Book 23- Pet Sematary by Stephen King

[Originally posted November 10, 2019]

It has taken me quite a while to articulate this review, and I’m still not 100% sure how to begin. After a week of putting pen to paper [and scratching out the pen to rewrite], I still come up short with my review for this novel. Let me start by saying it has taken a year of coaxing and talking myself up to be able to pick this book up. Over a year ago, a very kind customer of mine gave me two brown, paper sacks filled with all of her Stephen King books [partially due to my sudden interest and mostly due to her sudden need to Marie Kondo her place]. I immediately tore through The Shining, Carrie, and Misery, but subsequently had weird and unsettling dreams which made me take a break from King. Generally speaking, I like to choose titles based on the time of year [in the winter, I like to settle in with something dense that I can use as an excuse to stay in, and in the summer I opt for lighter, fun fiction that I can breeze through], so this year I decided to follow suit with Halloween and read the scariest book that I could imagine- Pet Sematary. Being an older title, many of my friends and acquaintances were excited for me to join the King Club by reading what is dubbed one of his scariest novels. I, however, had my doubts. As I’m sure has been established on here [many, many times], I am NOT a fan of horror or being scared. I will never understand why people choose to be scared and I’ve determined that it’s a switch in my brain which has been left dusty and unused [and I’m totally okay with that]. Pet Sematary forced me to take a giant leap into the unknown, and allowed me to expand my reading interests into a genre that I had only dappled in previously. I will try my best to concisely summarize the plot [emphasis on the word “try”] and then offer my own critical review of the text. As opposed to some of my other reviews, THERE ARE SPOILERS, so please be warned and skip the rest of this review if you are unfamiliar with the plot and wish to read it yourself.

The story follows the Creed family- Louis, Rachel, and their two children Ellie and Gage- as they move from Chicago to Ludlow, Maine for Louis to work as a doctor on the local college campus. As they begin exploring their new home, they meet their new neighbor, Jud Crandall, who immediately welcomes them and settles the unease that Louis had been feeling. Jud, a lifelong resident of Ludlow, gives them the lay of the land, warning them about the dangers of the main road they live on and pointing out the trailhead behind their property, on which he offers to give them a guided adventure. As promised, after a few days of unpacking and settling into their new house, Jud takes the family on a seemingly innocent trip down to the Pet Sematary- a small burial ground for the local children’s deceased pets. He shows them the space where his own childhood dog, Spot, is buried, and when asked about the deadfall of branches near the back of the sematary, he warns them to stay away. The trip to the sematary leaves the family disgruntled and unsettled- Rachel disapproves of their children’s close encounter with death, and Ellie becomes hysterically frantic that their cat, Church, will die and be put in the sematary. Louis soothes the woes and worries of his family, promising never to take his children back.

Normalcy sets in for the Creed’s, until Louis’s first day on the job when a young man named Victor Pascow is brought to the clinic. Irreparably maimed in a car accident and drawing what seem to be his last breaths, Victor comes to in Louis’s arms, grinning at Louis as he mutters this warning- “It’s not the real cemetary.” Louis, shocked by the young man’s alertness, cannot seem to respond as Victor continues, “The soil of a man’s heart is stonier, Louis… a man grows what he can… and tends to it.” Victor’s whole body dies at once, leaving Louis terrified, clutching the corpse, and grasping for some logical answer to this episode. Later that night after Louis falls asleep, Pascow comes to his bedside and guides a reluctant Louis down to the Pet Sematary. Pointing towards the deadfall behind the sematary, he warns, “Don’t go beyond, no matter how much you feel you feel you need to… the barrier was not made to be broken… Your destruction and the destruction of all you love is very near…” When Louis wakes hours later, he is convinced it was all an unsettling dream until he pulls back the sheets to reveal muddy feet covered in pine needs. The logical part of Louis’s brain takes over, trying to rationalize the insane experience. Soon the dream is all but forgotten, until the fateful day that Church is run over by a semi truck on the main road and killed.

Led by his trusty neighbor Jud, Louis has his first encounter with the Micmac burial ground beyond the deadfall, where he buries Church and is told the history of the tribe. The next day, Church saunters into the garage where Louis is working, smelling of sour earth, with pieces of plastic bag stuck in his whiskers. None too surprised, Louis brings the cat inside and feeds it, repulsed by the blasphemous presence of his daughter’s dead cat. Louis tries to rationalize with himself, thinking that the cat must’ve been stunned and not dead when he was buried. But Church does not seem to be his spry old self, walking in funny patterns and lacking the grace of a real cat, leaving Louis with a shadow of a doubt that he did, in fact, bring the cat back to life. When Ellie sees her old cat, she immediately notices the smell, and the fact that there is something off with Church. The family seems to ignore the glaring differences though, and continue on with their lives as usual while Church continues to exhibit more and more out-of-character behavior.

The plot finally comes to it’s point when their toddler Gage, is run over and killed by a semi on the main road. Distraught and unable to come to terms with his death, Louis sends his wife and daughter to Chicago to stay with his in-laws as he begins to plot his son’s second burial. Knowing what he plans to do, Jud harshly warns Louis to leave Gage in peace and tells the story of another local who brought back his son and was driven to murder/suicide after the fact. Unmoved, Louis continues with his plan and buries Gage at the Micmac burial ground. Gage comes back, possessed with unflinching evil, and murders both Jud Crandall and Rachel before Louis is able to kill him for good. Louis, unhinged by the horrors he has seen and convinced that he “waited too long” with Gage’s reburial, takes Rachel’s corpse up to the Micmac cemetery . “Darling,” it mutters, and then the story ends.

I want to start off by saying, I really liked this book. It scared the bejesus out of me, but it was so worth it. If you’ve read King, you know he likes to drag out the story [much like this particular review I’m writing]. He painfully details the protagonist’s backstory as a dramatic build up to the climax, and this can often lead some readers [myself included] to internally scream, “GET ON WITH IT!” However, with Pet Sematary I feel as if this technique truly lent to the creation of the story and was absolutely essential to the climax of the plot. While the idea of a cemetery in general gives me the creeps, what is even more unsettling is the slow unraveling of Louis’s mind. Whenever he tries to make logical sense of a situation [i.e. Church’s resurrection], he compromises another piece of his rational mind, and the more he does this, the more likely he is to do something rash and unreasonable. Now, I would make the argument that the presence of the Micmac burial ground [and it’s demons, spirits, etc.] are mainly responsible for the undoing of Louis Creed. I enjoy when a supernatural entity is the antagonist [its extra spooky when an unseeable evil occupies any story], and King does a grand job of creating this wicked presence which subtly alters and influences the minds of anyone who has visited the Micmac burial ground. Jud himself admits to wrong-doing by bringing Louis there, claiming there is a draw to the burial ground for all who have visited, and it is presumed that anyone who has been there will fall under the same spell. Talk about creepy!

The one thing I have an issue with is how quickly Gage is resurrected and then killed again. Now, don’t get me wrong, every single word that involved zombie Gage is horrifying and left knots in my stomach- Even now, I shudder as I think of Gage taunting Jud in his own kitchen before going in for the kill. BUT, it seemed to me that after ALL that build up, we should’ve gotten more time with possessed toddler Gage before he gets killed. The other point which had no resolution, and which I did not summarize, is Ellie’s sudden onset of clairvoyance after Gage’s death. As soon as her little brother dies, Ellie begins having horrible dreams about her family and the Pet Sematary. When Louis sends Ellie and Rachel back to Chicago, Ellie goes insane with worry and anxiety, convinced that something horrible is going to happen to Louis [or happen because of Louis] in their absence. In her dreams, Paxcow [aka Victor Pascow] comes to her, warning that Louis is in danger. When they finally get to Chicago, Ellie’s hysteria becomes so uncontrollable that Rachel decides to immediately turn around and go back to Ludlow to check on Louis [which is how she ends up murdered by her dead son]. King, however, does not go back to Ellie at all once Rachel leaves Chicago. This leads the reader to question what Ellie may already know, and whether or not she will end up back in Ludlow with her insane father and re-animated mother. My hope is that Ellie stays with her grandparents and never has to see her parents again- and maybe, hopefully, we get a sequel a la Doctor Sleep?!

All in all, this book was fantastically horrifying in all the right ways. I truly understand why this book is considered one of King’s best and most terrifying novels, and I would say I have to agree. If you’re a fan of a good thriller, and this review hasn’t completely ruined your will to read it, I recommend giving it a try. I’d loan you mine, but the back cover just fell off. If you’ve made it through this review, congratulations! I am currently cross eyed and giving up on any further edits or alterations.

5 out of 5 stars

Book 20- Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

[Originally posted September 22, 2019]

Anyone who knows me, knows that my relationship with horror is nonexistent. I don’t like to be scared, and I don’t understand people *cough Ryan cough* who live for the frights. So when I picked up my first Stephen King novel last year, I was skeptical. Why would I want to scare myself in my free time? Still I picked up The Shining with a [somewhat] open mind, and I was not disappointed [Kubrick’s film, however, is a completely different story... but we can tackle that disgrace at another time]. When I saw that my beloved Obi Wan, Ewan McGregor to lessor nerds, was going to play a grown up Danny Torrance in Doctor Sleep, I knew I had to read the book as soon as possible. Thanks to my local Powell’s, I found a reasonably priced copy and devoured it. So commences my critique of The Shining Part II AKA Doctor Sleep.

The new story finds grown up Danny as an alcoholic- shocking, I know- trying and failing to dampen the shining he still possesses. As Danny works through the program, and consequently comes to terms with his own demons, he becomes aware of another shiner, Abra, who contacts him through his childhood “friend,” Tony. Abra’s shining grows more powerful with her age, more-so than Danny could ever anticipate, and consequently attracts the attention of those who seek the shining for themselves. King beautifully intertwines three separate tales, showing the reader the multi-faceted nature of the shining and, as a result, the way in which Dan must come to understand his own shine to use it for good.

I’m going to start with a blasphemous opinion and work my way through the explanation. I enjoyed this book WAY more than The Shining. Or maybe it’s better to say, the way in which I enjoyed Doctor Sleep was different from how I enjoyed the Shining? I’m still not sure. Generally, I try to write these things as soon as I’ve shut the book, keeping the words and ideas fresh in my head, so give me a break as I try to analyze this doozy. Now, we all know King took strong influences from his own life when writing the character of Jack Torrance [namely his alcoholism], so I think it’s safe to say that Doctor Sleep is a redemption piece for King. Danny’s beginning is bleak, but as he works through the program [and, consequently, his own demons], he is able to heal himself in a way that his father never could. While his father was consumed by the shining and tried to give his son to the demons of the Overlook, Dan utilizes his gift to save the life of a younger girl, who’s shine would be food to the evil True Knot. Because of this, I found myself feeling whole by the time I finished the book. Call me old fashioned, but I hate open-enders, and that was the only qualm I had when I read The Shining. Doctor Sleep was the redemption I needed to see for the Torrance’s.

All in all, this book was phenomenal. Even though there were parts that dragged a big [as is King’s M.O.], I still found it hard to put the book down and finished it in just over a week. If you’re a fane of King, or a fan of The Shining, I cannot recommend this book enough.

Update 11/16/2019: Ryan and I went to see the movie at the Mission Theatre, and let me tell you.. PHENOMENAL. They did a truly amazing job translating the book to film. Now, it wasn’t 100% accurate to the book [they never are], but I have to say I was please non the less. I was skeptical of Ewan McGregor being cast as Danny Torrance, but he did an amazing job. If you haven’t seen it yet, GO!!

5 out of 5 stars