Carrie

Carrie by Stephen King
Doubleday - April 5, 1974
199 pages

Carietta White was never the popular girl. Far from it. She was the girl who got picked on. Since first grade, she's been the victim of attacks from her peers because of her religious beliefs, her outdated clothing, and her bovine appearance. At home, her mother abuses her emotionally and physically. What nobody knows about Carrie, though, is that she is possessed of an extraordinary power, and when people take it too far, they are going to pay.

This novel was the first Stephen King book I have ever read, the first of over fifty in my summer quest to read all of his full-length novels in chronological order. I had high hopes for Carrie, and it somewhat disappointed. It went much slower than I anticipated, and it was hard for me to put it down not because I was so invested in Carrie's life, but because there were few good places to stop in the story. Unlike the next book (which I am currently reading), 'Salem's Lot, there are no real chapters, or chapters-within-chapters, which King later becomes quite fond of, like in The Gunslinger. I finally accepted the obvious: I was going to have to almost always stop right before one of the fictional documents to avoid reading 120 pages at a time. Personally, my lack of interest in the book I don't believe was King's fault. It was just that I knew what was going to happen because of popular culture. If I had no idea that Carrie was going to (spoiler alert?)burn down the school(spoiler end?), the book probably would have been much better.

Grade: B