Krishna
Stephen King appears quite a lot in our reviews. See Gerald’s Game or Doctor Sleep for two examples. Why do we review him so much? Because of his excellent narrative powers, his ability to draw you into a tale and, frankly things he tries anew, like this book for example.
Andy Bissette and Frank Proux, two policemen are interviewing an old lady, the titular Dolores Claiborne. The whole book is pretty much a conversation, with Dolores doing most of the talking. Stephen King has written a book about a gripping story, all of which happens in a conversation! He really likes to try out things, does he not?
The lady came to argue that she was not the one who killed Vera Donovan. Who is Vera? The story explains.
She admits to killing her husband Joe St George but that was twenty nine years ago! At that time she had three kids : fifteen year old Selena, thirteen year old Joe Junior and nine year old Little Pete. Joe left her nothing, and was a drunk husband with no sense of his responsibilities. At that very time, Vera Donovan decided to come live full time on the island and offers Dolores a job as a housekeeper. Dolores had no money so she jumped at the offer.
Vera was rich, her husband made a fortune and left everything to her when he died. Vera was a virago, and would not quit smoking or drinking even after her heart attacks. Dolores was a stay at home companion to Vera even after her children had left (and Little Pete had left the world)..
Vera was a harridan but Dolores stuck with her through the screaming and bad manners. Vera’s kids never visited her from town and she did not have anyone else either, living alone in the big mansion (except Dolores, her housekeeper).
On top of all that, she was in a wheelchair when she was not in bed.
Her evil streak did not abate. She was harsh to servants with strict instructions and whenever they were flouted thrice the person was out. Dolores was the only one who could stay but then she had to put up with a lot. This is even before her cunning where she deliberately soiled the bed at unexpected times and expected a clean up. On one particularly egregious occasion Dolores was mad enough to scream ‘I will kill you!’ at her highest voice; every servant in the house would have heard it.
But really Vera was a tormented soul, seeing ghouls and monsters in everything, even dust bunnies and had to be calmed out of her raging terror and hysteria, and only Dolores was able to do that.
There is a horrible contest between them of Vera trying to make as much mess with her poop – outside the diaper – as she could when Dolores was away working and how Dolores managed to outwit her after several ‘defeats’.
She then moves over to her husband Joe. Joe was her sweetheart in high school and after marriage she found that he was a drunk and also that he had a temper. On one particularly painful hit, she ‘fixes him’ by smashing a pitcher on his cheek, wounding and bruising him. When he rises in anger, she gives him an axe handle first and says ‘If you want to finish it, now is the time; but you will rot in jail for the rest of your life’.
She protects her two kids Mark and Selena from any knowledge of the beatings and the ugliness in the marriage.
However, Joe seems ‘cured’ of wanting to sexually assault Helena but when she finds out that Joe had stolen the kids’ savings she had put in the joint account, she knows she needs to get rid of Joe. On a full eclipse of the sun, while the entire town is away either on the beach or on Vera’s rented boat on the sea, she manages to get Joe drunk and lure him to the abandoned well in a drunk state.
What follows is pure adrenaline filled action : Though Joe is trapped and falls, he does not die and there are several times when Joe seems to outwit her, severely injured though he is. In the end, she manages to come out on the top. But pays a very heavy price for it with her relationship with the children later.
Excellent stuff. In fact the entire book is told in the racy conversation style of a woman past her prime, not very well educated and struggling with the slings and arrows of a fortune intent on heaping problems after problems on her. One of his best books, in my opinion.
And then she is grilled by a Scottish detective who is highly suspicious and tries to trap her into admitting her guilt. He pulls apart her story and cross examines her grimly and she comes very close to giving up and admitting her part. But at the very last moment, she gains control and he retreats, unsatisfied but knowing that he is defeated. This is an excellent part in the story and keeps you turning pages.
After that the story moves towards its conclusion very fast. We learn what happens to Vera Donovan and why Dolores is in the police station. Even those events are well told and tied beautifully to the earlier events where Vera’s mind was going and she was seeing monsters everywhere and Dolores had to go and comfort her at every turn.
Now, the latest episode happened while Dolores was out hanging the clothes and the book races towards its conclusion.
A superb job of plotting and execution and it keeps you tense and absorbed until the very end.
For the murder she did not commit, she is harassed and hauled over the coals, which is heartrending. The townspeople start bullying and threatening her anonymously. Notices on her door, phone calls, drunk groups shooting near her house, the whole nine yeards.
The whole thing is touching – how it happened and how it looked like to the townsfolk who caught her in suspicious circumstances always. And the phone call from Vera’s lawyer is the icing on this cake. As if the story is not already top notch, there are things revealed at the end that make you stunned. I know it is an old book and I know that most of you would have already read it, but I will refrain from giving anything away except to urge you to read it if you have not already!
Fantastic.
10/10
— Krishna