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Post by dem bones on Apr 4, 2008 18:14:44 GMT
Stephen King - Pet Sematary (NEL, 1985) Blurb: THE HOUSE LOOKED RIGHT, FELT RIGHT, TO DR LOUIS CREED
Rambling, old, unsmart and comfortable. A place where the family could settle; the children grow and play and explore. The far-horizoned, rolling hills and meadows of Maine seemed a world away from the city-spawned dangers of Chicago, fume choked and garish.
Only the occasional big truck out on the two-lane highway, grinding up through the gears, hammering down the long gradients, growled out an intrusive interstate note of threat. But behind the house and away from the road; that was safe. Just a carefully cleared path up into the woods where generations of local children had processed with the solemn innocence of the young, taking with them their dear departed pets for burial. The simple little markers in the clearing told their story: Marta Our Pet Rabit, Hannah the Best Dog That Ever Lived, Smucky The Cat He Was Obediant . . .
A sad place maybe, but safe. Surely a safe place. Not a place to seep into your dreams, to wake you, shouting, sweating, slippery with fear and foreboding ...King's early novels are generally accepted to be his finest work, and I certainly enjoyed Salem's Lot, The Shining, Carrie and even much of Christine, without ever feeling any great desire to go back to them. Pet Sematary, on the other hand .... Well, it's pretty much his version of The Monkey's Paw (which he even quotes in the text), and, while it's probably not as "good" as the above-named, this is my fourth re-read and I still adore it. Maybe the episode which sees a grief-stricken Louis indulge in some body-snatching malarkey has much to do with the appeal, could be the unrelentingly doom-laden mood of it all, but this would be my desert island King ('specially if I could find it lumped together in an omnibus with Salem's Lot and The Shining. Dr. Louis Creed moves his brood - wife Rachel, daughter Ellie, baby son Gage and their cat Winston Churchill - from Chicago to Ludlow, Maine where he's recently secured a position at the University. The only threat to their peace and contentment is the highway which claims the lives of local pets on a regular basis. These are usually buried in the Pet Sematary situated on the Creed's land and from the first Louis has spooky dreams about the place. On his first day as campus medic, a young student, Victor Pascow, is killed by a reckless driver and dies in Louis' arms. His hideously disfigured corpse haunt Creed's dreams and one morning he awakes to find that he's slept walked to the burial ground where, in his 'dream', Pascow warned him that he and his family have not long to live .... To be continued ..... maybe ....
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Post by sean on Apr 4, 2008 21:32:36 GMT
This is indeed one of King's grimmer books. The graverobbing section you mentioned had me really wishing that Creed didn't go through with it, and the earlier chapter with Gage's imagined future life was incredibly moving.
Yep, its downhill all the way with this one...
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coral
New Face In Hell
Posts: 3
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Post by coral on Apr 4, 2008 22:21:47 GMT
This is the one Stephen King book I have actually read all the way through from cover to cover. I don't like Stephen King as a rule, but this is different somehow. It gripped my attention immediately and I had to read the whole novel in one go without stopping. Also, it frightened me so much I had nightmares for years afterwards, the only book ever to do that. I'll admit GR's zombie trilogy did that to me, but those are the only films too.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Apr 5, 2008 7:48:18 GMT
One I read when published in paperback and didn't think about until fairly recently when me mum-in-law had it as an audio book and claimed it was mega-scary. I picked up a copy and reread it - amazingly spooky! Got the DVD sitting awaiting viewing, good ol' Fred Gwynne leering from the cover. With a Ramones theme tune too!
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Post by Calenture on Apr 5, 2008 11:30:13 GMT
Maybe the episode which sees a grief-stricken Louis indulge in some body-snatching malarkey has much to do with the appeal, could be the unrelentingly doom-laden mood of it all... To be continued ..... maybe .... Looking at what I wrote about this way back, I see I hadn't taken the synopsis any further than Dem's, above; so if you want to continue it, Dem, my take here shouldn't interfere with that. Whether I'd disagree now with my own comment that King is "capable of much better than this," I don't know, as probably the old-fashioned pulpy feel would appeal more now. At the time I found all that "unrelenting doom" a bit depressing. Dr Luis Creed and his family move to a new home in Ludlow, a quiet University town in Maine. Creed is to be resident practitioner at the University. The house is a pleasant white frame building on the edge of town. Their only immediate neighbours are old Judd and Norma Crandall, who live on the other side of the new road - a road which huge trucks thunder along at intervals. From Judd, Luis and his family learn about the strange neatly mown path which winds up into the woods behind their house to the "Pet Sematary", where for generations Ludlow children have been burying their animals. Beyond the cemetery is a sweep of wild land, forest and bog, once the home of Micmac Indians. In a bizarre dream, Luis is warned not to go beyond the barrier - the deadfall of old trees - separating the Pet Sematary from the Micmac land. But in time, of course, he does. The Micmac lands have turned sour; the Indians believed them to have been touched by a Wendigo. And there is a place there where anything that is buried, comes back. The first half of this novel, King's sixth (under his own name at any rate?) reads like vintage King. About halfway through the pace begins to falter, as if he's tired of the story; but it quickly builds up again before the end. In a way it's a very old fashioned kind of horror story; Indian burial grounds, returns from the dead. But it has some horribly persuasive, almost black comic writing, especially in Creed's night-time grave-robbing expedition. It's an entertaining read, but low on ideas; a pot-boiler by a writer capable of much more than this.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 6, 2008 11:09:34 GMT
Right. Everybody's happy with the ace grave-robbing sequence then? Maybe that's what gives it some edge.
It's certainly a page-turner but then King's books usually are. I fair belted through Misery thoroughly engrossed but forgot all about it within about five minutes of finishing it. As mentioned, Pet Sematary has stayed with me longer than most and I don't think it's all down to the Ramones' classic, ("I don't wanna be buried/ in a Pet Cemetery/ I don't want to live my life again" - genius!), though that may help.
When Winston Churchill is predictably hit by a truck while the rest of the family are visiting Rachel's ma, Louis accompanies friendly neighbour Jud Crandall to the Pet Sematary behind the old Micmac Indian burial ground, a place of uncanny repute. Within hours the cat returns home, a dull-eyed, foul smelling shadow of his former self, but "alive" just as ol' Jud promised. Now fasten your safety belts as we spiral downhill.
Gage is fatally injured on the same lethal highway while seemingly under the influence of malign spirits and the anguished Creed knows what he must do. Jud is set against it - yes, the Sematary has worked its magic on human's before, but the results are too hideous to contemplate. Louis digs his son's corpse up anyhow, and takes another trek into the woods. As with Church, from the viewpoint of his family, Gage's resurrection is only partially successful. Something approximating their son has returned, but it's a cannibalistic killer under the malign influence of the Wendigo (!)
The real horror of it all is that the likable, thoroughly decent Louis brings down the forces of destruction upon his family through his unconditional love of them and, as a result, loses not only Gage but his wife and best friend, victims of the reanimated corpse. It all ends on a particularly unnerving note as another dead one is "laid to rest" on the Micmac's land ....
He may well have been capable of better, but personally, I'd settle for King writing another novel as upsetting as this in place of anything I've read of his since The Dark Half.
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Post by allthingshorror on Apr 8, 2008 20:57:43 GMT
I've read this book once/twice a year without fail since I was 15 -and now I have way too much memorabilla for the film. The first King book I ever read, and still the only book I compare all of his others to. I don't think it was the grave robbing that got me as much as it was that here was a man who you liked at the beginning of the book, but the further and further it got on - the more you disliked him and then hated him for what he did to himself and his family through his own stupid selfishness in believeing he could control a power that was way more smarter than he was. (I was 15 - that's what I got out of it!) It's probably time for me to read the book again soon. I tihnk the older I get, th more scared I am of th book and its mssage of death. When I was younger, what the fuck did I care about dying? But now as I'm getting wed and will hopefully have kids - the messages that pet Sematary contain become that little bit more real and frightening. And Victor Pascow. Best charachter King has ever created.
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