Stephen King expertly explains why ‘Sometimes dead is better’ in the 1983 horror, Pet Sematary.
Pet Sematary – the blurb
“The house looked right, felt right to Dr Louis Creed.
Rambling, old, unsmart and comfortable. A place where the family could settle; the children grow and play and explore. The rolling hills and meadows of Maine seemed a world away from the fume-choked dangers of Chicago.
Only the occasional big truck out on the two-lane highway, grinding up through the gears, hammering down the long gradients, growled out an intrusive threat.
But behind the house and far away from the road: that was safe. Just a carefully cleared path up into the woods where generations of local children have processed with the solemn innocence of the young, taking with them their dear departed pets for burial.
A sad place maybe, but safe. Surely a safe place. Not a place to seep into your dreams, to wake you, sweating with fear and foreboding.“
True story
The book comes with an excellent Introduction from King explaining that the foundations of the story are in fact true. King when residing in Maine with his family lived by a road plagued by thunderous trucks. His daughter’s cat Smucky died and was duly buried with a grave stone marked by his daughter that read ‘he was obedient’. His daughter’s grief got King thinking. What if the cat came back? What if the cat came back but was fundamentally wrong? King then wrote Pet Sematary and the rest, as they say, is history. King classes the book as the one he finds most scary. So much so that he kept it in a drawer. This from the man who gave us vampire infested towns, man eating cars and rabid dogs!
A different kind of horror
Reading Pet Sematary I can understand why King felt a sense of horror when writing the book. Yes there is plently of classic King – terrifying supernatural stuff that all good horror films are made of. But for me it was the death stuff that really got to me. Reading it you find yourself contemplating death, your pets, your spouses, your children. And it is this that I found truly horrifying. I won’t go in to details as I don’t want to spoil the plot but parts of it were truly awful to read. Sickening, heartbreaking.
One of my favs
My favorite King novel is ‘Salem’s Lot (I loved the reference to it in Pet Sematary by the way.) The way he writes small town America in Salem is just sublime. Whereas there isn’t much of that in Pet Sematary, I found the actual story line of Pet Sematary better, more tense, fraught. Some parts were agonisingly slow, like Creed’s nighttime trip to the graveyard where King pulled on every nerve imaginable. I didn’t know the ending as I hadn’t seen either of the two film versions and this only added to the suspense. If I’m honest the ending was classic King – veering off to the slightly absurd – but this didn’t spoil the book in anyway. It was almost expected.
Dead is better
Without doubt it’s right up there in all time King greats. More than any other it stopped and made me think. What would I do? Is dead better? It’s a really good one to get your teeth into and can imagine scholars are easily able to reel off pages of plot exploration which I would read with interest. It’s also surprising how much it hasn’t dated. Yes there are no mobile phones but you get the feeling that even they wouldn’t have been able to stop the horror as it unfolded. Read it, read it now!