Needful Things

Needful Things by Stephen King
Viking - October 1991
690 pages

Leland Gaunt opens up a new shop in Castle Rock called Needful Things. Anyone who enters his store finds the object of his or her lifelong dreams and desires: a prized baseball card, a healing amulet. In addition to a token payment, Gaunt requests that each person perform a little "deed", usually a seemingly-innocent prank played on someone else from town. These practical jokes cascade out of control and soon the entire town is doing battle with itself. Only Sheriff Alan Pangborn suspects that Gaunt is behind the population's increasingly violent behavior.

(Minor spoilers ahead)

Unlike The Tommyknockers, which I still can't believe is only 558 pages, this book is worth its 690. Although it's filled with the usual King puffery of long tangents and characters that don't mean anything, it was still all rather entertaining.

One thing that I wish had been played on more was in the end, where the town turns against each other completely and all of the objects turn into something useless, like Brian Rusk's Sandy Koufax card turning into a useless rookie and Deputy Clutterbuck's fishing pole turning into a bamboo rod. Actually, those are the only two examples I can think of, which is probably why I'm saying it could have been done more.

Apart from that, it was all good fun. I particularly like the ending and hope that King sets a future work up in Paradise Falls, Iowa. That's all I'm going to say.

Grade: A-