Needful Things

Rating:
Summary: Needful Things-Stephen King
Review: While its not one of the classic King novels (IT, The Stand, The Shining, Misery, etc.), Needful Things is truly an original tale. What makes Stephen King such an important writer in modern literature is his ability to tap into that small town mentality and balance it with the supernatural. Like The Stand, Needful Things contains a cast of epic proportions, and at times the pranks and the pranksters are forgotten or confused with others. But this book still gets five stars for the realistic darkness of human nature. In the Needful Things shop, the small towners conveniently find items that play a significant role in their lives and find theyll do anything to get them; paying a small price and at first harmles tricks that turn deadly. an excellent book.

Rating:
Summary: King doing what King does best
Review: In my humble opinion, there are two types of stories King does better than anything else -- the quiet, small, personal stories (like "The Body" and "The Shawshank Redemption") and the huge, sprawling, multicharacter epics (like "It" and "The Stand"). "Needful Things," King's farewell to the mythical town of Castle Rock, fits squarely among this second category and is just as good as any previous entrant.

Picking up unresolved characters from a wealth of his other stories (ranging from "The Body" to "The Dark Half" and many more), King weaves a great tale of a small town where emotions run high and grudges don't fade. Enter Leland Gaunt, proprietor of a new shop in town, "Needful Things." Whatever it is you want the most, Gaunt has it -- and for a very fair price. Or so it would seem.

Gaunt somehow knows the history of this town, the old rivalries, the quiet hatreds and the dark secrets, and he uses it to play the various characters against each other, turning the town from a powder keg into a ticking time bomb.

This book has all the King trademarks -- the omniscient devil-figure (Gaunt), the flawed but ultimately noble hero (Sheriff Alan Pangborn), well-realized children and dozens of fleshed out characters that bounce off each other and interact as realistically as anyone you've ever met. At once both dark and hopeful, it's a great read and worth picking up for any King fan.

Rating:
Summary: The fourth King book I've read
Review: This is only the fourth Stephen King book that I have read and I must admit.. it was my favorite. I have read Eye of the Dragon (too fairy taleish for me), IT (good but I saw the movie first which took a lot away from it I feel), Pet Semetary (enjoyed it a lot) and then Needful Things. My sister-in-law is an incredible Stephen King fan. She has all of his books on softcover and she started me out with Pet Semetary which I enjoyed. But somehow when I read Needful Things I got more into the characters and could see a hidden plot that may not be evident right away. You can take it to another level and start to realize that we end up doing just this.. we sometimes end up putting too much emphasis on personal things rather then family and friends (which most find out later when it just might be too late).
I'm only 22, not the all knowing by any means, and I read this book when I was 19. Still after a few years have passed, the characters are fresh in my mind. I feel that only a well written novel can do just that.
If you have some time I suggest this novel for so many reasons.
1) It may not have the guts and gore like some of King's other works but there is a fear that is evident whenever the shop keeper is mentioned, especially his eyes.
2) Around this time of year we tend to focus too much on material aspects in our lives... This book helps an individual to step back and realize.. Are all these items really that important?
3) It's just plain interesting, a great way to spend some time up in a small town in Maine 8-)
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

P.S. I welcome suggestions as well for any Stephen King reads. I'm still a newbie and would enjoy another persons perspective other then my sister-in-law. (...)

Rating:
Summary: Horrifically delicious tricks
Review: (...)

This book is macabre, horrific, maniacal, exhilarating...

You gotta read this. It's incredible. Make me heart flutter so many times. What writing. So great. Amazing climax. Just read it!

Rating:
Summary: The bad guy isn't believable
Review: This book is more about the scariness of human nature than the scariness of things external to us, and this makes it a great book. You think again and again about what your own response would be to the kind of temptation that the characters in this book are presented with, and you probably find yourself worrying more than a little.

My big problem with this book is that the bad guy, Leland Gaunt, is not believable. What exactly are his motives? In the first part of the book we are led to believe that he is just a mischief-maker, and this I could accept. But then it turns out that his powers are incredible and that his motives are much more malign, and this is where I can't accept things.

Let's face it, this guy is so powerful that he could start WW III without even working up a sweat. So what's he doing setting up shop in a small New England town and messing with the heads of the local yokels? It doesn't make sense, and this spoils what would otherwise have been a really great book.

Rating:
Summary: The Devil Made Them Do It!
Review: With his no-nonsense brand of legerdemain, King introduces the reader to a townful of quarky individuals with deep dark needs wedged not too deeply within each of their psyche. When villian Leland Gaunt opens his shop, "Needful Things", he teases each of Castle Rock's good neighbors' desires to the surface by waving under their respective noses just the right object symbolic of some unfulfilled emotion. He doesn't ask for much in return---a paultry amount of money and the performance of a little prank played on a specified yet unsuspecting neighbor. In a little over a week, the town is duking it out with Gaunt rubbing his hands in anticipation and Sheriff Pangborn blinking in disbelief.
From the start the reader knows that Gaunt embodies evil and his intentions are not to please but to achieve Castle Rock's swift destruction. However, I don't think the genius of this tale lies within its plot, but rather in the way King makes you salivate over each citizen's downfall while probing within to determine which 'Needful Thing' Leland Gaunt would use to entice and destroy the actual reader. His simple style deceives us into believing that we have "already heard this one" and then as we feel his well-crafted trap clench one leg, he scares the living daylights out of us as we realize the monster we fear the most is growling within our closest closet.
I listened to an unabridged audiobook version of this book on a long car trip and found King's kinky prose fun and focusable. Hence, I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a classic story of the battle between good and evil peppered generously with a good sense of humor.

Rating:
Summary: As Great Suspense As Ever!
Review: Once again, a bone-chilling, charmingly hideous piece of action from the one and only King of horror fiction. "Needful Thing" is the sixth book by him I've read, and my admiration for Stephen King only increases. This is not as good as "The Stand" or "Pet Sematary", but it's still one of the best suspense novels, horror if you will, that I've read so far in my life.

Rating:
Summary: READS LIKE A BAD SOAP OPERA. NOT A WORTHY KING PRODUCT!!
Review: Well, let's just say this is not one of Stephen King's greatest hits!! I certainly like the premise but I think a Novella would have been enough compared to this overly wordy behemoth. I am a Stephen King fan from the first release of "Carrie"...a book I read and reread so much I had to buy a second copy! "Needful Things" would be a great Television Series..sort of in the manner of "Friday, the Thirteenth." Many other presentations from King are much much better. If you are a Stephen King fan, you must read this story, just to finish "The Castle Rock" series of titles. But again, this is not top-notch King writing from the king of horror.

Rating:
Summary: Formidable and Terrifying ,yet Interesting...
Review: I wrote a draft of this composition 4 years ago, and in a way, despite my initial rejection, "Needful Things" has opened my mind. Many times, ideas that are unfamiliar to me, at first, create a very strong resistance and pain within me. In the end, I come at peace with myself when I realize they're true, and there's nothing I could or should do to change them. It's exactly getting out of my old beliefs and growing up. Yes, it is hard, but as it is was said - " the future always born in pain".

This serious and somber novel takes a good look inside the human nature, explores it thoroughly, and comes up with severe consequences.

After I'd read the book I realized it poisoned my soul .I didn't think that could happen because of a book, but it did. The horrifying things King had written about, the wickedness and horror influenced me consciously and unconsciously during the reading process.
It is important to me to let you know how I felt back then, because it was bizarre, unusual, and after all, fascinating.

Ignoring the supernatural in the novel, you're left with a lesson in decision-making when one is not utterly rational, the natural state of most of us. In here, as in "The Stand" everyone has to put himself in the place of the characters, decide what he would have done, which option he would have chosen and finally - take a stand.

This book stressed the fact that everyone has good and bad inside of him. Yes, it's connected to the desires, interests and needs we all share, but there's more to it. Inside every woman and man there is a silent struggle, between the two mentioned, from time to time.
It doesn't really ever end. There are intermissions, it could vanish for a long time, but its bases are there. This is the true nature of things as king see them.

King extends, speak of sheer evil. He speaks of taking truly wicked actions in order to achieve this that you want, to let go of any limits and concentrate on the things you've justified and decided to do. The frightening conclusion of them all is that anyone can get down and dirty, and King adds, that once evil has regulated your soul once, there is no way back. You have crossed the lines. There is a thin red line that once you've passed it the road back is almost impossible.
As usual in a King's book, he's referring to nothing short but a murder. After killing one man, willingly and intentionally, the barrier breaks. According to King, in that point, some would completely freak out and lose the good they did have before. They are now capable of doing anything you'd imagine.

The really interesting part is that sometime there is still good inside A man after doing the unthinkable. This side of him burdens him immensely, trying to pull him back to being rational. This is the barrier of sanity; it can be said that after crossing the lines for the first time, the man loses the very thing that stops him from damaging him and his surroundings. He becomes indifferent to it, and thinks only of himself - his interests and needs.

To be precise, in the book I read of so many people who were willing to do horrible deeds, only to satisfy their desires - the object of their affection.
It was horrifying to read about the demonical activity of the devil incarnate in the novel, that let hell break loose, and was responsible for everything. The thought that one person can do all that...It is believable...
And the way that people had changed in the face of the object they always craved for...Reading it, you have to witness all the filth and ugliness they had kept inside, then transformed it to brutal and gruesome acts. King calls it "Selling your soul". The idea that a person can lose control of his soul is unequaled in his books.

The sides story that stunned me completely was Brad Denfort's.
He is characterized as a peace and calm figure, of the ones that never vend anger on anyone, completely non violent, that suddenly, gets up one day, and in attack of sheer uncontrollable wrath bursts at the seams taking down a few others not to mention himself (and not without a reason).

This is a terror imposing kind of story, because you instantly reckon - "This could happen to me too !". You understand what he'd gone through, and why he did what he did, and that's the scariest of them all. Yet, you should remember King aims to cause this reaction, and he is successful...

In here ,we get to the bottom of it all. I found the "I want to scare the living daylight out of you" style very bad for me, though learned here a few formidable lessons. This is a real poisonous glass that harms...
In "The Stand" it was different. There weren't terrible murders and human outbreaks like in here, certainly not like in this form (I mention it because I'd read it prior to NF).

The satanic "Needful Things" is a monstrous, legendary horror, that some could relate to it as, 'at its best', but not me. I would avoid such writings in the future to come.

Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: I was surprised this would be a good book , since his work starting from ten years ago has been a downward spiral . I would have rated this 5 stars if Stephen had taken the time to really describe Gaunt's true form . Other than that , it is worth reading . My favorite books from Stephen King are 'Salem's Lot , The Shining , and It . Check them out if you have not already !