Krishna
Many of Stephen King’s books have been reviewed here. He is another one of our frequently reviewed authors. For a sample, check out our previous review of Christine or Carrie.
It is one of Stephen’s typical horror stories. Let us get into the story right away.
Jessie and husband Gerald are at the cottage. Gerald is a lawyer and has kinky sexual tastes. He has chained her to the bed and is into BDSM – albeit without affliction of the pain. Jessie never cared much for this but does not want to say ‘No’. Gerald puts the keys to the handcuffs on the side drawer in preparation for a night of sex in their secluded cottage. She tries to talk him out of it, as this has become ridiculous after several repetitions but he is no mood to listen. We learn that they are in a cottage far away and out of season and that he is a hotshot lawyer who had hitherto been totally easygoing in their married life.
When he refuses to listen to her ‘Release me from this shackles, Gerald!’ and threatens to go ahead with what she considers statutory rape, her rage boils over and she kicks him in the stomach and the nuts and he just keels over. She realizes that he is not responding or even moving so she realizes that he is either unconscious or, judging from the agonized breath and the colour that he turned before falling, could even be dead.
Now, Stephen King takes over and writes as only he can write, about just a woman stuck on a bed. She reminisces, panics, tries to control it with relaxation exercises that her psychologist had taught her.
In order to calm down, she looks at the familiar objects around her, thinking about their history in her life and tries other things. You just gently flow along in the prose that always is interesting. She also realizes her predicament – no one to help, no one to hear her cries, and the sun is westering and it will be dark soon. Enough of a tension in the background as she reminisces.
She tries all the usual things to release herself and fails.
In the meanwhile the dog that was barking was a feral dog which was ‘formerly known as Prince’ – it is impossible not to savour the allusion, though it does not mean anything in this book. Anyway, there is a really heartrending discussion of how its previous owner heartlessly abandoned it because of a new dog tax of seventy dollars a year – and this when he is a rich lawyer who had just bought a yacht. The dog is starving and comes in through a backdoor and smells blood – from George of course. There is a sequence of tense events where it fears humans and yet is inexorably drawn towards blood by its hunger. Fascinating, and pure adrenalin filled King story.
What happens next is gruesome, with Leslie fighting to keep it away from the tasty meal that is Gerald (for the dog) and failing.
After that gruesome noise of a meal being eaten by the hungry dog she goes for water that is just out of reach and tries to snag it through her wits alone – I mean not by wishing it to come to her but working out how she can get it to come to her.
In the meanwhile, this feral dog has a backstory. He was called Prince and looked after by a girl whose father bought him for the girl and she named him Prince. He was an adorable, happy friendly pup until the girl moved away and the father, trying to save a measly new dog tax, took Prince to the woods and left him there, bewildered, frightened and not knowing what to do.
Meanwhile, after a lot of frustration, Jessie manages to use her wits not only to get a glass of water that was out of reach on the side table but also manage to drink it, even though the glass was out of reach of her mouth when she did manage to get it.
King is back at what he does best. Imagine this story. A house with a single woman chained to the bed – no other person there – no one to converse with. A feral dog in the picture. But nothing else. Yet the story moves on fluidly with you getting a glimpse into the mind of this desperate woman.
She dreams of her childhood and a molestation – just hinted at slowly and then expanded on. There is the usual surreal moment where she sees a shadowy, otherworldly figure standing in a dark corner and staring at her.
When Stephen King finally meets that terrible evening head on when the father was inappropriate with Jesse, it is really painful to read. Very ugly and very disturbing. Chalk another one up for the narrative powers of Stephen King.
This is one of the better known books of the author, and the transition from the past to present keeps the story going. The struggles of a woman who is caught in a desperate situation and refuses to accept what seems to be her inevitable fate – starvation and death, are inspiring.
It also veers into the surreal, as many of Stephen King’s novels do – remember Duma Key? For instance, the stranger who stares at her and who has improbably long limbs is at once a distorted image of her dead father and, later, of Death itself, waiting for her to succumb.
But mostly it is about a girl, caught in a bed, unable to free herself and knowing that certain death stares her in the face, reminiscing. While Stephen King has used this ruse of a single person to devastating effect in other books (The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, for instance) or a full book as a single conversation (Dolores Clairborne as an example) to equally great effect, this story seems a wee bit contrived to me. Interesting? Yes. Very. But looks like the story was bent to fit, and the story does not move much at times.
This situation of being trapped is also the theme of Cujo – though in a very different set of circumstances – and so this book feels like a rehashed mix of his other stories. Yes, I do recognize that this may have been written mostly before most of the other books, but if you read it in the order that I did, you cannot but feel the drag of repetition.
Finally, through a very ingenious device – let me not give the ‘how’ away – she manages to free one hand, with considerable injury to the hand.
The rest of the story is her struggle to free herself, which to our surprise is achieved in just a few pages – and then try to get help before she bleeds to death.
A good book but the tactics of a single woman alone in almost the full story has been followed in other books – come of this written later – like The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, for instance.
As is the case in many of Stephen King’s books, there is this supernatural mixed with surreal events in this book too. The stranger who was staring at her comes back and terrifies her. Also, when she at last was sure that she had escaped with the car and escaped from him too, she sees him in the back seat. It is left to us to determine – kind of – whether it is a product of Jessie’s fevered imagination or whether it is a thing beyond death.
Interesting, nevertheless.
The ending of the book is told in terms of a journal that Jessie writes to Ruth, one of her old friends and also a voice in her head that advised her throughout the ordeal she went through.
The only thing you wonder about is why she is putting all this in writing when the police have helped her fully cover up how her husband died and what really happened to her.
The ending is all about her notes to ‘Ruth’. She talks about a crazy (and very creepy) criminal who vandalizes graves, not just for what valuables he can extract from the corpses. How he looks and how he acts are the typical King special creepshow.
The surprise is that she gets to find out whether it was really he or a supernatural being that visited her when she was locked into bed.
Nice, overall
6/10
==Krishna