News item from the
Westover (ME) weekly Enterprise, August 19,
1966: 'Rain of Stones Reported: It was reliably
reported by several persons that a rain of
stones fell from a clear blue sky on Carlin
Street in the town of Chamberlain on August
17th.'
In one way or another,
everybody abused Carrie. This sixteen-year-old misfit was
forbidden everything that was young and fun by her fanatical
mother. She was teased and taunted by her classmates,
misunderstood by her teachers, and given up as hopeless by
almost everyone.
But Carrie had a secret: She possessed terrifying
telekinetic powers that could make inanimate objects move, a
lighted candle fall, or a door lock. Carrie could make all
kinds of startling bizarre, and malevolent things happen.
And so she did one night, when feeling scorned and
humiliated…and growing angrier and angrier…she became the
vengeful demon who let the whole town -- and all the people
in it -- feel her power.
Why read Carrie?
Stephen King himself has said that he finds his
early work "raw," and Brian De Palma's movie was
so successful that we feel like we have read the
novel even if we never have. The simple answer
is that this is a very scary story, one that
works as well--if not better--on the page as on
the screen. Carrie White, menaced by bullies at
school and her religious nut of a mother at
home, gradually discovers that she has
telekinetic powers, powers that will eventually
be turned on her tormentors. King has a way of
getting under the skin of his readers by
creating an utterly believable world that throbs
with menace before finally exploding. He builds
the tension in this early work by piecing
together extracts from newspaper reports,
journals, and scientific papers, as well as more
traditional first- and third-person narrative in
order to reveal what lurks beneath the surface
of Chamberlain, Maine.
