‘True sorrow is as rare as true love…’
I can’t remember for certain but I’m fairly sure that Carrie was the first Stephen King book I ever read (it’s just a coincidence that it was also his first published novel). What’s definitely true is that one of my earliest literary memories is finding the book on my auntie’s bookshelf and seeing the cover image of a dark-haired girl with blood dripping down her face and being both terrified and fascinated. That was almost thirty years ago and I still find myself feeling the same every time I return to Stephen King…
Carrie White is bullied for her fundamentalist Christian upbringing and total lack of social skills. When the onset of her menstrual cycle inspires a particularly nasty spate of bullying, the incident catalyses a series of events that will eventually end in tragedy.
Part epistolary novella and part teenage diary, Carrie remains King’s most effective depiction of young women. While Carrie herself is beautifully and horrifically rendered, the characters of Chris Hargensen and particularly Sue Snell are also authentic and utterly compelling. Everyone grew up with a Chris Hargensen and everyone grew up with a Sue Snell. You don’t have to have gone to high school in America 40 years ago to identify with these characters. Carrie herself is the classic tragic anti-hero, desperately sad, desperately lonely, but also spiteful and vindictive. As with Brian De Palma’s film version, however, it is Carrie’s mother who remains the most captivating character. King has always been adept at portraying the fine line between evangelicism and madness and that all started here, as did his obsession with telekinesis, a topic that he would return to time and time again.
Carrie is short and nasty but it isn’t trashy and it remains one of King’s most beloved novels for a reason. It’s remarkably assured for a debut novel (one that only exists because King’s wife, Tabitha, fished an early draft out of the trash) and its depiction of teenage alienation and cruelty will resonate as long as there are teenagers still around to read it. Quite simply, one of the all-time great debut horror novels.