And so she became the joke, the brunt of teenaged cruelties that puzzled her as much as they wounded her. There was hardly any comfort in playing her private game, because like so many things in Carrie's life, it was sinful.
Or so her mother said. Carrie could make things move--by concentrating on them, by willing them to move. Small things, like marbles, would start dancing. Or a candle would fall. A door would lock. This was her game, her power, her sin, firmly repressed like everything else about Carrie. One act of kindness, as spontaneous as the vicious jokes of her classmates, offered Carrie a new look at herself the fateful night of her senior prom.
But another act--of furious cruelty--forever changed things and turned her clandestine game in to a weapon of horror and destruction. Though he is vague about the details, he keeps dropping hints as the story unspools. King also begins telegraphing who is going to live and who is going to die. Thus, whether Carrie works for you or not depends on how well you think that King modulates the rhythms of suspense, and how well you think he delivers the climax. The problem, I think, is in the way Carrie is structured.
Instead of being a chronological narrative, King turns this into a partially epistolary novel. There are sections in the main timeline that are told from the third-person.
I imagine that King thought he was increasing the tension with these cutaways, giving us fragments of a puzzle without showing us the picture on the box. For me, though, these acted as relief valves, deflating the tension — and my interest — by drifting away from the main character.
The time we spend with her is fascinating. There are, for instance, long discussions taken from a fictional book about the science of telekinesis. These portions are doubly irritating because they both drop the main plot thread and indulge in the sin of overexplaining.
As King would later learn, explaining the supernatural is not only unnecessary, but entirely besides the point. I only need a good tale to be derived from these notions.
The epistolary interjections become fatal — in my opinion — during the extended denouement. Rather than arriving at a powerful conclusion, though, King keeps interrupting the flow by cutting to the transcripts of a board of inquiry. The start-stop nature of the endgame does not maintain suspense, it empties it out. That said, Carrie is a legacy. View all 10 comments. Oct 12, Dan Schwent rated it it was ok Shelves: books , Outcast Carrie White has a secret.
She's telekinetic. When a popular girl's boyfriend invites her to prom as atonement, she accepts, completely unaware of the horrors lurking on the horizon Carrie is Stephen King's first novel and has been part of our cultural landscape since it was made into a movie in the late s.
Somehow, I've escaped reading it or seeing the movie until now. I knew or thought I knew most of the wrinkles of the plot going in, due to sai King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and numerous cultural references over the years. Carrie is told using an interesting structure, alternating passages from Carrie's timeline as it unfolds and excepts from accounts of what happened at the prom in the far future. The structure reminded me of Not Comin' Home to You at times.
I think Block did it better. The story itself is pretty good. It's a story of rejection, acceptance, betrayal, and bloody, horrible vengeance. It very much feels like a first novel, over written in places, but there's still a certain Kingliness to it.
While I wouldn't say I disliked the story, I wasn't in love with it. It feels like a novellette that was padded to bring up to novel length to me. Maybe it's because I already knew where the story was headed, both because of the structure and because it's been part of our pop culture for so long, I just wasn't hooked by it. The ending was much more horrific than I thought it would be, though. The rampage was by far the best part of the book. Possible connection with another Stephen King story: Teddy DuChamp, owner of Teddy's Amoco, is mentioned as having died in but his son still locks up the gas pumps.
I'm glad Stephen King broke into the business with Carrie but it just wasn't my bucket of pigs' blood. Two out of five stars. View all 12 comments. Apr 12, Erin rated it really liked it Shelves: movie , king-me , april Carrie is Stephen King's debut novel and you can tell. That's not "shade" because Carrie is still fucking great but as a "Constant Reader" I could see how his writing has improved over the years. I first read Carrie when I was 13 or 14 years old and it was my first King book.
Back then I would've giving it 10 Stars because I absolutely loved it. I watched the movie the original and I raided my sister's she's a huge King fan King collection and while everyone else my age was reading Harry Pot Carrie is Stephen King's debut novel and you can tell. Carrie is about a weird teenage girl who's mother is obviously severely mentally ill and who at school is constantly bullied. Carrie has a special "gift"? She has Telekinetic powers.
Carrie is a horror novel with Sci Fi mixed in but I consider this one of Uncle Stevie's more realistic novels. Substitute telekinesis for a gun and Carrie is just as horrifying if not more because every week a kid takes a gun to school and violence follows. Carrie has a hellish family life and she's bullied non-stop at school, Carrie is a ticking time bomb. Stephen King is so good at writing stories about bullied or mistreated people.
In the forward to this book he talks about the 2 girls he went to school with that inspired Carrie. These girls were weird and shy and because of that they were bullied. Uncle Stevie laments the fact that while he wasn't a bully he also never stood up for them. So he wrote Carrie as a way of sort of giving them their revenge. Carrie isn't in my opinion Stephen King's best novel but I think its a good gateway novel to get you started on your King addiction.
View all 17 comments. I love this book and I love Carrie, for entirely different reasons today than 20 years ago. On my first read of Carrie I loved Carrie because the whole book consumed me, engaged me, and after the last sentence I was like, wow that ride!
Now in my thirties this book has a whole new perspective, I love Carrie because every single person let her down, I love Carrie because no one else did and I love her for kicking back at a world that kicked at her every day of her miserable 17 years.
I love Carrie because she was a human, a kid and I can emphasize with her. People who say your school days are the best days of your life are deluded, wherever a kid stands in the popular social order has their crosses to bare. The one thing that I felt strongly through both readings is that I so badly wanted a different outcome of the Prom Queen, even during this reread I found myself internally begging King to change it up, but that's Carrie for you, she crawls into your head, under your skin, until she is all you can think about and you just so badly want the sun to shine down on her.
Carrie will always be my all time most consuming read, my feelings on this girl are overwhelming. A solid 5 star book and an all time favourite. View 2 comments. Apr 21, Scarlet rated it really liked it Shelves: stephen-king , horror. King pieces together Carrie's story through a series of reports and articles concerning a telekinetic catastrophe in Maine.
I knew how terrible the end would be before it even happened, so reading the book was an excruciating experience - the dread just kept building page after page, I could see what everything was leading to, I knew how easily avoidable it was, but there was nothing I could do except watch the dominoes fall one after the other.
And once the horror of it wore off, the tragedy of it sunk in. Yes, tragedy. Because more than anything, Carrie is a very sad story of bullying gone too far. Carrie's life is miserable - whether at home, where she's oppressed by her religion-obsessed mother, or at school, where she's relentlessly bullied by her peers. I was scared, not of Carrie but for Carrie. My heart went out to her and in the end, when the finale played out, a tiny part of me may even have rooted for her.
Carrie won't give me nightmares, but it's left me emotionally drained and heartbroken - not something I expect from a genre like horror. Quite an impressive start to my foray into SK territory, I must say. View all 41 comments. Feb 12, Jason Koivu rated it liked it Shelves: fantasy , sci-fi , fiction. Everything progressed along as it should in the first half.
The story moved at a good pace and the writing - though not moving - was adequate. Then the climatic scene happened soon after the halfway mark. I'll rephrase that. The climax happened in the middle… the middle! Nonetheless, I pushed on I think King may have actually used suddenly twice in one sentence! What happened? Why did the editing stop midway through? Why did the story drag on after it was essentially over?
In the end, this is a 2 star book that gets 3 for the interesting story and the strong start. Everything else is anticlimax. View all 29 comments. Oct 15, Lyn rated it really liked it. Was Carrie White a literary active shooter? She feels alone and without any relief and she is finally subjected to a humiliation that breaks a wall, crosses a line and then she crosses a line and people die. Stephen King crashes the writing party with a bold Was Carrie White a literary active shooter?
Stephen King crashes the writing party with a bold statement, declaring that he belongs and will be around for a while. Readers in when this was first published probably noticed the talent and maybe thought here was a young writer who had some more in the tank for down the road. So back to the active shooter idea.
Scary as King made the 70s, he had no idea how scary we would be a few years later. Before Columbine, before all the sad, sad CNN breaking news reports since, King showed us what could happen when the bullied, terrorized, terrifying, disenfranchised, chased up a tree and backed into a corner fat kid, picked last for the game and been on the receiving end of a laughing, pointing finger can do if she thinks about it too hard.
We see the scene from the perspective of the bully, the bullied, and the spectrum of third parties who look on and allow it to happen. Readers can relate because it is likely that kids were cruel to one another in caves.
Later, in his novella Apt Pupil , King will return to this idea, exploring the active shooter concept in a way more conventional to our desensitized senses, but here with Carrie he has dug down deep and uncovered the same black roots.
With her telekinetic powers and her unstable psyche, Carrie embodies and personifies a dark truth that King has turned a light on, that the ability to be hurt and hurt back is something inherent in us and that we can see in the classrooms, in the post office and in the mirror.
Oct 04, Sheena rated it really liked it Shelves: horror , king. They all had it coming :. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Story — 5. Besides being classic SK, you get Sissy Spacek! So powerful in spots! Use headphones! View all 7 comments. Jan 16, R. Gold rated it liked it. At its most relatable it felt like a degrading episode and at its worst it felt like Tarantino directed the club.
The only moments that tickled a different emotion was a flash when Carrie was 3 and talking to her neighbor and the early moments at the prom—they were the only scenes Carrie felt human. View all 5 comments. I've read quite a few King title but have decided to start again, reading them all in chronological order to better understand the prowess of this master story-teller.
This is his first full-length publication. Ultimately, Carrie is both the namesake, protagonist and antagonist of this story. And despite the many sides to her disturbed character she is also one the reader can not help but side with. My edition begun with an author's note that told of another bullied girl, much like Carrie.
This gi I've read quite a few King title but have decided to start again, reading them all in chronological order to better understand the prowess of this master story-teller. This girl he once knew took her own life and this tale serves the partial purpose of rewriting her story, and that of so many others.
Here he gives power to the downtrodden. He gives them a way to realise their potential, through Carrie's character. She enacts their vengeance. However, she also burns herself along the way.
This also serves as a reminder for how common Carrie's story is. How many other teenagers receive such high-school treatment and how many either internalise their hurt and self-destruct or lash out with devastating consequences?
The answer is too many. Even when she acquired a new outfit, the bullying did not cease. Sandra lived down the street from the house King grew up in, and was raised by a single mother. When a year-old King assisted her mother in moving some furniture, he was struck by the massive cross that hung above their couch. Sandra's peers also avoided her because of her seizures and strange dress. Tragically, neither of them made it to the age of King notes that Tina took her own life and Sandra died during a seizure while alone in her apartment.
Their ghosts haunted him as he wrote Carrie. He took both of their stories and crafted a tale that imagined what their lives could have been like if they had the gift of psychokinetic energy. King wanted to imagine a world that was fair to girls who weren't perceived as whatever was ascribed to the general population.
Mrs Irving hired me one day to help her move some furniture … I was struck by the crucifix hanging in the living room, over the Irving couch.
If such a gigantic icon had fallen when the two of them were watching TV, the person it fell on would almost certainly have been killed. I did three single-spaced pages of a first draft, then crumpled them up in disgust and threw them away. The next night, when I came home from school, my wife Tabby had the pages. She'd spied them while emptying my waste-basket, had shaken the cigarette ashes off the crumpled balls of paper smoothed them out and sat down to read them.
She wanted me to go on. She wanted to know the rest of the story.
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