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Carrie (Paperback)
by Stephen King
| Category:
Horror fiction, Bestsellers, Original books |
| Market price: ¥ 108.00
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¥ 98.00
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Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
This is where the genius started his famous reputation and talent, a fast paced exciting thrill-ride from start to finish. |
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Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Pocket
Pub. in: November, 2002
ISBN: 0671039725
Pages: 272
Measurements: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00933
Other information: ISBN13: 978-0671039721
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- Awards & Credential -
One of the top picks for Stephen King fans. Stephen is the 2003 recipient of The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. |
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- MSL Picks -
As Stephen King's first published novel, released in 1974, no one could have predicted that Carrie would be the beginning of what would become the biggest publishing phenomenon in history. Written over 30 years ago, Stephen King's first novel still has the power to scare readers. Originally written as a short story, King was for no apparent reason disgusted with Carrie and threw it away. And thankfully King's wife Tabitha later found the story and read it in one sitting, and in realizing its genius she almost forced him to publish it. After publishing it, Stephen King was immediately offered a staggering 400,000 dollar movie deal. And of course this put King into the spotlight and as an author to look out for, and it allowed him to write full-time. Carrie the movie developed into one of the most memorable horror movies of the 70's. Carrie is a novel that deals with the troubles of high school, teen anxiety, and a certain bucket of pig blood. King captures the high school years perfectly and anyone who wasn't part of the "in" crowd will emphasize with Carrie. King has said that he didn't particularly care for the character Carrie, King, in fact, makes her especially sympathetic when describing her home life with her nutcase of a mother and her inner thoughts and feelings.
As the novel opens, we meet humble Carrie White, who battles constantly with being an outcast and dealing with her mother's extreme religious beliefs. After an unfortunate hazing accident in the locker's showers, caused by fellow classmates Chris Hargensed and Sue Snell, Carrie begins to hate her classmates and even more her mother, who is the prime example of a way overprotective mother. Carrie then takes a week off and begins to discover powers she barely knew she had, a kind of telekinesis that is passed down through generations and allows the user the all-powerful ability to distort objects to her will just by thinking. During her break, Sue Snell and Chris Hargensen are punished by having to go to a session of detention, and if they refuse to go, the school will withhold their prom tickets. Sue Snell, filling pity for Carrie and deeply sorry for what she's done, agrees to the detention, while the school miscreant Chris Hargensen refuses her detention, and is of course disallowed to the all-important prom. Sue still feeling sorry for Carrie makes her boyfriend Tommy Ross take Carrie to the prom, while Chris makes her boyfriend get a bucket of pig blood and place it above the Prom King and Queen throne, already knowing that Carrie and Tommy will win. Come Prom Night, Carrie is having the time of her life and for the first time in her life she feels accepted, And even more amazing to her, she is crowned Prom Queen. But upon reaching the throne, Chris Hargensen dumps a bucket of pig blood on Carrie. Carrie enraged and feeling betrayed by her classmates, begins to use her powers to burn down the gym, with her classmates trapped inside, and continues to wreak havoc throughout the entire town, burning it like a dry leaf. And the last person Carrie kills is her mother, and she makes her heart go "Slower and slower" until it reaches a "Full stop". That night was from then on known as The Black Prom, and over 600 people died.
Carrie sets the stage for much of what Stephen King experimented with in later novels, but it is also a remarkably solid novel in its own right. Well written and chillingly realistic. King uses an interesting technique in this novel. Carrie book is divided into three parts: Blood Sport, Prom Night, and Wreckage. Blood Sport is an apt title as there are images of blood throughout the book; even Carrie's prom dress is red. There are no chapters, instead King intersperses fictional newspaper and magazine articles, fictional excerpts from books written about Carrie, letters, and interviews with survivors and others who knew Carrie along with the action as it unfolds. King is not a subtle author, he employs lots of foreshadowing throughout the book, and he makes it clear from the beginning that most people will not survive Carrie's wrath.
Although this is the one of the shortest novels Stephen King has written, it is one of his most thoughtful books to date. He shows what its like to be under the constant control of an unwanted mother and how it can affect somebody. He really makes the reader feel for Carrie, at first pitying for her and then in a macabre sort of way, rooting for her as she gives her classmates what they deserve. King is clever in his use of paragraphs, as he infuses (Fake) news articles, essays, book excerpts, and even a phony death certificate to make the story all the more plausible and use up the space between paragraphs. King's writing is fast-paced and relentless, never taking a break and almost forcing the reader to finish the novel in one sitting. He cleverly uses similes and metaphors in his writing that are at times hilarious or phantasmagoric. King really lets the reader believe in Telekinesis too, through his use of essays and examples of telekinetic happenings, and you get a tingle out of it. All in all, Carrie is a fast paced exciting thrill-ride from start to finish.
Target readers:
General readers.
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Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947. After his parents separated when Stephen was a toddler, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of the elderly couple. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and then Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, The Maine Campus. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale (The Glass Floor) to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co. accepted the novel Carrie for publication. On Mother's Day of that year, Stephen learned from his new editor at Doubleday, Bill Thompson, that a major paperback sale would provide him with the means to leave teaching and write full-time.
At the end of the summer of 1973, the Kings moved their growing family to southern Maine because of Stephen's mother's failing health. Renting a summer home on Sebago Lake in North Windham for the winter, Stephen wrote his next-published novel, originally titled Second Coming and then Jerusalem's Lot, before it became 'Salem's Lot, in a small room in the garage. During this period, Stephen's mother died of cancer, at the age of 59.
Carrie was published in the spring of 1974. That same fall, the Kings left Maine for Boulder, Colorado. They lived there for a little less than a year, during which Stephen wrote The Shining, set in Colorado. Returning to Maine in the summer of 1975, the Kings purchased a home in the Lakes Region of western Maine. At that house, Stephen finished writing The Stand, much of which also is set in Boulder. The Dead Zone was also written in Bridgton.
In 1977, the Kings spent three months of a projected year- long stay in England, cut the sojourn short and returned home in mid-December, purchasing a new home in Center Lovell, Maine. After living there one summer, the Kings moved north to Orrington, near Bangor, so that Stephen could teach creative writing at the University of Maine at Orono. The Kings returned to Center Lovell in the spring of 1979. In 1980, the Kings purchased a second home in Bangor, retaining the Center Lovell house as a summer home.
Because their children have become adults, Stephen and Tabitha now spend winters in Florida and the remainder of the year at their Bangor and Center Lovell homes.
He has put some of his college dramatic society experience to use doing cameos in several of the film adaptations of his works as well as a bit part in a George Romero picture, Knightriders. Joe Hill King also appeared in Creepshow, which was released in 1982. Stephen made his directorial debut, as well as writing the screenplay, for the movie Maximum Overdrive (an adaptation of his short story Trucks) in 1985.
Stephen is the 2003 recipient of The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
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From Publisher
A modern classic, Carrie introduced a distinctive new voice in American fiction - Stephen King. The story of misunderstood high school girl Carrie White, her extraordinary telekinetic powers, and her violent rampage of revenge, remains one of the most barrier-breaking and shocking novels of all time.
Make a date with terror and live the nightmare that is... Carrie
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| View all 10 comments |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-05 00:00>
Carrie, Stephen King's first novel, is truly remarkable writing! Most authors don't have quite the stinging debut they hoped for, but this book deffinetly did, even today. The story is about a teenage girl named Carrie White who has a trumatic life, where home isn't safe, school isn't safe, and she isn't safe. She grows up with her psycho catholic mother who often locks her in the closet, and at school is constantly cutdown. cutdown doesn't even describe the humiliation and torture, the hell of carries life is the true horror in this story. So all of a sudden Carrie snaps, things start happening when she gets overwhelemed, and she starts gaining telekentic powers and hurting and killing anyone who stands in her way. I appreciated King's writing and description. He truly is a genius of his craft, and creates a realistic cast of characters. The story is really depressing, but if your like me, you enjoy reading the humiliation and torture, and keep reading in your morbid giddiness. This is my first Stephen King novel I have fully read, and I have never seen the movie, which makes the book much more fun. This is a classic.
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Greg Hughes (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-05 00:00>
I read Carrie when I was in high school. Stephen King captured the essence of teenage life with great accuracy, I thought. At school people talked about the same things the shower girls in the first chapter talked about: parties, who's going out with who, who's dumping who, and a whole lot of other shallow topics that seemed really important at that age. For a first novel, King handled the dialogue well.
Everyone knows the story: a misfit girl finally gets her revenge on a town that rejected her. Being telekinetic is something I'm sure a lot of people would envy, even if they don't envy Carrie's plight. But ultimately the school and the town brought their destruction on themselves. No one can ever predict when someone will snap and wreak havoc. Bullied students who aren't telekinetic have to rely on less subtle means such as pipe bombs and guns. And usually, the taste of revenge is less than sweet. But the results they aim for are quite the same: heartbreak, grief, confusion and despair. Perhaps bullying should be a criminal offense?
I once read somewhere that when King was writing this novel he was so frustrated with it that he threw the manuscript in the bin. It was his wife who salvaged it and forced him to keep working on it. I also read that first novels are almost always autobiographical. Was King ridiculed in his youth? If so, then his international success as a writer is surely the best revenge.
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A reader (MSL quote), England
<2007-02-05 00:00>
I enjoyed this book a lot, I had trouble putting it down. Part of the reason for this was the lack of chapters, but it was mainly because this is such a good book.
Carrie is a character that I empathised with a great deal. She faces daily abuse at home and at school -I was myself bullied at school although thankfully my home environment was supportive. I see her as being a kind and attractive young lady who does not deserve any of the abuse she receives. During the course of the book, she discovers that she has powerful telekinetic abilities. I do not see what her actions near the end of the book as revenge, but as what happens when a tortured individual 'snaps'. She didn't plan what she did, it was merely a reaction to the dispicable way in which she had been treated. No one deserves to be bullied, but it happens throughout society. This book sends out the message that bullying is unacceptable.
This book is excellently written with a good storyline and a strong main character, I would recommend it to anyone, this is truly a 'must read' book.
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Richard Stoehr (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-05 00:00>
Though Carrie is definitely the work of a writer who is still finding his voice, it is a remarkably tight and gripping book, and remains one of my personal favorites of King's work.
The tale told by King and King's wife Tabitha, about how she literally pulled the first pages of the book out of a trash can, read them, and then encouraged King to continue with the story he had started, is somewhat apocryphal now. Nevertheless, upon reading the first few chapters of "Carrie" one can see what grabbed her attention. The reader is immediately involved in the story and irresistably drawn all the way to the end.
The story of Carrie White is that of someone who is essentially ordinary (almost painfully so), but with an extraordinary ability. How these two elements come together is the substance of the book, and there is a lot of substance here, both in terms of storytelling and thematic material. King's talent for strong character and capturing the feel of everyday life is already obvious in this book, and it is put to good use.
Carrie remains one of King's most compelling works, even 30 years after it was written. Thank goodness Mrs. King had the wherewithal to get him to finish it!
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