Carrie [Hardcover]

Stephen King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1990

An unpopular teenage girl whose mother is a religious fanatic is tormented and teased to the breaking point by her more popular schoolmates and uses her hidden telekinetic powers to inflict a terrifying revenge.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Why read Carrie? Stephen King himself has said that he finds his early work "raw," and Brian De Palma's movie was so successful that we feel like we have read the novel even if we never have. The simple answer is that this is a very scary story, one that works as well--if not better--on the page as on the screen. Carrie White, menaced by bullies at school and her religious nut of a mother at home, gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers, powers that will eventually be turned on her tormentors. King has a way of getting under the skin of his readers by creating an utterly believable world that throbs with menace before finally exploding. He builds the tension in this early work by piecing together extracts from newspaper reports, journals, and scientific papers, as well as more traditional first- and third-person narrative in order to reveal what lurks beneath the surface of Chamberlain, Maine.

News item from the Westover (ME) weekly Enterprise, August 19, 1966: "Rain of Stones Reported: It was reliably reported by several persons that a rain of stones fell from a clear blue sky on Carlin Street in the town of Chamberlain on August 17th."

Although the supernatural pyrotechnics are handled with King's customary aplomb, it is the carefully drawn portrait of the little horrors of small towns, high schools, and adolescent sexuality that give this novel its power, and assures its place in the King canon. --Simon Leake --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Publishers Weekly Eerie and haunting --sheer terror!

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 199 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (May 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385086954
• ISBN-13: 978-0385086950
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.8 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (458 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #232,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent are the Dark Tower novels, Cell, From a Buick 8, Everything's Eventual, Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and Bag of Bones. His acclaimed nonfiction book, On Writing, was also a bestseller. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is where it all began, April 9, 2001

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Carrie (Mass Market Paperback)

As with virtually everything Stephen King has written, this is enjoyable reading. It is also a quick-read for anyone who is intimidated by the length of some of the author's later works. I think the basic premise of this story appeals to many people because Carrie is, in many ways, the ultimate underdog, a girl terrorized by an insanely religious mother, victimized and persecuted by her peers, and alienated from the world around her. Everyone in life has been a victim or a bully, and I think the story of Carrie White does impart an important lesson to the folks out there who are treating someone they know the way that Carrie's classmates treated her. For those of us more sympathetic to Carrie's plight--the high school "outcasts," the "poor," the unpopular, the nerds, etc.--the story really matters here. Many of us daydream about the revenge we will exact from those kids who made fun of us all those years ago, and Carrie White shows us that revenge is not all it is cracked up to be. Carrie's "triumph" costs many innocent people their lives, and it doesn't really do a whole lot of good for Carrie herself.

You don't need me to tell you why you should read or re-read this book. This is Stephen King. By this point in time, unless you are just coming of age, you have already read this book if you are one of King's legions of fans or even if you were ever curious about this man's phenomenal success. Even more of you have probably seen the movie. While the movie was pretty faithful to the book, not even the magic of cinema can convey the true weight and atmosphere of this (or any other) book. Carrie is also King's first published novel. This is very important to would-be writers--clearly, King was still learning his craft when he wrote this novel, and thus the process of reading it provides any potential writer with a great learning experience. The format here is significantly different from King's more mature work. The story is told through several "voices," including a third-person account from a "survivor," extracts from research articles and newspaper items based on the events, as well as a more traditional author's voice. Thus, we get several perspectives on the characters and events. The story is not as fluid as it might be because we switch from one viewpoint to another as the tale unfolds. While I much prefer the style of King's later works, especially in terms of getting inside a character, King still infuses Carrie's world with realism and believability, proving that he can create masterful atmosphere and mood with any number of literary tools.

23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Carrie Is So Very....Different, November 12, 2005

By 

K. Fontenot "Prairie Cajun Lives!" (Louisiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Carrie (Mass Market Paperback)

I've seen plenty of the films that have been based on Stephen King's many novels, but this is only the first book that I've actually read by him. Much like the film that is based upon it, this book isn't so much a tale of horror, but more a coming-of-age tale. In it, we see young Carrie White, a total reject and loser by the standards of her peers, struggle with becoming a woman and realizing the strength of her newfound powers.

Carrie is hated by the kids at her school, primarily because of her crazy and religiously twisted mother. Poor Carrie had "outcast" painted on her from her birth, which her mother saw as punishment for having sexual relations with her now deceased husband. Picked on constantly, Carrie begins to test her "flex" power that seems to have greatly increased in power since getting her first period. Things come to a head at the school prom, but that's all I'm going to say, since this story is so well known.

Called "gory and horrifying" and "sheer terror" by reviewers on the back of the book, I didn't find any of that in here. In fact, I saw this more as a tale about a young girl who is so tired of being teased and attacked for being different that she seeks revenge. Of course, she has a rather unique and violent way of getting revenge, but I think that every outsider growing up wished that they had some sort of power that could protect them from the other kids who were popular, bullies or just plain mean.

Of course, Sue Snell is another character that I'm sure we've all been at some time in our life. She picked on Carrie just like the others, but knew deep inside that she was wrong. She also knew that if she stood against the majority, she'd be ostracized exactly like Carrie.

In short, this is a really good book. It's very fast moving and reads rather easily. The constant switching between thoughts, settings, and characters did become rather annoying at times, but overall this is a good story. It isn't that scary. In fact, it's more a reflection of society than anything.

Recommended. It won't be my last King novel.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a spectical of a novel!, September 9, 2000

By 

"niccuinn" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Carrie (Mass Market Paperback)

'Carrie', Stephen King's first novel, is truly remarkable writing! Most authors don't have quite the stinging debut they hoped for, but this book deffinetly did, even today. The story is about a teenage girl named Carrie White who has a trumatic life, where home isn't safe, school isn't safe, and she isn't safe. She grows up with her psycho catholic mother who often locks her in the closet, and at school is constantly cutdown. cutdown doesn't even describe the humiliation and torture, the hell of carries life is the true horror in this story. So all of a sudden Carrie snaps, things start happening when she gets overwhelemed, and she starts gaining telekentic powers and hurting and killing anyone who stands in her way. I appreciated King's writing and description. He truly is a genius of his craft, and creates a realistic cast of characters. The story is really depressing, but if your like me, you enjoy reading the humiliation and torture, and keep reading in your morbid giddiness. This is my first Stephen King novel I have fully read, and I have never seen the movie, which makes the book much more fun. This is a classic.