Show Me Your Books: Review Of Carrie

Show Me Your Books has a couple of new Stephen King reviews.  They are a look back at two King classics; Carrie and Night Shift.  Both are worth your time!  Show Me Your Books has kindly agreed to let me repost the Carrie review.  I think you'll like it, I did! 

Does the title "Show Me Your Books" remind you to the RatMan in The Stand?  "Bring out your dead!" Only, here it's "Bring out your books!  Bring out your books!"  No?  Oh well, maybe I've overly Kinged up as I await 11/22/63 !

There are a LOT of good reviews at Show Me Your Books.  Check them out here.  The growing list of reviews includes everything from Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea to H.P. Lovecraft.  Add to that John Saul, Ken Follett, Anne Rice, Bentley Little -- just to list a few.

• SMYB Review Of Carrie
• SMYB Review Of Night Shift

Stephen King Carrie

Plot:

Carrie may be picked on by her classmates, but she has a gift. She can move things with her mind. Doors lock. Candles fall. This is her power and her problem. Then, an act of kindness, as spontaneous as the vicious taunts of her classmates, offers Carrie a chance to be a normal ... until an unexpected cruelty turns her gift into a weapon of horror and destruction that no one will ever forget.

My Review and Thoughts:

 

 

Aaaa the birth of the Master of Horror. The very first, one of kind book Carrie published in 1974. The shocking aspect is this was King's fourth novel. It was for a magazine Cavalier and amazingly the first three pages of this book ended up in the garbage thankfully his wife took them out and told him he should finish the story. And so the birth of Carrie and the birth of a published master started.

 

 

This was the third Stephen King book I read when I first started getting into his writing. The first being IT and the second being Night Shift. I first read Carrie in 1989 and decided to give it another go because of the new cover released by AnchorBooks and felt it needed to be reviewed for Horror Fiction Reviews and I wanted to adventure again into classic King at his best.

 

 

I can't say enough about this book because I was a mistreated child and bullied in school, beat, made fun of and basically destroyed in many ways and so I looked at Carrie as a somewhat fantasy and savior due to the fact Carrie fights back and I wished during those horrible school times to be able to have those powers and fight back against those who enjoyed destroying me. The whole book is a powerful written story of horrifying chills that grabs the reader and shakes them violently into the story placing you there in all the wonderful amazing masterpiece word play that is throughout.

 

 

A perfect haunting masterpiece of eerie atmospheres, characters and a deep thick storyline that plays inside the readers head. Pure imagination runs wild in this book, King's powerful imagination flows upon the page and out upon the reader.

 

 

If you think you know Carrie because you have watched the movie or the mini-series then you don't know Carrie and you are not a true Stephen King fan or horror fiction fan unless you have read this book. The book has a lot more story, back story and also the aftermath. The book is a flawless example of what to do to create a perfect flowing book. Carrie reeks with images and emotions that the reader becomes apart of in many priceless ways.

 

 

This is a book that stands the test of time and is a as good in the 70's as much as it is today. The characters are flawless. Momma is one of the greatest fictional lunatics to ever grace the written page and is a character that haunts you and sticks with you as a truly insane person and pure evil in herself and her ways. Her parts are so well written you get thick emotions such as anger and hate toward her as you read showing the talent of the master craftsmanship of the writing skill put into this book.

 

 

Like I say no true horror fan or Stephen King fan can get away with saying yeah they know Carrie because of the movie, that's an insult to the power of this book and also to the world of written fiction, taking a movie in the place of the original concept. The movie yes is good but strays on my things, from Carrie's childhood to her true self, the movie changes her image all together, she looks nothing like what the movie betrays.

 

 

This is a power book that after reading it again after 21 years it still works in all it's original ways. A flawless book of characters, situations and horror. A pure tour-de-force of written quality that only a master storyteller can create.

 

 

Like I say if you think you know Carrie because of the movie, your all wrong. The movie is great and the acting is flawless but the book and movie are really two different entities in there own ways. The book has the back story, the different prom ordeal, the showdown between Momma and Carrie is different, Carrie not only takes out the prom kids she takes out the whole town in one climatic showdown that has to be read to understand even the ending of the book is different and might I add a flawless classic ending. This is a flawless book, a masterpiece of written word. A true powerful example of how to write a lasting book that still holds up today as it did then.

 

 

A must read, must own.