Carrie knew she should not use the terrifying power she possessed.
But one night at her senior prom, Carrie was scorned and humiliated just one time too many, and in a fit of uncontrollable fury she turned her clandestine game into a weapon of horror and destruction.
Published 1974.
Read from June 24th - 6th July.
Movie cover edition published by Hodder, 242 pages.
Given rating: four stars.
"But hardly anybody ever finds out that their actions really, actually hurt other people! People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter, you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it"
- Sue Snell.
Carrie, Stephen King's popular first novel that had three movie adaptations, is about a young teenage girl attending what I believe was her last year at high school. She had been viciously bullied by not only her classmates, but a large majority of the school and even by her own overly religious mother. Carrie, however, has a telekinetic power, the gene triggered by her traumatic life. One day, she has her first period in what would be every girls' nightmare - naked, in the shower room. Instead of the girls being sympathetic towards her, they taunt her (which, luckily, gives them a well deserving punishment). This, however, is only the start of Carrie White's story.
I want to start by saying how much I loved this book. It had flaws, and I was reading it in the middle of a reading slump so wasn't enjoying it to the full extent I'm sure I would have done, but overall it was fantastic. I wouldn't say I'm a huge fan of King, despite owning quite a number of his books, but they are horrific and terrifying and everything a horror book should be.
I felt like I knew Carrie White. I wouldn't say I had a traumatic bullying experience as Carrie did, and I certainly never had a mother like Carrie's, but yet I can sympathize with her to the point of almost understanding her. I ( as I have mentioned before) have ASD - Autism Spectrum Disorder - depression and anxiety, and I'm also overweight. If you are similar to me or Carrie, you know none of this would get treated well at all in a place like high school. I could feel Carrie's anger, I could feel her pain, and I have had that image of trapping everyone who had ever intentionally caused be hurt in the school gym and never letting them back out. I'm sure a majority of people have, none of us have ever really wanted to do it (I would hope). Her snap was totally understandable, it's hard to believe King was never a Carrie White himself with how accurate it was.
The novel jumps back and forwards from present to future quite a lot, but unlike a lot of other novels I have read, it is clear what time period we are in. Present is spoken from third person perspective, usually in the form of Carrie, Sue (a person who took part in the taunting shower scene), Chris (an evil bitch, that's putting it nicely), Billy (way worse then Chris), and some teachers around the school, as well as Carrie's mother Margaret. The future is written like a news article, a book extract, or in the form of an interview and can vary from third person to first person. This form of writing can give us a look in to the science behind TK, my favorite part about that being it only affects females.
Now, the flaws of this book are mostly due to my own morals and understanding of the world more then actual flaws in the book. I struggled to understand why her full name was never used and, instead, even her overly religious mother called her Carrie. If that's what she wanted her to be called all along, why didn't she? I'm pretty surprised she wasn't called something incredibly obvious, like Eve. From my small amount of research I have done, the history behind the name Carrie is that it is an Italian or French name meaning a song of joy and also means manly/masculine. I couldn't find any religious ties to the name at all, and for someone like Margaret, I find it all highly unusual. Another flaw of the book I found it had was how she was made beautiful, and that appeared to be the only reason people liked her in the prom and beforehand. But, I'm noticing a woman's appearance is a trend in most male-written books and it's a huge turn off for me personally. In a book, personality really does triumph over looks. And, my last flaw, was how...stereotypical that prom was. I have never been to a prom, and the reasoning for that is because of social anxiety and bullying, yes, but also because I have no interest in it - and King made it seem like this romance and wearing dresses was all a female dream. When, really, I couldn't care less about them. Again, just my own morals and opinions thinking they're flaws more then actual flaws in his writing.
Overall, I was highly impressed with this novel and would recommend it to anyone. I enjoyed it so much that I ended up moving on to another King novel, "Misery". And, yes, I will be delighted to write a review on that as soon as I have finished it, I really want to improve on this kind of thing so please do tell me what are my flaws here - I can't improve as well as I want to if I don't know where my mistakes are. Thank you for reading.
And I'm just going to leave these favourite quotes here:
"Whenever anything happens in America, they have to gold-plate it, like baby shoes. That way you can forget it."
- Sue Snell.
"She was thick through the waist only because sometimes she felt so miserable, empty, bored, that the only way to fill that gaping, whistling hole was to eat and eat and eat"
- Carrie White
- Loz :D
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