Carrie

Rating:
Summary: Finally! A book that tells a great story..Do unto others...
Review: Kings' 1st major hit authored under his own name. A must read for those who enjoy a peak into the supernatural. The movie, Carrie, is in sync with the book. This is a rarity of which I have yet to see realized by any storyteller

Rating:
Summary: Nah, the book is better [than the movie]
Review: Yes, Spacek is cool. However, the novel is even cooler. A definite must read. It chills, and has that fine balance that still leaves plenty to the imagination.

Rating:
Summary: King's First Book, and One of His Best
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: A coming of justice story ...
Review: The first time I read Carrie I thought it smaked of a "first try." After having been in love with "IT" for months I found "Carrie" a bit lacking. But then I read it over and over and over and I found that not only did I sympathize with Carrie, I wanted to be her, help her, recognize her. I could swear I'd seen her walking the halls of my high school, that I had been her standing in the shower, that I had looked through Chris' eyes and threw things.

The cruelty and assurence of being on the right side that King won't let you get away from is what makes this book a perfect documentary on how adolecents treat each other. The terror lies not in the decriptions of gory deaths, of blood and guts but in the fact that everyone went through this, everyone put someone else through this, and people are still going through this. Being beaten down, judged, torn between home and school because neither place is really safe.

Of course you cheer Carrie as she burns the city and destroys her enemies. How else could one externalize what years of taunting relly feel like, what they actually do? Carrie's classmates destroyed whatever they could of Carrie, and so did she. But she could get a hold of a lot more.

No, "Carrie" isn't "IT." "Carrie" is a lean and precise piece of being a teenager, and a reminder of the horrors that King doesn't have to make up ...

Rating:
Summary: Ehh....
Review: I LOVE Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels, but I have to admit that Carrie was pretty dissapointing. It was his first novel, and you can tell by its sloppiness. It hardly seems like the same author. I had to force myself to press on at times and the whole pig farm scene was disgusting. Those kids were truly dispicable, so much so that I was turned off. It's just a VERY mediocre book compared to the likes of Misery, Rose Madder, Pet Sematary, and The Shining. Outdated and overrated.

Rating:
Summary: Dissapointing Debut
Review: **** Much of this was copied and pasted from another review I wrote elsewhere ****

Here’s the book that started it all - King’s beginning
climb to literary fame and library glory. Carrie is a
245 page book, almost a novella instead of a novel,
telling the story of a young adolescent bombarded with
the verbal torture and cruel tactics of fellow peers,
not to mention religious corruption and abuse from her
mother. But instead of being just another teen weighed
down by the miseries of the world, Carrie has a gift,
a unique one that enables her to move objects by using
the power of her mind.

The plot for Carrie is a good one; it’s fascinating,
revenge filled, and satisfies all the old hatred in
any one who’s been victimized in high school. I have
no objection to the story itself, for it is a story
filled with dysfunction, social torture, mental
isolation and torment, all real horrors people face on
a daily basis. It also deals with the fascinating,
rare gift of telekinesis. King really invested big
when he brought up this power in Carrie and the power
of pyrokinesis in Firestarter.

However, a good plot does make a good book. To be
frank, direct, and brutally honest: I found Carrie to
be boring as sin. Not because of the story, no, and
not because of characters, although they weren’t up to
par in every way either, but because of the method it
was told.

King almost constantly interjected into the story with
passages from fiction works such as newspaper
articles, books, and interrogations. These were to
come after the disaster with the prom, when the story
was publicized and Carrie White was made famous. From
the start the reader gathers what eventually happens
and that Carrie herself is dead. The reader even knows
that the real protagonist of the story, Sue Snell,
remains alive, for excerpts from her book, which occur
after and as a result of the incident, are peppered in
the story.

King puts these passages in so often, literally every
second to third page, that I couldn’t stay focused on
reading. This method, while a unique one (and I
applaud him for being gutsy and trying that), had the
side effect of bringing me out of the story often and
remind me that I was reading.

Because of this detached, narrative method of telling
the events, I never came to care much about the
characters of the events, feeling like someone who
gets told a story by a second party after already
knowing what happens and is just enduring it to be
polite.

The pace of book was harmed because of all this. King writes good characters and this was evident in Carrie, I just didn't
care about any of them all that much.

In short, Carrie just doesn’t have much heart. This,
folks, doesn’t make a good book. No matter how famous
the author is now, or that this book brought him into
the limelight, or that DePalma made it into an
incredible movie. It’s rare to hear this, but I
recommend the movie instead.



Rating:
Summary: CREEPY....
Review: i know there's alot of stephen king's fans out there, but i never was, until i read this book... i watched alot of his movies but while reading this book it hit me "this is one heck of a writer"... i mean, from page one till the end, its so well written i thought carrie s' gonna pop at my door step any minute ( joking )... anyways i wud recommend this to anyone who's interested in such creepy stuff, this is a sure creeper... enjoy

Rating:
Summary: A good book but drowned out in some areas
Review: This was the first Stephen King book I read, and while I liked it, it was "Misery" that made me a fan.

Carrie centers on a girl (Carrie White) who is relentlessly picked on in school, a girl who seems to be the butt of every joke. Her mother is overly religious and always punishing her, and only her telekinetic powers can save her.

Carrie is written in two aspects. There's the bit (mostly called "The Shadow Exploded) that talks about events that have already passed, and seems to be analyzing it, while the other is the story itself.

For me, this was where the story went down hill. Since the book begins with us already knowing how it's going to turn out (the main story anyway, not the ending) the only thing we have to worry about is getting there. Yeah, it's horrific and suspenseful, but truly, I felt like some of the fun was taken out of the book because I was already told by the author just how the Prom was going to turn out. In short, the only surprising aspect of the book was its remarkable ending and that saved it from three stars.

Carrie wasn't really a boring read. I could care less about the moments where the events Carrie caused were being analyzed. I wanted to SEE it happening, not "hear" about it. The main story itself was a joy to read, but it's interrupted too much by the scientific analysis.

And the characters were no fun either. Carrie, she was interesting and so was Sue, but that's about it. I think what really took the joy out of the characters was Carrie's overly religious mother. At first you want to believe she's just a psycho, but King really took her far beyond the boundaries of a "believeable" character. She wasn't just a psycho, she was from another world! Carrie's mother seemed to subtract a little from the story for me because she just came off as too high-strung. She was too far beyond my imagination to think of as "believable".

Carrie wasn't a bad book, just not what I expected from someone who is generalized as a master of the genre. Carrie was by no means a scary book. The joy and experience of it was taken out from the very beginning. I would say Stephen King's later works are much more exciting than this.

Rating:
Summary: A Book You Have to Read For Yourself
Review:
This was a book that I read and didn't really enjoy. It was confusing to read and was too gory for me. The book had a good story line but wasn't my type of book. I have read a few other Stephen King novels and have enjoyed them tremendously but this was not one of them. To me it seemed confusing how the story jumped from telling about the past to reading about what people said about it in other books. I can usually read books that jump back and forth but this book made it really difficult. What the people in the book did seemed so cruel that it was hard to read. It just made you almost mad at them. If it would have been written a little differently it might have been fine. I had trouble picking the book up again and finishing reading it but you want to know what happens in the end. In some ways it had suspense but not enough to hold my attention. This book could be considered well written to some people and most likely is but it wasn't written in a way that I consider good. It defiantly had potential and could have been a book I enjoyed. Maybe one day I will read it again and it will be, but at this point I don't think it is. I think this book is for, for one, a strong reader who can understand complicated writing and for two, I recommend it for someone who can take the gore and how mean the people were to Carrie and how Carrie got revenge. I would also recommend people to read it for themselves and make there own judgement because I make it sound like a terrible book but you could enjoy it.


Rating:
Summary: CARRIE (DOUBLEDAY AND COMPANY, INC. /1974)
Review: With the advent of school shootings (e.g. Columbine, the Michael Carneal case here in Kentucky, etc.) and the rash of violence that has escalated among young adults, it seems as if Stephen King's first novel has only grown in relevance over the years. Although billed as a horror story, the horror of "CARRIE" is all too human (even the business about telekinesis is presented as a genetic/physiological phenomenon and not a supernatural one) as the reader is introduced to the title character: a shy , withdrawn sixteen-year-old girl who lives with her mother (a religious maniac Hell-bent on keeping her daughter pure from the "cravings of the flesh" while personifying a wrathful God full of vengenece and judgement instead of a loving God as personified by the mercy of Christ Jesus) and has little to do with anyone at her school where she is ridiculed daily. When a couple of her classmates decide to play the ultimate practical joke on her, Carrie enacts a terrible revenge on the whole town who has no idea about her secret ability whereby she can make things move by the sheer force of her will. The effectiveness of the story works on two different levels: as a compulsive page turner guaranteed to keep you in suspense, and as a sorrowful commentary on the cruelty of human beings who fail to put themsevles in other people's shoes or who channel their grief, jealousy, anger, self-loathing, and/or hatred and misery into making another's life a living hell which in turn brings the persecutor a sense of sick satisfaction. But such evil must be exorcised instead of exercised upon the weaknesses of another, and thus is true Christian love and morality all the more important to be encouraged. If King had given Carrie White a shotgun or a pistol to weild instead of her telekinetic power then the story could have been tailor made for the front page news. And that's the real horror of "CARRIE" in that it hits too close to home as far as teen violence is concerned. HARSH LANGUAGE: about 139 words, VIOLENCE: about 22 scenes, SEXUAL SUGGESTIVENESS: about 13 scenes including a sado-masochistic relationship between Christine Hargensen and her boyfriend Billy Nolan who are the ringleaders behind the prom night joke which pushes Carrie over the edge and into violent retribution.