Just like Carrie, I…

Can remember their faces when the joke was on me… it was ALWAYS on me. I can still hear their laughter, along with the lack of empathy or appreciation of my humanity. I was nothing but a joke to them. So I can remember a time where I said less and expressed close to nothing.

I had to revisit those traumatic memories in order to appreciate Carrie as a character. Before I did that, I complained to those around me how lazily written I felt she was. The girl says close to nothing, she appears so plain; it’s as if King put no thought into her as he wrote her. But then I got to the end of the book.

Her inner dialogues that I feel King thrives most with; I was able to truly connect with this character. She heard their laughs on a loop, their deep-cutting words on repeat, and the looks on their faces every time she was the butt of their joke. I understood why she was written to be so quiet and non expressive. Carrie was me at that age.

I’ve researched a lot about mass shootings for my 2nd novel “This House Is Broken Part 2:
An Anti-Religious Cult Sequel” and I couldn’t help but compare this violent ending to a mass shooting. Carrie was tired of being a joke, tired of being harmed, and tired of not having her humanity respected. She didn’t only commit mass murder with her telekinesis… a lingering supernatural feeling took over the survivors. Everybody felt her pain and their shame.

Though I could never bring myself to kill my past bullies or countless innocents in the process, I relate 100 percent to wanting everybody to understand how they make me feel. This may be my most emotionally invested book review.

I wish Carrie’s mother was in the novel a bit more. I loved the outside perspectives on the prom massacre. They came in the form of news articles, book excerpts, and police reports. It was a nice touch. I wish King didn’t describe every bleeding thing, it feels like dialogue copouts to me. At times, he’s irrationally racist in describing things @moralityinhorror (you mentioned this about a recent read of yours)

But he is a master storyteller. No one can strip him of his greatness.

3.5/5