Reviews with content warning for Medical trauma - Pet Sematary

Reviews tagging 'Medical trauma'

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

58 reviews

sidekicksam's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad 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

Did I binge-listen to this in, like, 3 days? Yes. Yes I did.

I am, slowly but surely, making my way through King's (most popular) backlist. Pet Sematary was one of those books I heard about but didn't really know what it was about. A Pet Sematary, obviously.

This was not the book I expected it to be, and it positively surprised me. I'm a big wimp so I thought I'd be super scared, but this is not that kind of horror story (though I did feel a bit odd about my cat for about 0.5 minutes). This book chills you to your bones, and though the plot twists are not entirely surprising, the way King writes the story, I still felt robbed somehow.

This book was so addictive, I did not want to stop listening to it. The narration by Michael C. Hall (you may know him as Dexter) was an excellent choice, his mysterious voice adds that chilly layer to the story that other narrators might not have managed.

Content Warnings

caylamaureen's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Holy smokes! I’ve been a King fan for quite some time now, but I was scared to pick this one up, I’m not gonna lie… especially after King himself said that he thought he had finally “gone too far and threw it in a drawer with no intent to publish I love a good thriller but with a name and a preface like that I thought it would be too gruesome for me. But I have to say that King really writes in a way that no other writer does anymore and if more people could stomach these complicated topics, we’d be studying them in school hands down. The way he uses metaphors and forces us to think about the world we live in is absolutely unreal and I’m not tired of it yet!

Okay, Pet Sematery has very little blood and gore and jump scares compared to other King novels and I was left thinking “would I even call this ‘horror?’“ To me it felt more like tragedy. Kind of like a bit of a haunted tragedy? I’m not sure… what it really, actually is at its core is thought-provoking and psychological. More than any other book I’ve ever read, you are going to be pushed right up against the glass to the questions of afterlife, the worst kinds of childhood trauma, and the complex interwoven effects of death in the family. It’s absolutely astounding to me how simply King was able to make me question everything I think I know about death (or don’t know about it) and not only that but FORCE me to think about it. Luckily for me, I love nothing more than to be forced to think about life’s tough questions and then have something to on overthinking about endlessly. So if the hard topics aren’t your thing (or are triggering!! Read the trigger warnings!!) and inevitable haunting tragedy isn’t your thing, you won’t like this book. But it is undoubtedly a literary masterpiece that I can’t stop thinking about!!

Content Warnings

zakcebulski's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Well, I finally finished this book. This book and I have a long and sordid history, unfortunately. I picked this one up years ago when I wanted to get in to reading Stephen King's works, and figured that one of his most classis books would do well to get me in to his bibliography.
Holy hell was I wrong. Before going further allow me to say that I felt like I liked this book more than I thought I would, but not as much as I hoped to.
Starting out with the less than positive parts of this book, for my two cents...
I don't know whether I have a complete lack of empathy but, I found that every time there was familial or marital strife within this book, I found myself urging the plot to move the fuck on. I think a big problem is that I just object to Louis Creed as a character- I don't like him at all. That sucks because he is the protagonist, after all, and, to have him be so fucking annoying makes the read carry an air of annoyance throughout.
I found Louis to be very akin to Paul from Misery wherein I was only rooting for him because he was the conduit by which the story was unveiled. I did not like Louis throughout the book, and I think that that hindered my enjoyment in a big way.
I also felt that the last leg of the adventure was... very fast- to the point where it came off, to me at least, like King needed to finish the book ASAP. It felt like it was very compressed. The first trip to the Burial Grounds was so well done, it was so vivid, and spooky, with a nice air of tension throughout. But, when Louis takes Gage there it is like he is speedrunning it. The atmosphere of this book is exquisite, and the fact that it was blown by is admittedly disappointing.
And then, the final confrontation with Gage and Louis was so fast that I truly didn't even feel a threat from Gage's reanimated corpse. It was, absolutely, very stomach churning to realize the fight was between a father and his reanimated son after the son had just killed his mother and an old man, but, the fight boils down to Louis killing Gage again, with a few massive shots of morphine. It just seemed like it was rushed and didn't have a totally satisfying conclusion.
Lastly, and this is just a nitpick on my end. Stephen King's sexual dialogue has never been a strong suit, but, good Christ- "Let's see if you taste as good as you look"? Please... please stop. Please for the love of all that is good and holy... please...

Now, to the parts that I did like about this book.
I loved and I mean loved Rachel, Jud Crandall, as well as Ellie. I thought that these were all fantastically realized characters, characters who I was genuinely interested in.
I have no qualms about saying that these characters may in fact be some of my favorites within all of the SK books which I have read.
I thought that the implications behind Ellie's visions and the potential to tie them in with the Shining was fantastic. I appreciated very much how King wrote Ellie to be a stand in for what likely would have been most people's experiences with learning about death. I think that Ellie's youthful curiosity is well written, and her confusion but desire to understand the cycle of life and death is endearing and very reminiscent of my own.
I thought that Jud was the best. I loved Jud's character from his lax persona, to his accent, to his knowledge that older people just accrue through existing. Jud is a person that most people know, and, the fact that he seemed like such a realistic person is a testament to King's ability as a writer. Jud is easily a top 10 SK character for me, I loved reading his backstory and the gradual reveal that he knows more than he lets on about the Burial Grounds.

Lastly, I want to talk about Rachel's character. I thought that she was an allegory for undealt with trauma. I thought that her reaction to death in such a vociferous way was a textbook reaction where you don't know how to deal with something, and so you lash out. This is such a sad portrayal, but, I also found it very raw, and honest. I found Rachel's portrayal to be so well articulated where you can feel her terror that comes from a place in her youth where trauma is not dealt with and metastasizes into something unable to be controlled.

The exhumation of Gage was stomach churning when you think about what is really happening. A father is exhuming his son to rebury him in the hopes that he will come back to life and be who he was. This is heartbreaking. The fact that it obviously doesn't work and Louis is forced to kill his son, again and then is forced to deal with the grief and soul- dampening heartbreak of having been the reason his wife died is tragic. The fact that the cycle continues is horrifying, and it feels like it is the manifestation of evil consuming cancerously the people who are bedeviled by grief.

I thought that above all, the best part of this book is regarding the implications that so many things have. Are the lights that the people see when going to the Burial Grounds the Wendigo? Are they the Deadlights? Is the psychic/ clairvoyance related to the Shine, or is it just the Burial Grounds exhibiting its force on to the people who it can influence?
I think that this is one of those King books that I didn't immediately love, but, if I were to give it a read over, I would likely like it a lot more.

I still prefer books like Salem's Lot and The Shining but, I thought that this was a solid read, and one that I think has a great deal of substance to gain from subsequent re-reads.

Sometimes dead is better.

Content Warnings