Carrie - My first Stephen King

Right.
How to describe this book? ....'odd' just doesn't do it justice.

A girl, Carrie, who is constantly tormented by her peers and basically the whole town, gets her revenge. Telekinesis is her one claim to coolness, but her fanatical mother calls her the devil's child because of it. A few incidents happen one after another and Carrie's TK (telekinetic, telekinesis, telewhatever...) abilities come back from hiding and enable the following tragedy.

The book switches (somewhat noticeably, so you shouldn't get lost) from story line to excerpts from books/newspapers about the story of Carrie and her revenge. The book is somewhat vulgar, but seeing as this is Stephen King here, this should surprise no one. Sue Snell (God forbid anyone actually passes down the name of 'snell' to their children) is a fellow angst ridden teenager at Carrie's high school, but feels sorry for her and convinces her boyfriend (who is also mildly upset at people's treatment of Carrie) to take Carrie to the prom. Meanwhile, in the 'dark side' of town, a snotty cheerleader is planning to dump pig's blood from the rafters onto the prom King and Queen. She also tries to ensure that Carrie will be the one getting covered in the aforementioned blood bath.

We can easily see these two coincidences lining up to create the big 'you dunnit know beetch!' scenario at the end when Carrie goes crazy and basically kills everyone. Carrie's mom is a real psycho. Religious mania taken to a whole new 'lock me into a psych ward or I'll kill you...' level. Not good. But technically if my mom made me wear six (basically) layers of clothing everyday and called me devil spawn when she wasn't locking me into a closet to repent for my sins, I would kill her later too. Hey, honesty is the best policy. Unless, of course, you plan on setting fire to your home town. You might want to keep *that* one to yourself.

So Carrie and whats-his-face go to prom together, and Carrie has some semi-big-showdown with her mummie over making her own red dress. Oh the horror. Red. *sighs* Anywho...they do in fact get voted as prom King and Queen (by one vote) and the evil cheer girl is outside w/her boyfriend waiting to pull the string that will consequently end in their untimely demise. Blah blah blah, Carrie and (Ted?) have the blood all over them, the guy gets knocked unconscious when the bucket hits him over the head. Carrie trips over herself but runs outside and cries, then decides to kill them all. Nothing disturbing there.

Carrie, now covered in rotten piggy blood, zombie-walks the streets after setting fire to the school and locking all her classmates inside. She makes all the fire hydrants lose their water (read: unscrews the lid and lets water shoot everywhere), and then takes down the power lines. After causing a little chaos there she goes home to finish of mom. Mom, likewise, was waiting to kill sweet little Carrie -wonder why? After getting stabbed in the shoulder by her mother, Carrie uses her fab new superpower to stop the batty old thing's heart. She then basically drags herself away and kills the cheerleader who caused the whole thing, I almost smiled at that one because she was really annoying, then dies after talking to Sue. Well, 'mind-talking' anyway. *mutters* Stupid TK people, they don't even have to talk to do anything. They could just sit there all day and do nothing! Lucky....

Aside from the vulgarity and eventual carnage, the book was pretty 'to the point'. I kind of expected more cruel/personal killing scenes for the high school thing, but I guess setting the whole thing on fire works too. The little article/book excerpts were interesting, and gave the book a 'non-fiction' feel, but at times I had to double check where they ended and the story began.

ENDING POINTS:
+ Carrie is likable, and you really *want* to sympathize with her
+ You also find yourself liking Sue and whats-his-face (Ted???) because they try to help
+ You might (hopefully will) smile when you see the cheerleader and her bf die...by then you will probably hate her too
- Excerpts try to make this seem real, which can get annoying (Think 'Blair Witch Project', "Wait, that wasn't real!?!? WHY???!?!? They lied to me! NOOOOooooooo...")
- The mom is pretty crazy, you wonder why CPS was never called
- You see the carnage coming from chapters away, but it does take a *long* time to get there, the book does a good job with suspense though
+/- Its not really that *scary*...just creepy and 'what?' feeling