A review by zakcebulski
Gerald's Game by Stephen King

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


Dude, holy moly what a book. What a book. AS I continue to go through the backlog of Stephen King's work, I have gotten to the point where I have read most of his immensely popular books. I continued through reading the "less" popular books and picked up Gerald's Game in early 2022, however, at the time the story did not click with me and I quickly set it aside for later. One thing led to another and I picked it up again and this time, I finished it, and boy oh boy am I glad that I did.

This book takes place from the point of view of one Jessie Burlingame. Jessie is a woman in her late 30s who is married to a successful lawyer- Gerald. The pair travel to a lake house near Lake Kashwakamak for a romantic getaway. The getaway starts off innocently enough, until Gerald pulls out two pair of handcuffs and arrests Jessie to the bed. Jessie realizes that Gerald is deliberately choosing to believe that her protests against further sexual advances are just part of the game, and he means to rape her. It is at this point wherein Jessie defends herself and kicks Gerald in the stomach and in the testicles- this shock causes Gerald to suffer a massive heart attack which kills him (good, fuck that dude). But, all is not good, as Gerald's dumbass locked Jessie up and kept the keys far out of reach- meaning there is a very real chance that Jessie could starve or die of dehydration. She as well fears being discovered in a half-naked and locked up way- this plants the first seeds of the internalized sexual shame and self-loathing that Jessie harbors.

As Jessie spirals more in to panic, hunger and espeically thirst, she begins to hallucinate a series of voices. These voices act as other characters for a vast majority of the book despite being characters within Jessie's mind. They are- The Goodwife- a version of Jessie that is very submissive and puritanical who actively feeds in to the doubt Jessie feels and tries to thwart her escape attempts. Punkin- a 10 year old version of Jessie. Ruth- a hard talking no bull-shitting voice who was one of Jessie's roommates in college until Jessie severed the relationship after Ruth tried to get Jessie to reveal parts of her past. Finally, there is Nora, who was Jessie's one time psychologist.
I think that King does an expert job in diversifying all of these characters even though they are in essence all versions of Jessie just at different times or on different wavelengths.
The voices are where much of the internal struggle comes from as Jessie battles her inner voices as they try and make her face her inner demons, while others are content with letting Jessie's inner trauma remain repressed.
As the story progresses and as Jessie dives more and more in to her past and her trauma it becomes clear that during a total solar eclipse she was sexually abused by her father. Not only that, but, her fucking garbage ass father gaslit the 10 year old (yep, 10 year old...) in to thinking that she is/ was at fault for this event. This traumatic event gradually changed her from who she was to seeking security in being Gerald's wife- wherein she needed to want for nothing, and she had all she could ever desire.

I loved how King crafted Jessie to fall from a reliable narrator more into a vaguely unreliable narrator role. This makes it even creepier and harder to know for sure what is going on when she awakens to find another person in the room with her. Jessie initially believes that this figure is not there and is only a creation of the shadows falling on the walls from the moonlight. The voices in her head however believe this figure to be dangerous, and real, and one who will harm Jessie should she not escape by the following night.

This sets up one of the most squirm inducing, tense ass scenes that I have read since maybe some things in The Troop or since the hobbling scene in Misery. Jessie is shown to be a very resourceful person when she makes her way through self doubt. She is able to get a hold of a glass of water and make a straw- which was a tense as shit scene about water is that wild??? Jessie reflects back to the day where her father assaulted her and the eclipse occurred, and gets the idea to use glass to aid her escape.
Now, what happens... goddamn man, even writing this I am cringing. Jessie breaks the glass and uses it to slice open her wrist- at first to use the slick blood as a means of lubricant, but, then she fucking degloves partially so, her hand. This helps Jessie to finally escape, but, good fucking god there are some truly horrific images in this escape scene.

Jessie makes it out and with the help of one of Gerald's fellow attorneys Jessie finds out that the law firm is covering up the whole event so as to not lead to scandal. As well, Jessie starts to process her trauma by writing to Ruth- whom she ran away from and buried trauma with way back in college. Jessie finds out that the apparition from that night was real- a serial killer and necrophile called Raymond Joubert. Jessie learns that he had been living around the lake while robbing houses. Jessie takes Joubert's arraignment to be the time to confront all of the abusive men in her life. She goes to the courthouse and confronts the man who she was so scared of and... spits in his face.
Jessie then is able to fall asleep easily.

I thought that this story was fucking great and that is helped on by the fact that Jessie is such a great character. I loved the way that there were two lanes in the story to explore- the first was the physical world and the danger she was in. The other is the trauma that she has harbored but has been unable to escape, where she has no choice but to go back to the beginning (like Randy Meeks says) and face that trauama.

There are some truly terrifying scenes of body horror in this book- obviously the degloving scene, but, the scenes where Gerald's body is torn apart by a starving stray dog? Woof (goddammit). As well, the ending where Joubert imitates Jessie being chained up and recites to her what she said to him- where it is confirmed that he was in the room sent shivers up my spine.

I loved how this book comes off like a very female empowerment read. Where the lead character is a woman who has been beaten down by men in her life for so long, and she gradually starts to take the power back. I am sure that there is a truly inspiring feminist read through of this book. There were some truly triumphant moments in this book- where Jessie gets a drink of water, or, when she unshackles herself- it is fantastic, and I had a smile on my face as she overcame these abhorrent challenges. 

And, man, having just recently finished Needful Things I absolutely adored reading about the references to the characters and the story of that book. I am getting so much more interested in the King Universe that I know exists, and it is just such a fun thing to read about. 

 
 King does it again. Goddamn, what a read. 
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