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By her own account
she's an old Yankee bitch, Dolores
Claiborne: foul temper, foul mouth, foul
life. Folks on Little Tall Island have been
waiting thirty years to find out just what
happened on the eerie dark day her husband,
Joe, died - the day of the total eclipse.
The police want to know what happened
yesterday, when rich, bedridden Vera
Donovan, the island's grande dame sans merci
and Dolores's longtime employer, died
suddenly in her care. With no choice but to
talk, Dolores Claiborne talks up a storm.
"Everything I did, I did for love," she
says, and this spellbinding novel is at once
her confession and her defense. Given a
voice as compelling as any in contemporary
fiction, her story centers on a
disintegrating marriage's molten core, where
the mind's unblinking eye becomes huge with
hate and a woman's heart turns murderous. It
unfolds the strange intimacy between Dolores
and Vera, and the link that binds them. It
shows, finally, how fierce love can be, and
how dreadful its consequences. And how the
soul, harrowed by the hardest life, can
achieve a kind of grace.
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Time
Powerful...Startlingly good.
San Francisco Chronicle
Among King's best...An unforgettable, unflinching glimpse
into a mind driven to murder.
Publisher's Weekly
Described by the publisher as a companion piece to King's
last book, Gerald's Game , this new novel surpasses it in
every way, and shows that King, even without the trappings
of horror and suspense, is a magnificent storyteller whose
greatest strength has always been characterization. His
sterling title character this time out is a Maine woman in
her 60s who made a living as a housekeeper and now is under
suspicion in the death of her senile employer, Vera Donovan,
who fell down a flight of stairs. Did Dolores push her?
Responding to the charges against her, Dolores recounts her
life in a tightly woven narrative that is beguiling and
touching at the appropriate moments. The friendship between
these two lonely women ``livin' on a little chunk of rock
off the Maine coast'' was the anchor of both their lives,
and it soon becomes clear that Dolores didn't kill Vera. But
she freely acknowledges--30 years after the fact--that she
did kill her husband, Joe, during a solar eclipse on July
20, 1963, ``my day for seein' eyes everywhere.'' Presenting
Dolores's story in her own remarkable colloquial voice, King
brings readers face to face with a goodhearted, lovable
woman whose honesty is ultimately unforgettable. 1.5 million
first printing; BOMC main selection. (Dec.)
Library Journal
King again eschews supernatural horror, as he did recently
in Gerald's Game , to study the equally monstrous things
people can inflict on one another. The story, sparer than
much of King's work, is a monolog by the title character,
who is suspected of murdering her loutish, insensitive
husband and the difficult, rich, and senile woman for whom
she has kept house for many years. As Dolores tells her
story to the local authorities, the details of a life of
drudgery and marital unhappiness emerge, along with the
ironic truth behind the deaths. In theme, style, and setting
a companion piece to Gerald's Game , this new work is a
quietly terrifying tale of desperation, abuse, and revenge
that showcases King's talent as a powerful storyteller.
Certain to be a best seller, it should appeal to a wide
audience. For all popular fiction collections. Previewed in
Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/92.-- Eric W. Johnson, Teikyo Post
Univ. Lib., Waterbury, Ct.
BookList - Ray Olson
Like "Gerald's Game" , King's second novel this year is
short by his standards, isn't concerned with supernatural
horrors, and takes place mostly on one October day and, in
flashback, on July 20, 1963, when a total eclipse of the sun
laid a diagonal band of darkness across central Maine. A
further resemblance is that it also features a female
protagonist, but while King wrote "Gerald's Game" with
third-person omniscience, he offers "Delores Claiborne" in
that tough old Mainer's voice as she tells the sheriff of
Little Tall Island about two deaths she's been involved
with. One, just the other day, is that of her wealthy,
invalided employer, Vera Donovan, whom it's suspected she
fatally pushed downstairs. The other, which happened during
that long-ago eclipse, is that of her drunken,
good-for-nothing husband, Joe St. George. She didn't kill
Vera, but she did kill Joe, and as she fills us in on the
hows and whys of both deaths, King secures his place in the
highest echelon of contemporary American novelists. For
cantankerous, profane, scatological, and fiercely maternal
Delores is as vital and vivid a character as any in American
fiction. Moreover, the death of her husband is as virtuosic
an essay in grand guignol as King has ever written. King is
well out of the slump that so many of the contributors to
the recent mid-career assessment, "Reign of Fear" , seemed
to think he was in. In fact, he's never been better. |
