Carrie by Stephen King
Blurb:
Unpopular at school and subjected to her mother's religious fanaticism at home, Carrie White does not have it easy. But while she may be picked on by her classmates, she has a gift she's kept secret since she was a little girl: she can move things with her mind. Doors lock. Candles fall. Her ability has been both a power and a problem. And when she finds herself the recipient of a sudden act of kindness, Carrie feels like she's finally been given a chance to be normal. She hopes that the nightmare of her classmates' vicious taunts is over . . . but an unexpected and cruel prank turns her gift into a weapon of horror so destructive that the town may never recover.
Spoiler Filled Review:
Carrie is a blood-drenched tale exposing the psychological horrors of abuse and bullying, and the deadly consequences of pushing the wrong person over the edge. In quintessential King fashion, while there is supernatural horror and suspense, the true macabre comes from the mean-spirited, terrible things that humans are capable of inflicting on each other. I initially read Carrie as a young teenage, right around the age that Carrie was, and I remember thinking to myself: that was a pretty disturbing book, the bloody shower scene made me uncomfortable, and while it was fine, it was not one of my favorite Stephen King novels. Now, fast forward more years than I care to count, and I picked it back up after a fairly long King hiatus because my interests had shifted more into the epic fantasy genre. I’ll say it straight out, re-reading Carrie felt like I was settling back into a well-worn, overstuffed armchair with a soft light and my favorite drink sparkling beside me. I DEVOURED this book.
Okay, before I get ahead of myself, we all know the story of Carrie, right? Young girl, religious fanatic as a mom, who is ostracized by her classmates. She’s the butt of everyone’s joke. And Momma is keeping her purposefully sheltered to protect her from the Heathens outside their home who want only to corrupt and ruin her. Carrie is traumatized when she develops her period after gym class while in the shower with all the other high school girls. She has no idea what’s happening, thinking she’s bleeding to death, while all the girls gang up on her, yelling at her to “plug it up” and throwing sanitary napkins at her while she cries in fear. After this traumatic, catalytic event, she begins to notice a telekinetic power that, when she reflects upon it, she’s always had. Skip ahead to the finale where, in an act of contrition and attempted reconciliation, one of the shower girls has her boyfriend take Carrie to the prom for a magical night. But the prototypical mean, rich girl cannot allow Carrie to have the night, dumping buckets of pig blood on her, causing Carrie to erupt in a fury of telekinetic rage that results in the near total destruction of Chamberlain, Maine and the murder to hundreds of town people.
My first reaction, as I re-read Carrie decades after first reading it was the thought: this, THIS is why I loved Stephen King so much growing up. His prose is just beautiful. It's clean, it’s descriptive, and it’s interesting to read. His characters are so full of life. And his villains are so despicable.
It blows my mind when I consider that this was Stephen King’s first full length novel. He had published a few short stories in different “gentlemen’s magazines.” But this was his first novel. I have always heard that one of the first pieces of advice most authors receive is: “write what you know.” So, I’ve always found it funny that King decided to tackle menstruation and female, teenage bullying as his first full foray into horror fiction. But he does it so well.
In this re-read, I read part of it from the recently published 50th Anniversary edition with a forward from Margret Atwood and a new introduction from Stephen King. In Stephen King’s introduction, he recounted the familiar story of how he wrote the first few pages, didn’t think it would work, and threw it away only to have his wife—an author in her own right—pick it out of the trash, read it over, and tell him to keep going because he had something. But he also tells about two girls he knew in high school. Girls who had been bullied relentlessly. One committed suicide. One died from epileptic seizures. But he expresses that he regrets not standing up for them when they were bullied. He was only 14. It’s hard to stand up when you’re 14. And, as he recounted those stories, of the ghosts of the girls who haunted him and wanted, NEEDED to be combined into the Carietta White of this novel, my heart broke for him and for those girls. And I understood. He was writing something that he knew about.
Back to the actual novel. Carrie is written in an extremely unique and interesting style. You have the story told through multiple POVs, academic articles, coroner’s reports, news articles, police interrogation transcripts. The list goes on and on. And these different snapshots allow the reader to slowly build a mental picture of the horrific events of Prom Night. The slow but inevitable unveiling builds the suspense in a masterful avalanche of eventual chaos and destruction.
While still not my absolute favorite of King’s extensive bibliography, I was shocked at how much I enjoyed Carrie on this reread. It pulled me mercilessly in and held me gasping until the bitter, bloody end. In an age where bullying is rearing its ugly head, both in school and throughout the computers and phones in every young girl’s pocket, this story is more important than ever. At the end of the day, all it takes to stand up to a bully is to stand up. King’s Carrie is a masterclass in pristine prose that paints a horrifying portrait of supernatural powers that are superimposed on the deadly slights and jilts bullies thrive on. May we all remember the blood-drenched gaze of Carrie the next time we want to make fun of someone who may be a little less fortunate than us.
