Carrie by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Project Stephen King Chronological - (Anachronous) Review #1
The man in black fled into the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
Ok, this is not a quote from this book. Nor is it in the language I first read it in. But I need to pay tribute to the book that introduced me to King which I first read in Greek, almost a decade ago, in my mid-20s. So I think it's fitting as an introduction to my series of notes about King's writing, since I started being more social about my readings and my impressions of them.
After the Dark Tower epic, which absolutely swept me away, I read his non-fiction endeavour, "On Writing", suggested by a tutor of mine. Due to the numerous Dark Tower connections in other King's works and the solid advice he gives to aspiring writers in his "memoir of the craft", I decided to closely follow the tales this master craftsman spun over the years in chronological order. I started this out almost three years ago, and I haven't been reading as fast as I thought, and I haven't been writing down my thoughts either.
Since I'll be coming back to my personal experience with King's stories, I will only say in brief about Carrie that it was a great read, especially if you put it in the context of its time.
"Carrie" is the story of a bullied high-school girl, raised by her oppressive, hysterically religious mother, and of the events that culminate her suffering and trigger her telekinetic powers, that manifest and burst in a vengeful fit that takes down a whole town with it. Carrie becomes an instant archetype and the characters around her are mostly transparent as snow, opaque as shadows, but apparently you don't need much more to create a classic modern horror tale, one that made it into film, first by De Palma's rendition, and lived on in the character types that became too recognisable and almost cliché in stories since.
King's style is still kind of awkward, he's in search of his voice. He intersects extracts from newspapers, reports and other voices among his omniscient, third-person narration and uses the italicised internal monologue parts. The whole story has a sense of inevitability, drawing to its conclusion. I most certainly enjoyed this first effort (which was not quite "first" as I found out later, when I reached the Bachman novels period). "Carrie" not only saved King's family from the financial struggles, but also put him straight to the map.
It is a solid 3.5, that my memory romantically turns into a 4, as I caught myself frequently after finishing the book that I wanted to return to return to the book's world, recounting Carrie White's drama and demise. The same fascination with which I picked King's second published book, Salem's Lot.
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