Carrie by Stephen King
Product details
Web ID: 16836928Great read
I've read this book back twenty two years ago,it was a great read.couldn't put the book down.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Pass
I hardly ever say this but honestly just stick with the movie
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Good introduction to Stephen King
FOUR STARS (+.5 if it were allowed) I was hesitant to pick up another Stephen King book after reading It, a book in which King seemed to delight in unsettling his reader (I almost ripped out a certain six-page sewer scene– HOW did that get past the editors???), but Carrie sparked my interest after I caught it alone on a shelf. Knowing a strange dark world lay within, I picked it up and fell inside. One of my biggest problems with King is he seems to enjoy adding overly grotesque or sexual scenes that not only take me out of his world but also force me to cringe through a passage or page(s) that seem unnecessary. However, Carrie did not feel like a mere shock factor. Carrie is disturbing right off the bat, portraying a young teenage girl who is becoming a woman. She’s bullied intensely, and at home, there’s no break– her crazy, obsessive mother’s favorite punishment is locking Carrie into a closet and telling her to pray. Carrie is a horror novel. As such, it’s disturbing and sometimes disgusting, definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, and King loves to make things over the top. But his characters are layered, and more than anything they’re human. He exposes his characters’ inner thoughts, even the ones that most people hide behind a shiny smile. Take one of the teachers who takes pity on Carrie. The teacher craves gratitude. She does things not for the sake of doing them, not out of the goodness of her heart, but because she likes seeing herself as a savior. She herself sees Carrie as piggish, fat, and ugly. It’s disturbing because it’s familiar. As a whole, people enjoy knowing that they’ve done good, that they’re perfect citizens or friends or siblings. Is it selfish to do something for another when you’re really doing it for yourself? The book is almost all that it claims to be. And yet. I couldn’t give it that perfect five. The book contains excerpts from newspapers, articles, interviews… While interesting, at times they took away from the book. It worked for the most part, but the speculative article/book clippings could at times be boring to read, or repetitive in their message. This book also didn’t have the same suspense or scare that he implements in later books. Carrie has a more subdued tone horror-wise, and the length of the book– which to say, not long at all– makes it hard for Carrie’s descent into madness to be 100% authentic. Instead, I felt like she was always close to the breaking point, like I was waiting for her to snap instead of watching her spiral. And I wasn’t exactly rooting for her– she was depicted in a way that made her easy to hate. It was sad, actually, seeing the person she was and knowing that she could be so much more had her mother and the people had her school not been so terrible. Overall, Carrie is a great introduction to King’s books, a less intense version of his usual style while still maintaining his legendary ability to make a reader want to wash their eyes with bleach out of disgust or horror of what they just read. It’s the type of book you wouldn’t want anyone reading over your shoulder, but it’s also the type of book that everyone should experience.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Welcome to my gateway book
My TBR pile is currently grumbling fairly loudly at me but I couldn’t let the 50th anniversary of Carrie’s introduction to the world pass without a reread. I was twelve years old when I was introduced to Carrie White. A major departure from The Baby-Sitters Club, which I’d been reading prior, this was my gateway book to the Kingdom, and horror in general. Carrie wasn’t the first telekinetic person I’d met. It was Carrie, though, who taught me righteous anger. Our high school experiences were nothing alike, yet I related to Carrie, this hurt, wronged girl railing against injustice. The angry part of preteen me found her scorched-earth approach appealing. There are a few people who knew me when I was a teenager that should be very grateful my telekinesis never kicked in. She appealed to the outsider in me, who spent high school and a significant amount of time afterwards trying to find someone who could understand me. Carrie was the first hero/villain I cheered on as they unleashed he!! on those who had hurt them and the randoms whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Over thirty years after my first read and several rereads later, my love for Carrie - the book and the person - remains as strong as ever. If anything, I appreciate her even more now.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Classic
Stephen King’s Carrie is a true classic. Reading it 50 years after its original publication date has given me an insight that is truly unique. There is so much that I can compare to Carrie, yet at the same time, nothing compares. The standard was set high with this novel, qnd yet, the only person to have raised the bar and set new parameters for the horror genre has been King. This book is spooky and emotion-filled. It is gruesome and horrifying in a way that is sublimely different from the horror books written today.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
A True Classic
I wish more of King's subsequent work had the semi-epistolary structure and style of this gem. There's nothing more I can say about it other than that it's such a well-written, empathetic and inspiring debut, especially considering the era in which it was first published.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Fantastic!
I really enjoyed this one! I am a bit surprised by just how much I liked it and am kicking myself for waiting so long to read this book. I think that I have seen pieces of the movie but have never sat down to watch the whole thing so I wasn’t overly familiar with the story. I have only read a handful of King’s work and I thought it would be interesting to go back and read his debut novel. I have to say that his talent was evident from the beginning. I felt bad for Carrie right from the start. Her home life was absolutely horrible and the way that she was treated at school only made things worse. Carrie lives with her extremely religious mother and is forced to follow a harsh set of rules. After an incident in the high school locker room, Carrie is ready to push back against her mother. Things reach a climax at the high school prom when Carrie is crowned queen. She has recently rediscovered her telekinetic power and she has had enough. By the time the night is over, it will be a night the town will never forget. I thought that Sissy Spacek did a fantastic job with the narration. This isn’t the first time that Ms. Spacek has brought this character to life and I thought that she was the ideal choice to voice this audiobook. I thought that she was able to add just the right amount of emotion and excitement to her reading. I do believe that her performance added to my overall enjoyment of this story. I would not hesitate to recommend this book to others. This is one of King’s shorter works but it packs a big punch. I ended up listening to this book in a single day simply because I didn’t want to put it down. I cannot wait to read more of this author’s work.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Underwhelmed
Review of Carrie by Stephen King: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Carrie is unique, odd, and an outcast. Her peers in school taunt her and her strictly religious mother abuses her. The stress of all combined suddenly triggers something inside her. Powers that she quickly learns to control over time with practice. After being fed up with the lifetime of torment that she has endured, Carrie uses her telekinetic powers to wreak havoc on the town and seek revenge. While this was a perfect pick for a spooky Halloween read, I was disappointed in that it didn’t live up to all the hype. I was expecting gruesome scary horror but all I got was one gory pig scene. If anything, the book made me feel more sad for Carrie the entire way through rather than scared. And although it was a quick read, I did have a hard time with the internal dialogue in parentheses every few paragraphs. It seemed to distract from the flow of the writing. The ending left me with questions that I wasn’t upset about. Typically I need all loose ends tied up and questions answered for my own personal closure but I was okay with how this was left off. It left room for a sequel that maybe we might be lucky enough to see on its 50th anniversary in a few years... just throwing that out there Stephen King... Overall, I felt neutral about this book. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love it. But given that I haven’t seen the entire movie, it was a fun read for this month.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com