Carrie By Stephen KingPublished: April 5th, 1974 By DoubledayPage Numbers: 192 pagesFormat: HardbackSource: Library
Summary: Why read Carrie? Stephen King himself has said that he finds his early work "raw," and Brian De Palma's movie was so successful that we feellike we have read the novel even if we never have. The simple answer is that this is a very scary story, one that works as well--if not better--on the page as on the screen. Carrie White, menaced by bullies at school and her religious nut of a mother at home, gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers, powers that will eventually be turned on her tormentors. King has a way of getting under the skin of his readers by creating an utterly believable world that throbs with menace before finally exploding. He builds the tension in this early work by piecing together extracts from newspaper reports, journals, and scientific papers, as well as more traditional first- and third-person narrative in order to reveal what lurks beneath the surface of Chamberlain, Maine.
News item from the Westover (ME) weekly Enterprise, August 19, 1966: "Rain of Stones Reported: It was reliably reported by several persons that a rain of stones fell from a clear blue sky on Carlin Street in the town of Chamberlain on August 17th."Although the supernatural pyrotechnics are handled with King's customary aplomb, it is the carefully drawn portrait of the little horrors of small towns, high schools, and adolescent sexuality that give this novel its power, and assures its place in the King canon. --Simon Leake
My Thoughts: As Stephen King's first book, I am going to overlook many of the details that made me want to chuck this book into the trash. These include: The many POV'S, bad character background knowledge, the horrible dialog. All these things didn't really help the plot and mainly confused me. This could have been because I saw the movie and the movie was really good.
This is the first time I've compared a book to the movie adaptation while reading the book. As an avid horror fan this book wasn't traumatizing, not was it scary. But it was different. I mean the whole locker thing was a bit weird, and as a man who wrote it, I only have one question: WHAT KIND OF DRUGS WAS HE ON WHEN HE WROTE THIS BOOK?!? Because I am going to need some of them.However, there is something special about this book that didn't let me completely hate it. There was something in the end that blew me away. The description of Carrie's rage throughout the town, exploding cars and shit, that was amazing. I have never been so interested in something like this in my life. Another this is the police questioning parts. The interrogation were also nice to read because the dialog was intense.
"They're hurt Carrie for the last time. "
This was so powerful in itself and that is what brought the book up for me.
Things like that are what make a good book.