I read Carrie by Stephen King for the First Time!

I've never finished a Stephen King novel, I tried reading IT for the longest time but it just sat on my shelf collecting dust. I'm a person that gets overwhelmed with books that are chunky and are more than 400 pages long. I also soft DNF'd Rose Madder because it was quite hard to read especially from the husbands POV. However I decided to read Carrie by Stephen King as I was kindly gifted the book in a facebook group. I'm no stranger to Carrie. I've seen both the Sissy Spacek film and the remake with Chloe Grace Mortez as well as its sequel but I've never delved into the book that inspired the film to be made. There will be spoilers if you haven't seen the movie.

Published in 1974. It was Stephen Kings debut novel. 

Carrie White is unpopular at school and subjected to her mother's religious fanaticism at home but Carrie has a secret. She has the power of telekinesis but a cruel prank turns her gift into a weapon. 

We all know the story. Girl goes to prom, girl gets a bucket of pigs blood dumped on her. Girl gets murderous. It's a well known pop culture horror movie and here I am, reading it for the first time. 

In some way, seeing the movie first helped me visualize the scenes. Although Carrie is described as being a much more plump version than her movie counterpart, reading the opening shower scene and remembering it from the film, really formed in my mind. A scene that sticks with everyone beside the prom scene.  As a person who menstruates, reading this scene, is a nightmare. I would have been mortified if blood started to run down my leg after PE in the shower. So much so that I think most times anyone who had cramps, got an excuse to stay out of PE. 

This book reminds you of how cruel teenagers can be. Even in this day and age but this prank over steps harmless kid fun. Considering the bullies in this book are complete psychopaths. Billy is quite literally one of the worst people in this book and I'm glad he dies. Not only is he the one that goes so far to kill a bunch of pigs to get the blood (red paint would have easily did the same job?) he also goes as far as to tell his girlfriend Chris that he will rape her if she doesn't do as she is told. 

Aside from Carrie herself, the characters I felt sorry for were Sue and Tommy and even Ms Desjardin. They tried. Tommy didn't deserve his fate. Despite going to the prom with Carrie because he was told by Sue to take her, he at least tried to make an effort and saw a different side of of Carrie that nobody took the time to see. If the prank had not gone ahead, I think Tommy and Sue could have made Carrie's life a little bit less shit in school.

I find this story could be seen as an allegory to school shootings. I don't know if this was King's intention but basically don't bully the teenager who's different because they will go on a murderous rampage through the school and town. Her anger towards these people, made her turn back and head into the school to unleash a world of pain and death. Carrie could have made the choice to keep walking home but she chose to inflict her power onto everyone.

Themes include, coming of age through violence, revenge, comformity and atonment for sins (this is shown through Sue's need to help Carrie by getting Tommy to take her to prom as well as writing her book, sheding light on the night Carrie massacred a whole town with her mind and though Mrs White's atoning by trying to kill her daughter because she thinks the sin of blood is though bloodshed)

The book itself is structured with no chapters, I'm not sure if this is all the Carrie books or just this version and the kindle version but I really disliked having no chapters. I also hated the fact that some lines would be broken up with thoughts in brackets. It took away the flow of the sentance. Especially with the news articles and snippets of Sue Snell's book but I didn't mind them as much as it gave you more backstory on what happened during the night, Carrie White killed over 200 people.

In this case, I preferred the 1970's movie starring Sissy Spacek as the titular character Carrie. 

I think for a debut novel, King did quite well but it also reminds me how things were so different back in the 70's. It's a short novel coming in less that 250 pages so it is a quick read. I'm glad I read this novel and got to experience, who many have hail king of horrors, a snippet of what is to come regarding Stephen King's catalogue of horror books.

💭 What Stephen King's books do you recommend?