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Sunday 30 August 2015

Book Review: Carrie by Stephen King



Pages :  198

Read on : Kindle

Review:  I was recently mocked by a good friend for reading this book (playfully, of course). Stephen King has no shortage of fans globally and a good majority of people begin their reading journey with his works. Carrie being a turning point in his writing career. I do admit, that after hearing so much about Carrie as a popular fictional character in the literary world and watching the really cool trailers and viral prank videos (the cafe one in particular) curiosity got the better of me. 
Pretty much everyone existing on Earth will know what Carrie is all about (unless you're living on another planet) and I will not repeat the mundane. The devices that Stephen King uses to narrate her story is quite clever. Some from people who knew her, victims, towns folk and news stories. Despite being one of the most mentioned books in the 'Horror' genre, It didn't really terrify me due to the lack of details, I personally felt. I'm downloading the movie as we speak and am half expecting the visuals to do all the talking. 
However, what did terrify me was Carrie's overtly religious and insanely cray-cray momma who.... I'm just going to say it..... is completely batshit mental. I'd probably run away if I was Carrie. Perhaps this was the entire trigger in the film that explains Carrie White's budding telekinetic powers. What I don't understand is, there wasn't a whole of scenes depicting her exercising this power. She has to do a mental flex and objects can be manipulated to move as her will. I wanted to see more of that. To a point where her skills did seem borderline terrifying instead of going all out with a surge of power. 
Why was Carrie White mocked at school so miserably? Was it just because of her awkward introvert nature or was it the fact that her mother was mad into religion? I wish there was a little bit more depth to that or the characters around her. When I say depth, I mean I would love to have a closer look at how evil Chris and the girls were, than seeing just a mean prank and the revenge that followed.
May be I have really grown out of this phase and it's quite likely that adolescent me would have been frightened enough. I have read other books by Stephen King and somewhere somehow he does fall short in his storytelling.
I did draw one conclusion that those who do commit heinous crimes actually might come from a background of bullying or ill-treatment or deep misunderstandings that leads to a build up of angst and anger. That's just a thought I had.


Final Rating : 2/5

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