Carrie by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Some spoilers ahead, in as much as you can spoil a novel published in 1974.
King’s first published novel is in a way the ultimate teenage tale of revenge. Dowdy, introverted Carrie White, a 16 year old girl raised by an extreme Christian fundamentalist mother, is taunted and bullied through high school and does her best to ignore it all while bearing the incessant, borderline insane ravings of her mother. Things seem to be turning around when good boy Tommy Ross invites her to the prom but if you’ve seen the movie, you know how that turns out.
Carrie uses her telekinetic powers to take revenge on those who have humiliated and teased her, eventually spreading her wrath to the entire small town of Chamberlain. Basically, everyone dies.
King writes the story as an epistolary, inserting interviews, book excerpts, commission reports and newspaper stories between the more conventional narrative scenes. Two things I found interesting were how King tips his hand early–less than halfway through you learn that a lot of people are going to die, often which specific people. The story, bracketed by the interviews and reports, becomes less about what will happen and more about what did happen. There is still a slow-burning dread that builds as prom night approaches, a kind of Doom That Came To Chamberlain, if you will.
King also approaches telekinesis as something worthy of scientific study, showing experts speculating on its likely genetic origin and whether more “taunt me and watch me destroy the world” Carries might be out there. Perhaps this was meant as a way of making Carrie seem more sympathetic, a victim of both a brutal upbringing, and a terrible, albeit, natural ability she could not control (or could control all too well, perhaps).
Unlike many of King’s later novels, Carrie is fairly brief and some of the characters feel a bit thinly drawn as a result. There’s just enough meat on the bones here but only just. One of King’s affectations is in full force, though. This is where he’ll break a paragraph abruptly
(and put something in parentheses to emphasize a specific mood or line of thought)
and then continue on with the narrative only to
(switch back to the parenthetical interjection, often making liberal use of exclamation points! italics and word repetition word repetition o the words o the interjections over and over)
While it can certainly emphasize a particular mood or thought pattern, it looks a bit hamfisted now.
Still, any fan of King’s work would be remiss to not read Carrie. King’s skills are still being refined here and not every character or turn feels true (Carrie’s mother especially seems way over the top, something Piper Laurie took to heart in the 1976 film adaptation), but even at this early stage he shows an effortless ability to get a narrative rolling and keep it moving.
