ideal. (In particular, there's a series of extracts from Susan Snell's fake biography; none are very interesting. Apart from anything else, they don't read like biography: they read like monologues.)
But, it's a really good story. Carrie herself is a fascinating character: an archetype (the damaged girl with powers beyond her sphere) to which King would return later in his career, and the book drags the reader along at a fair-old whack. King himself has described the novel as being "a cookie baked by a first grader – tasty enough, but kind of lumpy and burned on the bottom". And that's a pretty fair assessment, I'd say. As a debut novel, it's a fairly good piece of juvenilia. As a statement of intent – that intent being to write stories that deal with the weird, twisted and human in equal measure – it's exceptional.
Thanks to Mr. Smythe, whose work I have used here without express permission, but whose comments do King’s work better justice than I felt I could do myself by way of brief synopsis.
Go here to read the whole review of Carrie, by James Smythe
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| The author, Stephen King, from a day when that jacket must have been a lot less cool than it is now. Totally man. S'alright. / Source: ScaryRadio.com |
What I liked about it:
Ok, back to my own words. Personally, I found the book to be quite interesting, and the characters to be remarkably believable for a first novel. Having read a few of King’s other pieces of fiction (Salem’s Lot is my favorite non-Stoker written vampire novel, and I’ll tell you why someday), I can see a lot of his common touches in Carrie. If you’ve also read more than one of two of King’s works, you probably know what I mean. It’s the little turns of phrase and the particular stylistic choices that set the man’s work apart. Occasionally I find those quirks to be... well, quirky. But they do give King a certain distinctiveness that is probably partly responsible for his high sales and lasting popularity.
But enough about the author and let’s get back to the book. The characters are the heart of Carrie, and they are well done, in this reviewer’s opinion. I was most struck by the character of... hmmm... what was his name? The jealous girl who pulls the string that dumps the blood on Carrie in the climactic scene? Her boyfriend (reviewer's note: Billy is his name - looked it up). He’s one scary dude. He’s probably the scariest guy in the book, not counting Carrie’s mom. The way King describes him seems to indicate a sociopathic personality (please note that I’m not a mental health professional, but the signs seem to fit, in my lay opinion). The description of the kid’s work in the high school gym where Carrie gets her crazy on, the way the guy methodically goes about setting up the rigging that would allow him and the “mean” girl to dump the blood... quite a piece of mental cinema, that was. I’d say these particular passages were a glimpse into King’s budding brilliance.
There are other sections that do well too, but I’ll just conclude my remarks by saying that Carrie is full of little nuggets of goodness that keep the reader invested in the story, and the mixing up of the plot is effective - for the most part (see What I Didn’t Like) - as well. You know what is coming from good ways off, but King manages to keep the coming dread from losing its oomph too soon. Almost a perfect balance of exposition and tension building, even after having all but told the reader that things won’t end well for almost everybody involved. Good stuff.
And as an aside, the audiobook was read by Sissy Spacek, which made a nice touch. She'll always be the Carrie I see when I close my eyes and picture... that.
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| The movie, though I haven't seen it in a years, doesn't seem to quite match with the novel. I hear there is another remake in the works, but I didn't feel like putting off this book review until it comes out, then shelling out the cash to go see it, then maybe wishing I hadn't (I'm not a fan of all the remakes that Hollywood seems to think Americans thrive on these days), and then writing a "Dual Review." So you get Sissy in red. Ouch. / Source: Ossuary.BestHorrorMovies.com |
What I didn’t like about it:
I liked the book for the most part, but there was one thing I found... too convenient. The deaths of Christine Hargensen (I looked up the name I had forgotten earlier, the girl who is ultimately responsible for Carrie’s psychotic break at the end of the novel) and her boyfriend Billy. Yes, it closed the loop of the story, and many would say, had the two “gotten away with it,” that it was a bad way to leave the reader hanging. I disagree. In fact, I thought the climax should have been resting on Carrie’s mom and the confrontation between them. Yes, confronting the source of Carrie’s troubles also allowed Sue Snell, the girl who lives through all this and goes on to be stricken with grief and haunted by the events she has witnessed, to interact with Carrie before her death. But I found it to be sort of tacked on, personally. Yes, the whole “flipping on the headlights and there she stood” part was... well I felt like hooting from nerves when I heard that part of the audiobook I was listening to. But I still didn’t find the scene that followed to be as effective. Some other method of dispatching the two might have worked for me. It seemed too horror movie-ish; too cliche I guess.
Also I mentioned earlier, the dividing of the plot up into a jumbled bunch of clips from fictitious records and personal reminisces, though it did allow King to tell us what would happen and still allow the tension of the actual moment, did get a bit boring in places. Some of it might have been trimmed, I think. But King does tend to put more in his novels than I like. Perhaps that is why I tend to prefer his short stories. But that is a topic for a later date.
What I learned, if anything:
I can’t say as I learned anything specifically from this one. It was a good book, but not educational.
Recommendation:
The book is worth a read, if horror fiction is at all your thing. That said, it is gruesome in places, with what I’d refer to as “mature” content (language and situations, as well as the obvious gore and violence) and subject material that strikes right at a tender spot. After all, most people have some passing acquaintance with bullying, either acting as the bully or the victim, or witnessing events relating to one or the other. Though the book is set in the late 1970s, King’s work is not really dated when it comes to the core subject of the ways that young people can be cruel toward one another, unfortunately. But taken as just a scary romp without an analysis of the undertones, Carrie does the job, just the same.
Learn more about Carrie, by Stephen King, on Amazon.com
Well, that's a few minutes of your life that you'll never get back, huh? Thanks for reading, just the same. Now that the internet is at home again, I'll try to slip in some time around my course load and write something other than reviews. I haven't done a decent Thoughts from the White Board in some time. And then there is always the idea I've been kicking about of resurrecting Abnormal Signs. Wouldn't that be nice? And while I'm at it, I can write that novel I've always wanted to. While also going to grad school, and moonlighting as a rock star and famous Hollywood talent scout. Yup, that's me.
The parting comment:
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| Source: AtomicYeti.com |
Vampires appear to be what is going to get most of America, but personally I prefer Indiana's fate. Or maybe New Hampshire's. And definitely Hawaii's. Hey, I'd risk a Tiki Curse just so I could enjoy some tropical breezes at a reasonably priced resort with my family. But while we're being silly, let's just face it, the Russians are what is really coming for us. Just face it America. The Russkies are gonna get us, sooner or later.
There's a monster in Bear Lake?
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