Rating: 
Summary: Total Eclipse of the Heart
Review: "Dolores Claiborne" reads like one big chapter - well it is (there are no chapters or breaks in the book). Dolores is a 65yr old woman, on trial for murdering her employer Vera Donovan of 40 or so years. Dolores is a woman who holds nothing back. She spills her whole life story, from when she first fell in love in her husband, Joe St George to the fateful day (yesterday) when Vera was found at the bottom of the stairs. We also find out what happened on the day of the total eclipse of the sun almost forty years ago, when her husband Joe dissappeared. Its a brilliant read, and total engrosses the reader. The more the story unfolds the more you love Dolores and even Vera, and despise Joe. Joe is a mean man, he bashes his wife, and makes moves on his 14 (i think) year old daughter, Selena. He also thinks his oldest son, Joe Jnr is a wuss for reading and has little time for him. The youngest, Pete idolises Joe, and Dolores fears he may grow up to be like Joe. Dolores tells all - her love/hate relationship with Vera, hate/hate relationship with Vera and her relationships with her children and the rest of Little Tall Island. I guess the only dissappointing thing is there are really no surprises in the book (maybe one at the end) but its still a great read, purely for the great insight into the character that is Dolores Clairborne. And if you don't like the book, as Dolores would say "frig ya!"
Rating: 
Summary: Unique and daring...only King could write it!
Review: 30 years ago, Dolores Clairborne did an unspeakable thing: she killed her husband. She had her reasons, yes indeed, and the townsfolk always suspected her of doing it...but nothing was proven.Yesterday, the elderly woman under Dolores's care died an accidental death. Now, police think Dolores did it. This is her confessions. Stephen King has written a beautiful, unique, and powerful novel: the confessions of a murderess, trying to prove herself innocent of the crime she is being convicted of by admitting to a past crime. It is the story of a woman who has seen sixty-some years go by, most of them filled with some kind of hardship. It is the story of a woman toughened by life, compassionate yet unflinching in the face of fear. "Dolores Claiborne" by Stephen King is gripping and unforgettable. You've just got to get your hands on it.
Rating:
Summary: Dolores Claiborne
Review: A truely compelling novel about the story of a women who lived a life of both mental and physical abuse and comes out on top. This is the classic story of domestic violence involving the sickness of alcoholism. King manages to describe this sickness so well that the reader feels as though they are there in Dolores' mind. This women struggles to fit the steriotype of a "good wife" and is constantly being abused for it. The detail in the emotional highs and lows of this novel make the reader feel as though they are walking that fine line between sanity and insanity. Honesty I have never read a book that has this much drama and is still realistic. I recommend this read to anyone who is looking for a good lesson on relationships because King offers plenty in this story of a powerful woman defeating those who wish to push her down. Definatly 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Unlike any other King novel
Review: Dolores Claiborne is unlike any of his other novels to me. If you're expecting a horror story, take that out of your mind. You won't find any supernatural things going on in this book.
DC is told in first person by Dolores herself as she sits at the county police station as she's being questioned in the death of her employer, Vera. Vera's death looks like a murder to the police, with Dolores as their main suspect. Not to mention the fact that Dolores is well known around town for supposedly killing her late husband. In this book Dolores tells us her side of both stories in a way that is very page-turning and suspenseful. You wouldn't think that one confession could fill up nearly 400 pages, but this one does and there's not really one boring moment.
What propels this story is the anticipation to see what is going to happen next. That, and the VIVID story that Dolores weaves with such detail and humor. I really enjoyed the book and now I'm on to Gerald's Game, which is kind of a sister to this book. Even if you're not a big King fan, I'm sure any mystery reader will enjoy this book!
Rating:
Summary: A Compelling Look Into What Drives a Person To Kill.......
Review: Dolores Claiborne(1993). Stephen King's 22nd Novel, Published Simultaneously With Gerald's Game. Between the Late 80's and Early 90's, Stephen King was hard at work with the novels "Gerald's Game" and "Dolores Claiborne". He originally concieved them to be issued in a Two-Volume Set Entitled "In The Path Of The Eclipse" because of the similarities. Both main characters experience Total Solar Eclipses, and for one moment in both stories, are bonded. Both novels portray plotlines about Child Abuse, And Learning to live with the Horrors of your Past. Both Novels stand as some of Stephen King's most ambitious, but "Dolores Claiborne" is more so. A startling confession of the human mind, and the reasons that drive people to murder, present themselves in their full glory in "Dolores Claiborne"'s unending narrative(It has NO chapters or paragraphs), and it is a compelling read from start to finish. In Usual Fashion, "Gerald's Game" and "Dolores Claiborne" claimed the #1 Spot each, and both stand as some of Stephen King's deepest novels, dealing with the demons inside of us and from the past. "Dolores Claiborne" has been made into a successful and emotional movie, Starring Cathy Bates(Star of "Misery"). Read On To Find Out Why "Dolores Claiborne" stands as one of King's strongest novels. Plot- After the mysterious death of Vera Donavon, Longtime Housekeeper Dolores Claiborne is accused of pushing her down the stairs. As she goes in for a Police Interragation, Dolores decides to relate all of the misdeeds in her past. She tells the police that she never killed Vera Donavon, but she did murder her husband over 30 years ago. What follows is her compelling testimony of her troubled past, and what drove her to kill her husband, and most importantly, Why she did. We also learn of her deep friendship with Vera Donavan, and their troubled yet very loving relationship. Dolores relates everything about her past, and in her testimony, irrecovable sins are revealed, relationships are made and torn, and the horrors of the past are revealed in "Dolores Claiborne". Writing- Stephen King's writing in "Dolores Claiborne" is undoubtedly the most original I've ever read. Why, you ask? Mainly because the entire story is a narrative from a Police Interragation, and we read through the records taken at the interrogation. The reader learns everything of her past through Dolores Claiborne's "Yankee" drawl and slurred speech. While it takes a little while to get used to it, by the end of the novel, the unfinished words, the slurred words, and the made-up words seem completely natural, and the narrative flows quicker than most books I've read for THAT reason. Since there are NO chapters and NO Paragraph, the reader is almost FORCED to read "Dolores Claiborne" in one sitting, and I must say, that's not Hard At All! I found myself reading for about 4-5 hours straight just to finish "Dolores Claiborne", and you will undoubtedly do so to. In years to come, "Dolores Claiborne" will be recognized as one of King's best, as it doesn't focus on "outward" horror(Such as Evil Clowns, Possessed Dogs, or Evil Cars), but instead, focuses on the horror(or evil) inside of us all. Overall, I found "Dolores Claiborne" to be an excellent triumph for Stephen King, as his unstopped and troublesome narrative is sure to influence other such books with it's magnificence. Although "Dolores Claiborne" isn't scary, it fully makes up for it with its Mystery, so any "Constant Reader" of Stephen King is sure not to be disappointed. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! FANS OF STEPHEN KING AND MYSTERIES WILL HIGHLY ENJOY "DOLORES CLAIBORNE". DRAMATIC AND UNFLINCHING, "DOLORES CLAIBORNE" WOULD MOST LIKELY BE ENJOYED BY MOST ANY READERS ALSO! Also Recommended- Gerald's Game-Stephen King
Phantoms-Dean Koontz
Mr.X-Peter Straub Thanks For Reading!
Rating:
Summary: Master of horror becomes a master, period
Review: Dolores Claiborne, a strong woman in a small town, finds herself in a pickle. The entire Maine town believes that she killed her husband during an eclipse, years ago. And now she's accused of killing her longtime employer, a bitch of a woman who ran her ragged as long as she lived. This book is Claiborne's first-person narrative, as she gives the mother of all statements to the interrogating police officer.
This book marks many milestones for King, and is very different from everything he'd written before (although a harbinger of things to come). The extended first-person narrative is similar to From a Buick 8, and the strong female protagonist is also a first. But more than those obvious firsts, this novel is amazingly complex, with not one, but two complete storylines supported by the narrative. The two deaths occurred in different times and for different reasons, but the context of Dolores's life gives them an interface that is sometimes subtle, and always compelling. This is the book that first displays the level of storytelling that lifts King up above his horror genre roots.
King has never been afraid to ask his readers to bear with him as he tries something new, and I would think that hardcore fans would enjoy this book for the spot-on voice, the compelling story, and the typical Kingsian flair for language and description. But this book is not for King fans alone. Indeed, the relative lack of blood and guts might make this more appealing for a reader of serious literate fiction, and less appealing for the horror book junkie.
My first thought after reading this book was that King was making a concerted effort to be a feminist, or at least to give the idea of a strong female protagonist it's due. Rose Madder, Gerald's Game, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon are all later stabs at the same theme, and I think that of the four, this is undoubtedly the best effort (not to take anything away from the other three).
One final note: this book is heavily couched in the heavy-handed colloquialisms of Dolores, and if you're going to be turned off by the constant colorful phrases (think Mark Twain), then this might not be the book for you. But if you can accept the language as Dolores speaks to us, get ready to enjoy a story that will make you really care for this strong, proud woman of Maine.
Rating:
Summary: Best domestic violence fiction
Review: Leave it to Stephen King to write what I consider one the best fictionalized accounts of domestic violence on the market.
Sometimes there are unusual twists in real life just as in Delores Claiborne, such as the desperate measures taken by Dolores to protect her child from incest and the most unusual string of events that led to an investigation of how Delore's abusive husband died.
Delores Claiborne is an excellent read because 1. it has a good plot, believable and realistic, 2. Good Writing (KIng of course), 3.There are several conflicts going on within the story, societal, mother-daughter, internal conflict within Delores and a moral conflict for the reader; and the third reason this is a good choice for a domestic violence read is 4. the dynamics are there, a layer beneath the surface at times.
Rating:
Summary: "An accident is sometimes an unhappy woman's best friend."
Review: The conventional street wisdom is that the best movies adapted from Stephen King novels are the ones that do not mention they are adapted from Stephen King novels. Of course, if you look at the films "Stand By Me," "The Shawshank Redemption," and "Dolores Claiborne" as well as read the King stories they were based on, you would find that they are atypical works in that they do not have the supernatural elements we have expected from King ever since he published "Carrie." Consequently I am mulling over the idea that in some distant time there could be an emphasis on King's "non-horror" fiction that would study him as an example of a regional author and make an argument that even if he was the best selling author on the face of the planet at one time, that he was actually a decent written (i.e., the Charles Dickens of the 20th century). "Dolores Claiborne" was written between October 1989-February 1992 (future generations of King scholars will have fun studying the overlap of his novels to create some tapestry of analytical insight) and the title character is a foul tempered, foul mouthed, old Yankee who has been living all her life on Little Tall Island off the coast of Maine. The novel is told in the first person by the 65-year-old Dolores, who has just been arrested for the murder of Vera Donovan, the even older richer lady who had been her longtime employer and who suddenly died in Dolores' care under extremely suspicious circumstances. In explaining what happened, Dolores not only tells her life story but also defends herself from the charge that she murdered Vera Donovan by explaining her involvement in the death of her husband Joe thirty years earlier on the day of the total eclipse. It takes a while to get used to the way Dolores talks. Those who have seen Kathy Bates' captivating performance in the film are in no way prepared for how thick King lays on the accent and colloquialisms with Dolores as narrator. But after a while you get used to the missing letters or idiosyncratic spellings employed by Dolores and focus on the story. However, the murder mystery is just the hook for this novel, where the bigger mystery is the true nature of the relationship between Dolores and Vera. It was strange enough that Dolores came to work for Vera, but even stranger that she stayed for decades as the old lady began her descent into senility. Meanwhile, Dolores has been putting up with her drunken, abusive husband Joe. But while she puts up with anything Joe heaps upon her, she is more protective of their daughter Selena. Ultimately, "Dolores Claiborne" is a character study and when the nature of the bond that was forged between Dolores and Vera is revealed, it is true to the characters and their situations. There is horror in this novel, but it comes from real human beings. This is not to suggest that King is making some sort of belated attempt to acknowledge real horror in the real world because those things have always been in his novels; they just get overshadowed by telekinetics, vampires, haunted hotels and the like. But this time there is nothing in the way and the bare boned approach serves both King and his characters well.
Rating:
Summary: a battered wife's revenge
Review: This is a great book, and the film is just as good, in a different way. This is one wife's struggle with domestic abuse at the hands of a drunken, insulting, violent husband. It leads to this desperate woman's disturbing scheme of retribution and murder. Powerfully chilling. In the book, Stephen King tells Delores' story from her own point-of-view, her own regional Maine dialect, her own voice. This gives the story an added realism that is most effective. David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"
Rating:
Summary: Good Stuff.
Review: This isn't the normal SK freakshow kind of book. It's a real story about the rough life of a hardworking mother. I liked it, new is good, although he kind of spent 2 pgs. too long on one topic. Altogether it would be worth your money. Dolores is one heck of a woman. =D
|
