Carrie by Stephen King: a review

Carrie is one of the most infamous horror stories ever written by Stephen King. Its story arc is used over and over again in soap operas, primetime TV, and movies (similar to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol). Carrie is a nobody in High School, in fact she’s worse than a nobody, she’s weird and comes from a weird family. Carrie’s mother is a crazed religious zealot who believes that her own daughter was a curse from God because she engaged in marital sex, who won’t let her daughter make friends, and doesn’t even explain breasts and menstruation to her daughter. This last issue is where the story starts to take place, sixteen-year-old Carrie, being teased in the gym shower as she starts her first period. Strange things begin happening around Carrie whenever she is frustrated, belittled or teased until the climax near the end of the book.

I honestly never felt the need to read this book. I hadn’t even seen the movie, but it is a plot used so often in TV Halloween specials and Soap Opera prom stories (I still remember NBC’s Passions and how amazing it was) so I never cared to read the story until my book club decided to read it. I am so glad I did, I loved the fanatical character of the mom, and how throughout the mainly linear plotline of Carrie’s Prom sections of newspapers and books from after the event are inserted into the storyline. Even though I knew how it was going to end, I really wanted Carrie to turn her life around. I didn’t want the sappy ending where she’s just accepted and gets a boyfriend, the cookie-cutter ending. What I wanted was for Carrie to say “eff you” to the kids at school, smack her crazy mother in the face (with a hammer), and just go start her own life in the woods or something. Alas, that obviously couldn’t happen, but even knowing how it was going to end, I still really enjoyed the book.