• Author: Stephen King
• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton / Hachette UK
• Publishing year: 1974 (2024 Hodder 50th Anniversary edition)
• Pages: 245
• Cover: Alasdair Oliver
• ISBN: 978-1399731294

https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/stephen-king-3/carrie/9781444764352/

Review:

Hell hath no fury

When asked what book have you read the most in your life… my answer will be ‘Carrie’ by Stephen King. I actually lost count but I think this was the sixth time (or was it seventh?) I read it. And every single time I just know I will love it and will finish it knowing in a few years I will pick it up again and read it again. Last year, in 2024, Carrie celebrated her 50th anniversary (well the book at least). To celebrate that milestone Hodder & Stoughton (Hachette UK) published a new beautiful edition. There was another reason I read it again and that is thanks to a few wonderful people from the book club that decided to read it and I couldn’t resist and joined in…

Chamberlain, Maine, 1979! Carrie White is an outcast in school. She’s different. Her mother, Margaret White, is a religious fanatic who seem to carry all the weight of everyone else’s sins on her back and she doesn’t want Carrie to be part of that world, a sinful world. But Carrie just wants to fit in as much as possible, she’s just very misunderstood. But she doesn’t. Her clothing is not trendy, her hair is slick and she’s just not hip. And at the age of sixteen she has her first period, just after gym class in the showers. Only Carrie doesn’t understand what’s happening and she thinks she’s bleeding to death. This to much hilarity of her classmates who throw sanitary pads and tampons at her. It’s not until the teacher Miss Desjardin intervenes that they finally stop torturing the distressed girl.

Carrie White has a secret, something that had been lying in wait inside of her but that has now come bursting out, slowly. She’s a telekinetic. Carrie can move things with her mind. Only Margaret has an idea of her ability but she thinks it’s a gift from the devil, witchcraft.

Sue Snell, one of the girls from Carrie’s class, feels guilty for what she did to Carrie. She’s the only one of the group that assaulted her in the showers. Because she feels guilty she asks her boyfriend Tommy Ross to ask Carrie to the prom, to redeem herself and to offer Carrie a way to fit in, to show she belongs. Tommy does what Sue asks and Carrie accepts. But others have other plans on prom night with Carrie. And those plans will result in a dreadful and macabre night. Carrie will no longer take any insult from no one, not anymore!

This was Stephen King’s breakthrough novel, his very first published book. And to think it started out as a short story he started writing after reading an article about telekinesis and puberty, to think he actually threw it away unfinished and were it not for his wife, Tabitha King, who picked it out of the trash and told him to finish it! So Stephen King did and he rewrote it until it became a novel. He added articles and excerpts from books (fictitious) to add more background and, which would become very typical writing for Stephen, hints to future events in the story to tickle his readers’ sense to know more. I believe, based on the Goodreads reviews I read recently, that some readers didn’t like the added articles and book excerpts (the documentary style of the novel). I get that, but in my experience those add more background and insight to the story, especially the feeling of guilt by the survivors and the reason why a girl would go on a rampage in the town where she grew up.

On the surface of this novel is a story of a bullied girl who is driven to the furthest and makes her bullies pay for their actions. But deep within it’s all about a girl being misunderstood, raised by a mother who keeps her away from the world and smothers her with religion and punishment. Carrie is just a teenage girl who is looking for her place in the world but is being held back by everyone around her: her classmates, her mother, everyone in Chamberlain. They see a girl who dresses funny, who lives with a mother who’s estranged from everyone and everything and they don’t see what’s inside Carrie. So when you drive a misunderstood powerful person to the brink of the edge, she will retaliate/rebel in some way. Carrie does it in the most gruesome and destructive way possible.

I am glad I reread it, fifty-one years after it was first published and thirty-three years after I first read it.

Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale) wrote a new introduction to this anniversary edition in which she expresses her love for Carrie, the novel and the girl in the novel!

Other versions of the book:

Also in Dutch several covers were used:

https://www.vbkbelgie.be/products/carrie-1

The cover was taken from the Brian De Palma movie adaptation which I already wrote a review for:

Stephen King Movie Marathon: Carrie (1976)

Of course Brian De Palma isn’t the only one to adapt Carrie into a movie. There’s a sequel called Carrie 2: The Rage (pretty decent movie), a remake in 2002 (that was supposed to become a tv-series but it ended with this adaptation, which I haven’t seen yet) and the 2014 remake with Chloe Grace-Moritz and Julianne Moore (in my opinion a missed opportunity as it was a copy of De Palma’s version, although the teaser trailer gave a look at Carrie’s wrath and that was never included in the finished product, not even as a deleted scene on the bluray and dvd). But my hopes are high because Mike Flanagan is currently filming a miniseries based on the novel. And my hopes are pretty high as his track record is pretty good (The Haunting of Hill House, The House of Usher, Midnight Mass and Doctor Sleep to name a few!). So let us cross our fingers he stays true to the novel. Did you know that Carrie was adapted into a musical as well, in the eighties?