Carrie - Stephen King

Stephen King's first novel, published in 1974, was the breakthrough which led him to become America's most influential and prolific writer of modern horror. Love him or hate him, there's no denying King's colossal impact on the genre. Reading Carrie was like taking a nostalgic trip back to the nineties when his books dominated public libraries. The go-to-man for horror as a teenager, I was more familiar with film adaptations of his books and short stories than the writing itself. Since Carrie was his first book, I decided to go easy with my judgement, but it turned out a lot stronger than I was expecting. Inevitably there are going to be problems when a man steps into the shoes of teenage girls, such as regular references to female anatomy (do we really need to know that her ample breasts are jiggling beneath her blouse like 'a dirty old man's dream'?) but on the whole it was competently done.

The tale, like many of King's, is set in his home state of Maine, and the presumably fictitious small town called Chamberlain. Carrie White lives with her overzealous religious nut of a mother and is the butt of ridicule at her local high school. After a shower hazing incident concerning tampons and her first period, Carrie's tormentors are given detention and the threat of exclusion from the prom. With another vicious prank lined up for prom night, none of them can anticipate the bloody revenge Carrie will unleash with her powers of telekinesis. This is a classic coming of age tale which, although beginning to show its age, manages to convincingly portray the trauma of puberty, victimisation and adolescent cruelty. It is written in an epistolary manner, made up of journal extracts, letters, interviews, and a shifting point of view which makes for a compelling, if fragmentary, first novel.

Rating: 3/5