Carrie Book Review

Carrie by Stephen King

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Blurb:

Carrie White may have been unfashionable and unpopular, but she had a gift. Carrie could make things move by concentrating on them. A candle would fall. A door would lock. This was her power and her sin. Then, an act of kindness, as spontaneous as the vicious taunts of her classmates, offered Carrie a chance to be normal and go to her senior prom. But another act - of ferocious cruelty - turned her gift into a weapon of horror and destruction that her classmates would never forget.

Review by Brittany:

Because this book has been made into a film at least three times that I'm aware of, I was already familiar with the story before picking up the book. I can honestly say that the film adaptations I have seen have followed the story amazingly well.

A good move that King made when writing this book was including excerpts from the newspaper, professional journals, and biographies that were published regarding Prom Night. This added another layer to the novel by giving different characters an opportunity to share their experiences, but the formatting was interesting and didn't leave me feeling like I was drudging through exposition.

King's development of his characters was extremely well done, most notably for me in Carrie's mother. There are few scenes in the book that are described from her point of view, but each scene that she is in is powerful anyway. He made her into a scary character, but in a subtle way.

One character that I am still unsure about is Tommy. I still cannot decide if he had good intentions or not when it came to Carrie. King referred to moments when Tommy would take her hand or smile at her or tell her she was pretty, and his level of genuineness is still a gray area for me. I want to believe it, but I just don't know. I think his ambiguity is another example of why this books is such a classic.

Of course I enjoyed this book. It is a classic for a reason. I do think that it was written a bit choppier than King's more current works, but that doesn't take away from the excellence of the story. If you haven't read this one, you definitely should!

Notable quotes:

Somehow it had all led to this, even the early part, and when it was done the glue that had held them together would be thin and might dissolve, leaving them to wonder how it could have been in the first place.

She was glad they had decided to leave her alone, because she was still uncomfortable about her own motives and to examine them too deeply, lest she discover a jewel of selfishness glowing and winking at her from the black velvet of her subconscious.