Carrie by Stephen King (Book Review)

Carrie 
By Stephen King
Published by Anchor, 2008
Ebook Price: $7.99 

Even living in the small town of Chamberlain, Maine in 1979 doesn't stop 16 year old going on 17 Carrie White from suffering the equivalent of cyberbullying. Even though she's in high school, kids write offensive graffiti at their elementary and middle schools insulting and making fun of her. She is picked on by everyone not just at her school but by just random kids she passes on the street. She can't escape the endless persecution and it's been going on ever since she was a small child. A lot of it has to do with her nutjob fundamentalist Christian mom who believes that Carrie's very existence is a sin. She has never allowed her to play with other kids and is abusive, assaulting her and frequently locking her in a closet without access to food, water, or a bathroom.

As the book begins, Carrie is so clueless that when she has her first period in the girls shower room at school and begins to bleed she panics and doesn't even know what is happening to her. She thinks she is dying! The other girls laugh at her, insult her, and throw tampons at her! Only one of the girls, Sue Snell, begins to doubt what she is doing and questions her own morality. She, along with her boyfriend, Tommy,  resolve to help bring Carrie into the social network of the school. To do something nice for her for probably the first time in Carrie's life.

This might all sound like an afterschool special drama, but there is a mysterious x factor. Carrie has a telekinetic ability to move objects with her mind. She also seems to have some telepathic powers. As the book, progresses, her powers manifest stronger and stronger. She also does a fair bit of practice to see exactly what she can do. Meanwhile the leader of the bullies at her school, Christine Hargensen, is preparing an awful prom night surprise for Carrie.

I had been meaning to read all of Stephen King's books for some time and now seemed a good time to start. And I wanted to read them in order of publication. I will be skipping books I have already read like Salem's Lot and The Shining. Next up after this is Rage.

I was quite surprised by the lack of gore and violence in this book. All of that is really concentrated in the end Prom Night sequence. There's really not a lot going on in the book except for that. It's a character study more than anything else. Even in the Prom Night scenes, King is restrained, I guess stemming from the fact that he wasn't really confident in what kind of writer he wanted to be and hadn't really found his voice.

The book was good, if a little slow. What's funny is that reading it, I started thinking what if Carrie White had existed in the Marvel or DC universe? With her telekinesis, she could have become a superhero! Maybe if her mom hadn't been such a loon, Carrie could have read some X-Men comics back in the 1960s or 70s and gotten a better vision of what her power was. Or if she had some read some good scifi!

Another thing I thought about was that back in 1974 when this book was published, the parts where Carrie unleashes her powers on her classmates was probably a lot more shocking than it is now in 2019. Mass school shootings seem to occur almost monthly in the US now so we've almost become USED to horrible school violence.

Who would have predicted from this first book that Stephen King would have become one of the bestselling authors of my lifetime? There's really nothing in this first book that makes him stand out from the crowd. It's really a generic mainstream title if you get down to it. The characterization is really strong, which to me is a foreshadowing of something he would become a master at.

My Grade: C