Survivor [Hardcover]

Tabitha King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1997

The consequences of a car accident in her youth come back to haunt photographer Kissy Mellors in the form of a policeman who pursues her and whom she eventually marries, in a nearly fatal decision. 30,000 first printing. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Departing from her usual literary territory of Nodd's Ridge, King (The Book of Reuben) moves onto a Maine campus to pit a strong yet vulnerable woman against her own demons as she struggles to extricate herself from a poisonous marriage. Talented photographer Kristin "Kissy" Mellors, 21, is poised to escape her hometown of Peltry, where she is finishing college, when a tragic accident freezes her in her tracks. Spotting two college girls in her headlights one night, Kissy slams on the breaks only to watch helplessly as the car behind her plows on and mows down the girls, killing one and leaving the other severely brain damaged. Traumatized, Kissy is compelled to photograph the comatose girl over and over. She finds herself inextricably bound to three men as well: Junior Clootie, a local hockey star who was the lover of the girl who died; James Houston, a wealthy premed student who was the drunk driver responsible for the accident; and Mike Burke, the first officer on the scene. Pregnant, Kissy marries Clootie (although Houston could be the father); but when his boozing and womanizing escalate into abusive behavior, she bails out, falling into a marriage with Burke. Rising from cop to assistant DA, the alcoholic Burke never loses his infatuation for Kissy, but theirs is a brutal, lifeless marriage. In a tough and gritty conclusion involving a breathtaking chase, Kissy starts making the right decisions after years of wrong choices, confronting Burke and regaining her own soul. King has created a compelling heroine in Kissy. Faltering yet determined to be brave, she captivates the reader just as a speeding car captivates the driver who desperately wants to get it under control.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this compelling psychological drama, we are drawn into the world of Kissy Mellors. She is the driver who stopped in time to avoid killing two young women?but the drunk who passed her did not. One woman dies, and the other goes into a coma that lasts for years. Kissy's life is changed forever by this event and by the relationships she forms because of it?with the comatose victim and her family, with the dead girl's boyfriend (a hockey player Kissy later marries), with the investigating officer, even with the drunk driver. Kissy is free-spirited, foul-mouthed, and talented and understands little of her own motivations. King gives us a much greater understanding of the minds and emotions of the men who love Kissy; we almost sympathize with the man who obsesses about her to the point of violence. This is as good as anything King has done previously and belongs in most fiction collections.
-?Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; First Edition edition (February 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525942416
• ISBN-13: 978-0525942412
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,179,940 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thursday's child, third daughter of six, third child of eight.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ELEGANT AND COMPELLING, April 18, 1998

By 

D. F. Norris "dfnorris" (Napa, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Survivor (Paperback)

This is not a book for readers who want a quick plot and fast action. Rather, this is a book to savor and experience. It is a character study more than a tightly wrapped story. The author is clever by grabbing the reader in the beginning of the book with a horrible accident and its aftermath. In my case, once the book got my attention, even as it began to meander into the psyches of its characters, I was hooked. The characters are at once compelling and totally infuriating, especially Kissy, the female lead. There were times when I thought "You go girl!" and times when I wanted to reach into the book and slap her for her thick-headedness. But no matter how I felt about any of the characters, I was emotionally drawn into the story, which is always a satisfying experience when reading. It was easy to become totally lost in the book - I would often be reading into the wee hours of the morning. This book may not be for everyone, but for me it was one of the best books I have read in quite a while. I actually slowed my reading down towards the end, because I just wasn't quite ready to let go. Again, don't just read this book - experience it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than her husband, October 15, 2005

By 

Rhonda Strotman (Arizona) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Survivor (Paperback)

I picked this book up for a dollar and only bought it because I knew Stephen King's wife wrote it. I had been reading his novels from the beginning of his career. So I didn't hold out a lot of hope for her book. BOY!! Was I wrong!! This is one of the best books I have ever read, period. I found myself actually caring about the characters as if they were real. It has been quite sometime since I could feel that emotionally attached to a fictional being. I felt Kissy's pain, ups and downs, and I really wanted her marriage to work as much as she did. I highly recommend this book to anyone who.... well, anyone, period.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fearfully and wonderfully made, October 8, 2005

By 

L. Argiri (Durham, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Survivor (Hardcover)

Fiction about the results of postmodern family fragmentation usually focuses on the failures, not the survivors, perhaps because the failures may come across as sympathetic-while the survivors probably don't. What survivors may win from their chaotic experiences is a brittle, uneven, unkind strength. Tabitha King's young protagonist, Kristin "Kissy" Mellors, brings that kind of strength out of the chaos of her youth. We learn that Kissy was raised by feckless, undependable/uncaring parents and enjoyed no stability until she landed at Sowerwine University. Her college is really her first home.

At twenty-one or so, Kissy is a talented photographer with some issues. She doesn't like men, but she does like sleeping with them; unfortunately, she isn't very good at actually avoiding bad men, and she's not all that consistent with contraception, which has made for some trouble in her life and will make for some more. She seems to live with the constant low terror that a sensitive young person would feel, lacking all real backup and knowing that one false move may undo everything she's put together for herself, but not sure what kind of move is a false one. In the midst of senior-year stress and the aftermath of witnessing a tragic car accident, Kissy meets rising hockey star Junior Clootie. The need for intimacy and connection is what Kissy and Junior share. In a reversal of the usual sexual scenario, he's the one who admits his need. Sexual harmony (and hot sex scenes) follow.

Unfortunately, a serious mistake by Junior forever undermines Kissy's shaky faith in him, after which follow a breakup, a reunion, a contraceptive failure, a marriage...and then things really go downhill. In excruciating psychologically accurate detail, the reader gets to see Kissy grind Junior slowly and painfully to little bits. Furthermore, while so doing, Kissy also grinds herself slowly and painfully to little bits. Junior is no more immature than most men of twenty or twenty-one and kinder, more patient, and more perceptive than the rank and file of humanity; he's an innocent in the wrong place at the wrong time, namely in the path of Kissy's destructive rage. The cycle is continued in the storm-torn, tossed-from-pillar-to-post childhood of their daughter Dynah.

Tabitha King achieves the same feat that Tanith Lee managed with Rachaela, the protagonist of her Blood Opera series: creating an unsympathetic character who manages to command readers' interest and...well...sympathy. Kissy, who seems to benefit from Junior's generous support even after divorcing him, is mean and venial and chronically unable to cut any other human a millimeter of slack, and yet it is no stretch to pity her at the book's desolate ending.

Every instant of this character's experience is rendered with believability that leaves a reader thinking: "Yes, people act like that. Yes, they suffer like that. Yes, they're usually unable to stop doing the things that make them suffer like that. This happens all the time, everywhere."

I love Stephen King's books, buy every one of them as soon as it comes out, and read it until I either finish it or have a headache, in which case I finish it the next night. But Tabitha King is a better novelist than her man Stephen. He writes about the symbolic language into which we translate our fears. The devices of the horror genre are more-malleable, more-endurable ways to think about loss, dead ends, failure, humiliation, helplessness, hunger, and other true vectors of human pain. Tabitha King writes directly about what we have to fear.