Reviews tagging 'Miscarriage'

Carrie by Stephen King

41 reviews

guivx5's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Imagine starting your writer career with a book that defines a genre?

This is King's first book I've read (and I didn't know it was his first book written before picking it!), and it already sets some high standards for him, for I thought this was a brilliant experience. This is a 200-ish page that covers a multitude of topics with good balance: from bullying, abuse, childhood trauma to telekinetic powers and even scientific negligence (Like, God, how can you be THIS creative for a single story?). "Carrie" brings a lot to the table and does it well.

Perhaps what made me 5-star this one is how King uses horror and suspense, genres that are so saturated with cheap jumpscares and generic demonic creatures, to build a complex character such as Carrie. Her ultrareligious mother, her socially-reproved appearance, the lack of any happiness in her life... She's got you hooked even before you know about her powers. The uniqueness of her situation, and at the same time the ways we can relate to the problems, is truly something I haven't seen in a book character in a long time. She seems very real (Not only her, but the entire cast of characters here). Her powers are an amazing twist to the narrative as much as they are a metaphor for her anger. The rise of her telekinesis is, ultimately, her downfall. The amount of symbolism mixed to the tragedy here is astonishing.

I have a feeling that King could say he hangs out with aliens every saturday night for a poker game and I would just believe it. Intentional or not, "Carrie" pokes on uncomfortable subjects. It makes us wonder: how is one supposed to go through life facing so much hate without exploding? And if they do... can we really blame them?

On another note, I'll start training my cousin to see if she can lift objects.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Death, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Violence, Bullying, and Blood

Moderate: Misogyny

Minor: Miscarriage

autisticmisabel's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body shaming, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Bullying, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Misogyny, Murder, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Excrement, Alcohol, Death of parent, Racial slurs, Sexual assault, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Classism, Injury/Injury detail, Racism, Rape, Car accident, and Sexual content

Minor: Chronic illness and Toxic relationship

eva_rebolledo's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

Not necessarily bad, just gets boring at times. Reading Stephen King in English as a non-native speaker was.. an experience?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Violence, Religious bigotry, and Blood

Moderate: Death

Minor: Animal death, Abortion, Death of parent, Alcohol, Miscarriage, and Rape

nnnightime's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Not a bad book but not amazing either, I was interested enough to keep reading but there was definitely some excitement or something lacking.

All the characters, even Carrie were not likeable, I found Carrie to be kind of pathetic and only slightly less as the book went on. I guess Sue was okay, even though she's basically the reason all the shit went down. But I suppose that's what King is getting at, that people are awful and even good people can be awful, on purpose or not. The ending was both interesting and not, with the reveal of another girl being noted with telekinetic powers, but I'm not sure if it was supposed to leave the reader scared or with a sense of "oh no it could happen again!" Because I kinda don't really care, sure a lot of the town were bystanders but they all knew or had a pretty good idea that Carrie was being abused by her mother and/or bullied at school and did nothing to help her. So I find it difficult to feel sorry for most of them.

I thought it was interesting that we knew what was going to happen the whole time, jumping from past to the present and the future it was pretty well done and easy to follow. But I'm not sure if knowing what would happen took some of the mystery and excitement away.

I don't think I'll ever read it again and the only reason I'd recommend it to someone would be if they wanted to see how well King rights awful people, and because it's short. I'm genuinely interested I why some people rate this book 5 stars, other than the kind of person who just rates everything 4 or 5 stars, I can't really understand anyone finishing the book with any other response other than being mildly happy that you'd completed a book and everything ended the way the book told you it would at the beginning.

Ugh I sound super harsh, it wasn't a terrible book, I probably wouldn't have finished it if it was, but it just wasn't all that interesting either.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Murder, Rape, Sexual violence, Violence, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Car accident, Cursing, Fatphobia, and Gore

Minor: Miscarriage

Probably just don't read this book if you're sensitive to anything.

grave_liminal's review

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

The objectification of women and minors, as well as the glorification of sexual assault, makes this book extremely hard to read. It also opens a very large discussion about fatphobia in literature.

If you removed every single female description and sex scene from this book, it would’ve been a solid 4 stars. The repetition of the “breast” descriptions were so frequent that it seemed like a joke, a book written by a 12 year old boy. Disappointed that this was my first experience reading a King novel, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. Would never reread it, and would barely recommend it other than the purpose of being able to say you’ve read a horror classic. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Rape, Religious bigotry, Blood, Bullying, Child abuse, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Animal death and Fatphobia

Minor: Homophobia, Racial slurs, and Miscarriage

planetshelf's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This writing layout is strange and dense, and I can't decide whether I like it.

I’m always upset when I think about Carrie. Her experience on this planet was so fucked.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Mental illness, Murder, Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Toxic relationship, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Bullying, Confinement, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Gore, Child death, Emotional abuse, Blood, and Child abuse

Moderate: Death of parent, Gaslighting, Pregnancy, Car accident, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Sexual content, and Sexual violence

Minor: Rape, Alcohol, Body shaming, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Suicidal thoughts, and Racial slurs

maria_vkl's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Bullying, Body shaming, Child abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Sexual content, Violence, and Toxic relationship

andylpzgal's review against another edition

dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood, Bullying, Car accident, Child abuse, Death of parent, Death, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Miscarriage, Religious bigotry, and Sexual assault

amysanti27's review

dark sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

For The Spooky Halloween Season And After Finishing My Reading Challenge I Thought I Would Finally Venture Into The World Of Stephen King. This Book Was Interesting It Was Almost Like Watching A Netflix Documentary But Reading It. There Are Some Outdated Terms As A Warning And Outdated Views That I Do Not Support But Overall It Was A Great Short Read And Very Similar To The Movies.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Death of parent, Gore, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, and Violence

effys's review

dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I’m gonna start this off by acknowledging that this is going to be a brutal review because I have strong opinions about Stephen Kings writing. I feel like Stephen King writes with a highly sexist and racist undertone (this is only the second of his books I’ve read and I’ve not read anything recent of his). I have only read this and IT but he managed to find a way to put the N word in both books and there was at least 2 occasions he mentioned minstrel shows very casually in this book, there was also a point where he described Carrie as looking like an “Indian wearing war paint” which made me very uncomfortable to read. 

King seems to be one of those male authors who is convinced women think about their breasts 24/7 as there were so many moments in this book where breasts were brought up unnecessarily including one occasion where a schoolgirls nipples are highly sexualised (creepy af 🤢). 

Overall the story was good but I feel like there is a lot of improvement to be had in Kings writing so I hope as I read some of his more recent works I see an improvement.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Bullying, Car accident, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Murder, Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, and Violence