Carrie: 04/24/25

Carrie by Stephen King (1974) is the author's debut novel. It mixes together news clippings, interviews, as well as third person narration to tell the story of an abused teenager who uses her telekinetic power to burn it all down.

One of the weirdest things for me is how the book is set in the near future. The book was released in 1974 but the events of book take place in 1978 and include interviews from as late as 1980.

By the standard of modern King novels, this one is a novella. It's short, coming in under 300 pages, making it the length of a typical cozy mystery. Although it's tightly edited and pulls no punches, it's still flawed.

Carrie White is fifteen. She's had telekinetic powers her entire life, something that might have driven her mother to an extreme form of fundamentalism. She lives a very sheltered life and is taken completely by surprise when her period starts after P.E. She freaks out while the her classmates tease her mercilessly.

This introductory scene of Carrie comes after a clipping about a rain of stones over the White house in 1968. The scene includes the bullies tossing sanitary products at her; that is such a male response to the situation. I have never seen a girl bullied by other girls have sanitary products thrown at her. The name calling and blood themed jokes, yes. Tossing pads and tampons, no.

Why? First and foremost, even if the school provides them for free, they aren't provided in abundance. Each and every girl in there, baring any trans girls, wouldn't want to waste the few products they probably have stashed away in a hidden pocket in their backpack. Not having that spare on hand during an emergency is far worse!

The other thing about this initial bullying scene is how universally mean the others are. That level of feral behavior is really more a junior high or middle school thing. Children in the early throws of puberty are far meaner than those who are basically over the worst of it.

What keeps this book from being a total disaster is its brevity and the way the interviews, news articles, and other testimony is used pad out an otherwise mediocre story that ties blood to a girl's unhinged rage, whether it's her own or later the pig's blood that dumped on her and her date.

I re-read Carrie this year because last year I read The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson (2022). Of the two, I still prefer Jackson's take on the story. I think she has enough lived experience as a Black woman to see a more realistic path to the ultimate conflagration.

Four stars

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