Product Description

Carrie White is no ordinary girl. Carrie White has the gift of telekinesis. To be invited to the Prom by Tommy Ross is a dream come true, and a step towards social acceptance by her high school peers. But events take a macabre turn on that horrifying and endless night.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13022 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
‘A writer of excellence…King is one of the most fertile storytellers of the modern novel’ (Sunday Times )

‘One of the great storytellers of our time’ (Guardian )

About the Author
Stephen King has written some 40 books and novellas, including CARRIE, THE STAND and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (from the collection DIFFERENT SEASONS), BAG OF BONES, ON WRITING and most recently CELL. He wrote several novels under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, including BLAZE (June 2007). He won America’s prestigious National Book Award. He lives with his wife, novelist Tabitha King, in Maine, USA.

Customer Reviews

Carrie
Interestingly enough, Stephen King is a writer who is known for his position on short stories (or novelas as he likes to put it) - often refusing its release as a standalone story if it stands at less than 300 odd pages. This release of Carrie, King's first novel, sits comfortably at just over 200 pages, with medium sized font, and is a rather small paperbook copy which would easily fit into your jeans pocket.

The story consists of a school girl named Carietta White; bullied and broken, not only by her fellow classmen, but also by her over-zealous mother who is ruthless and cruel in her extremety to praise The Lord. So when the school "prince" asks her to the prom, it's a dream come true, and is what she portrays as her chance at finally fitting in - much to the displeasure of her mother.

As always, King includes his supernatural elements and ideas to a superb degree, combining reality with fantasy and myth which seemlessly integrate to create something only Stephen King manages to pull off. Carrie is not just your usual high school teenager, blissful in ignorance of the world's dealings and trouble, King embodies her personality with the power of telekenisis--a power which somehow allows her to control things around her, and create devastating sets of circumstances which literally come raining down.

The story is told through four different vantage points, one is the narrator telling the true account of Carrie, and the pit-stops leading up to the crunch of prom night. The second point of view is that of fellow class member, Susan Snell, who portrays the events from the future in her own autobiography as it were. Newspaper articles, letters, interviews and a published book about the strange occurances are the fourth vantage point--seemlessly mixing together the stories to create a whole.

King's writing is always to a high standard - never one to stand back from describing harrowing scenes in explicit detail, and can be at times a little disturbing. It's not without reason, however, it just accomodates the story as it needs to be told. My only gripe with the book would be that it's a tad short, but it opened up a whole collection of much more accomplished King novels to follow, and it's always interesting to see a writers roots, and here King's famed style flourishes raw and engaging.

Beware the evil that lurks in the heart of little girls...
[possible spoilers ahead, though they are but vague]

Apparently, Tabitha King rescued the first draft for this from a bin and had to semi-force the young Stevie King, who thought it was rubbish, to pick it up again.

What can I say? Thank you, Tabitha. Has Stephen listened to that niggling evil voice at the back of every writer's mind, no matter how ingenious, we would never have had this book - which would have been a shame, as it is an absolute masterpiece.

Quite how Stephen King knew exactly what it feels like to be a psychologically tortured teenage girl is beyond me, the point is that he does, and does a superb job of telling the world. The book is indeed chilling, but for most of the book the chills are provided by the sheer potential for evil of human being vs. weaker human being.

The horrors at the end are horrific, but to a point - since this is just a book and we may respond to books as irrationally and emotionally as we please, I cannot claim to have been horrified by what happened to Carrie's torturers.

In any case, a real, human, spell-binding tale about the dark that lurks in the hearts of little girls, and one of the very few books in the world to have made me stay up until dawn to finish them in one sitting.

Stephen King's Carrie
Carrie is the first book written by Stephen King and age means nothing in the quality of this book. Over ruled by her religous mother Carrie is a bullied school girl and the book portrays her coming to terms with her life as well as the "gift" she has obtained. The devil spawn to her mother, ol' praying carrie to her peers but being asked to the prom by a popular is her dream come true. But the night will take a sinister turn for the events and for the kids attending that prom revenge is best served cold...