Take a photo of a barcode or cover
This is one of those horror stories that remains a classic across the decades. I thought I’d read it ahead of its fourth remake, which inevitably won’t live up to the book but will be entertaining. It’s a good blend of suspenseful, frightening, and downright sad. Also a wonderful example of villain as opposed to a monster.
However, I dock it of 1 star for two reasons.
Number one. Because of all of the testimonial formatting embedded in the first-person story telling, the climax of the prom is played up heavily but ultimately feels short and not as frightening as you anticipate. By the time we reach the prom, we have a countdown to this incredible disaster that feels short lived. Devastating, yes. But the climax of the book ends up feeling more like the face-off between Carrie and her mother. So the pacing takes almost a stutter-step. It doesn’t derail the rhythm, but does lose some momentum.
Number two. There are books that use racial slurs in a context that is absolutely necessary to the storytelling, such as To Kill a Mockingbird. And there are classics written in a time period where racism was an unacknowledged concept, where slurs are a byproduct. This was neither. There were slurs both for African-American people and Vietnamese people present in the book. The former is entirely inexcusable, as it didn’t further the character who used it in any way and was already inexcusable by the time period in which the book was set/writer was writing in. The second was semi-common for the time, known to be harmful, but was used anyway. Therefore, overall, not acceptable.
However, I dock it of 1 star for two reasons.
Number one. Because of all of the testimonial formatting embedded in the first-person story telling, the climax of the prom is played up heavily but ultimately feels short and not as frightening as you anticipate. By the time we reach the prom, we have a countdown to this incredible disaster that feels short lived. Devastating, yes. But the climax of the book ends up feeling more like the face-off between Carrie and her mother. So the pacing takes almost a stutter-step. It doesn’t derail the rhythm, but does lose some momentum.
Number two. There are books that use racial slurs in a context that is absolutely necessary to the storytelling, such as To Kill a Mockingbird. And there are classics written in a time period where racism was an unacknowledged concept, where slurs are a byproduct. This was neither. There were slurs both for African-American people and Vietnamese people present in the book. The former is entirely inexcusable, as it didn’t further the character who used it in any way and was already inexcusable by the time period in which the book was set/writer was writing in. The second was semi-common for the time, known to be harmful, but was used anyway. Therefore, overall, not acceptable.