Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by beaconatnight
Carrie by Stephen King
3.0
While I have to admit that I didn't like this book much for the first 40 pages or so, it gets much better from then on. Call me a wimp if you like, but I enjoyed the book afterwards, because there was then some warmth to contrast with the bleakness and horror.
What I did not like in the beginning was how distantly the story was narrated at that point. Moreover, I thought the scientific articles interpolated in the narrative were kind of dull and didn't add much. A friend of mine told me that, upon reading this first part of the book, he wondered whether King felt unable to put himself in a teenage girl's shoes and therefore, unlike the later parts of the book, did not give us inside into what was going on in her mind. That explanation made a lot of sense to me. Incidentally, this stylistic device of interweaving descriptions of the events with the subjective perspective of its protagonists was used quiteeffectively in later party of the book.
This big scene in the shower room (people who have read the book will know what I mean) certainly did have an effect on me (how could it not). There obviously is a tendency to feel some sort of disturbance or disgust towards bodily excretions, and blood in general. (In fact, this is another one of those topics on which, according to the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, we find very different "common-sensical" stands in different cultures.) But I think for me the scene was more powerful because it so vividly and believably exemplified the sheer evilness to which human beings are possible. Horror that stems from human nature might be even the more frightening.
The book had some characters that I liked. The most interesting character is certainly Carrie herself. She has telekinetic abilities first triggered by very strong emotional outbursts. The ground for these outbursts is laid by her terrible social surroundings of religious fanatism and ideas of guilt and submissiveness, while in school she is that victim of bullying that probably most of us have seen in their own days of school. This becomes particularly painful when, towards the middle of the book, people are genuinely more friendly towards her and she develops hope and opens up. This made the big climax - the catastrophe that is hinted at pretty much from page one - really just so very sad and tragic. Of course I knew that there wouldn't be a happy ending... yet, I so much wanted there to be one.
That being said, I'm not sure if I liked the ending per se. I'm usually all for the over-the-top-ness of 80s action and I liked how the different strands come together.
However, it was very long and to a certain extent a bit too silly. Less might have been a bit more here.
There are some other interesting characters, too. I thought the rough PE teacher, especially after furiously kicking around that one particularly horrible student, was quite interesting and her conversation with the principal was the first scene that actually made me warm up to the book. We also follow a student, Sue Snell, who was involved in the bullying, but who later has feelings of guilt and wants to somewhat make up for that by convincing her boyfriend to invite Carrie to go to prom with him. Finally, there is Chris Hargensen, the popular girl who took particular pride in being the bully and who starts some sort of a vendetta against Carrie when she is punished for her part in the shower room scene.
Rating: 3/5
What I did not like in the beginning was how distantly the story was narrated at that point. Moreover, I thought the scientific articles interpolated in the narrative were kind of dull and didn't add much. A friend of mine told me that, upon reading this first part of the book, he wondered whether King felt unable to put himself in a teenage girl's shoes and therefore, unlike the later parts of the book, did not give us inside into what was going on in her mind. That explanation made a lot of sense to me. Incidentally, this stylistic device of interweaving descriptions of the events with the subjective perspective of its protagonists was used quiteeffectively in later party of the book.
This big scene in the shower room (people who have read the book will know what I mean) certainly did have an effect on me (how could it not). There obviously is a tendency to feel some sort of disturbance or disgust towards bodily excretions, and blood in general. (In fact, this is another one of those topics on which, according to the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, we find very different "common-sensical" stands in different cultures.) But I think for me the scene was more powerful because it so vividly and believably exemplified the sheer evilness to which human beings are possible. Horror that stems from human nature might be even the more frightening.
The book had some characters that I liked. The most interesting character is certainly Carrie herself. She has telekinetic abilities first triggered by very strong emotional outbursts. The ground for these outbursts is laid by her terrible social surroundings of religious fanatism and ideas of guilt and submissiveness, while in school she is that victim of bullying that probably most of us have seen in their own days of school. This becomes particularly painful when, towards the middle of the book, people are genuinely more friendly towards her and she develops hope and opens up. This made the big climax - the catastrophe that is hinted at pretty much from page one - really just so very sad and tragic. Of course I knew that there wouldn't be a happy ending... yet, I so much wanted there to be one.
That being said, I'm not sure if I liked the ending per se. I'm usually all for the over-the-top-ness of 80s action and I liked how the different strands come together.
However, it was very long and to a certain extent a bit too silly. Less might have been a bit more here.
There are some other interesting characters, too. I thought the rough PE teacher, especially after furiously kicking around that one particularly horrible student, was quite interesting and her conversation with the principal was the first scene that actually made me warm up to the book. We also follow a student, Sue Snell, who was involved in the bullying, but who later has feelings of guilt and wants to somewhat make up for that by convincing her boyfriend to invite Carrie to go to prom with him. Finally, there is Chris Hargensen, the popular girl who took particular pride in being the bully and who starts some sort of a vendetta against Carrie when she is punished for her part in the shower room scene.
Rating: 3/5