I’ve never been a horror aficionado. Although I had read one or two Stephen King novels before, and seen my share of horror and slasher films, it’s never top of my list when I’m looking to purchase new books. I guess I don’t like to be spooked too easily. However I came to the novel “Carrie” as a long-time admirer of the film version. This review is therefore written from the perspective of someone moving from movie to book – sometimes this can be a disadvantage, I find, as you’re left with the imagery of the film rather than forming your own. As an example, we’re told early on that Carrie and her mother are both overweight to varying degrees, but with the mental image of Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie in my head it was hard to picture them any other way.

Anyone reading it after seeing the movie will be struck by the similarity between the two for the most part. A brief outline of the story for those unfamiliar. Carietta (Carrie) White is a sixteen-year old girl living in small-town America with her religious zealot mother, Margaret. Her father died before Carrie was born. The community is fearful of the White family, with Margaret keen to protect her daughter from the sin that she sees all around the neigbourhood, described in several painful episodes in the novel. We learn that Carrie is abused by her mother, who has attempted to murder her child several times. Whether this is to protect her from sin or to prevent the girl’s latent powers emerging is left ambiguous until the climax of the novel. We learn that from an early age Carrie has experiened episodes of telekinesis – the ability to move and manipulate objects purely with the power of the mind. However the ability seems fairly passive until Carrie finally experiences her first period, humiliatingly recounted early in the book. It is clear Carrie has no concept of menstruation, her mother having kept her in the dark about it since it represents the sin of Eve and “the curse of blood”. As far as Margaret is concerned, Carrie’s first period is a sign that she has been sinful and she sees it as a failure on her part to have not prevented it in the first place. Carrie is hounded by her fellow pupils and utterly embarrassed by having her period in full view of her classmates in the shower, who laugh and jeer – continuing a cycle of bullying Carrie has suffered throughout her school life. As the plot unfolds, Carrie realises her ability to move objects by focusing on them in her mind. As she practices, her ability gets stronger and stronger until she is able to move and manipulate virtually anything without suffering herself.

It is in a nutshell a simple story of revenge, told in an ingenious way. Much of the story takes the form of excerpts from books and transcripts written after the events of the book are supposed to happen. These books are scientific investigations into the White case and telekinesis, told as if it were now established scientific fact as a result of Carrie. Or we read pages from Sue’s autobiography recounting the events. This is a clever and novel way of approaching the story and gives us the chance to assess things a little more detachedly – for example, we read of the investigation into the case which wonders whether Sue’s motives were entirely honourable or if she were part of the set-up to humiliate Carrie further; we then read Sue’s own words which refute that. It means we are never left to consider only one facet of what happens. In a way, though, this method is distracting and a little convoluted since it’s as if we go from these excerpts and then read the story as if we’re watching in real time again, as if to say “this is what really happened”. It can all get a tad confusing.