Search - Carrie

Carrie is one of those stories that everyone thinks they already know. I've never even seen the movie and I was one of those people. I enjoyed King's early writing, the narrative/case file style, and the sheer terror of Carrie. In the spirit of the story, I really got to know Carrie when I thought I already did.

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 feel like 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.

King's first novel is more than a coming-of-age story, it is the story of a birth in all its bloody glory. Carrie, shy, embarrassed, seemingly helpless, attempts to emerge from the hell of her childhood into a free, bright adulthood, only to be met with the same ridicule and violence from her cruel classmates and fanatical mother. But Carrie has grown up, not into an adult, but into something darker, more vengeful and infinitely more powerful that will repay them blood for blood. King's debut novel remains one of his best, creating characters that are simultaneously horrifying and pitiable.

Very good read!

This book by Stephen King is the first, to me, a long line of bestsellers. I have
read others by him too, but not all. I have seen the movie only once, an it was by far
real good.

Stephen King isn't my favorite. I didn't really like this book.