As with any Stephen King book, it is extremely well written. But it's not just the style, or the word choice, it has more to do with the fact that everything happens so fast, yet the book only contains five days. The novel is 877 pages long, and anybody would be scared to start such a huge thing, but the actual events in the story happen extremely fast, you are never once bored. That is really something, especially considering the fact that an entire chapter could explain what happened in a span of five minutes. Another factor adds to the great length of the book. It has as many characters as Chester's Mills has inhabitants (the town under the Dome). Although most of them have no character development, only names mentioned once or twice, there are 48 major characters. As with any story, some characters are more developed than others, but these 48 have quite extensive personalities, including Horace, a yellow Corgi. While one character is doing something on one side of town, another could be doing something else elsewhere. Although the story has extra-terrestrials (I doubt that's much of a spoiler), we are never really explained the origin of the Dome. The novel isn't about that. It's about how people react to sudden isolation. I love this type of story, I especially like to marvel at all the scared people who become sheep and follow the one crazy religious person who self-proclaims themselves as leaders, or shepherds, as they would say. Under the Dome touches some important political, psychological, and environmental issues.

The book cover of my copy of the novel

The political aspect encounters incompetency. Big Jim Rennie is the power-crazed small-town politician who snaps in his lust for power once the Dome comes down. He starts to plan a dictatorship, and uses the occasion to start destroying his meth lab, which was the biggest supplier of meth in the United States, until the Dome came down. Big Jim knows how to control the town, and the many incompetent idiots that also have powerful roles in the town's society. Stephen King said, during an interview with Time Magasine concerning his book, "Sometimes the sublimely wrong people can be in power at a time when you really need the right people".
The psychological aspect centers around how people become completely different in a matter of minutes, once survival instincts kick in. It also shows how people are zombies, following the first command they hear, because they need someone to tell them what to do. But there are also, of course, those who keep a relative amount of common sense and independence.
The environment issue is simple enough. The Dome is invisible at first, but after the first day, it has become visible because of smog, fire smoke, exhaust from cars, etc. Air passes through the Dome, but just barely, and the people under it never experience wind, nor do they quite care really. Their main objectives are food and propane (which will cause more pollution). Only in the end do people start to realise how precious air is, and even one man who is seen smoking a cigarette is looked on with horror. There are several fires inside the Dome, as well as a few outside, when planes crash into the huge invisible barrier, and after a while, the Dome itself becomes dirty with soot, and is no longer qualified to be deemed invisible.
Overall, I loved Under the Dome. I seem to have a penchant for isolation stories, I love trying to figure out which will become which before the isolation actually occurs. For example, who will be the first to be killed by a fellow human, who will be the religion fanatic, the self-proclaimed leader, the 'sensible ones' who resist the self-proclaimed leader, the first to suicide, etc. Sometimes, the most unexpected people change for the worst. I was a bit disappointed that the Dome's background wasn't clarified much, but the Dome is only the MacGuffin for the novel. As always, Stephen King has produced a masterpiece, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone. For those who 'aren't into the whole readin' thing', a mini-series based on the novel is planned, but as with everything in this world, the book is, and always will be, infinitely better.

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Red and White 1958 Plymouth Fury: Christine

This was a good novel, very thrilling. It does keep your heart racing with action and suspense, especially near the end, when the climax reaches its peak. The ending is rather open, however, and leaves the hint of a sequel, but none have shown up so far. As always with Stephen King's works, it is very well written, and no words are wasted on useless descriptions. The story itself is somewhat mysterious, and Christine's nature is never really explained. I think this adds to the realistic way this supernatural story is formed. The characters don't, and wouldn't, know what exactly Christine is, so why should the readers have an advantage? The ending has a funny way of ending well, but still making you feel pity and sadness. This novel has also encouraged me to name my car, which I do not own yet, 'Christine'.
A movie based on this novel was released the same year as the book. As with any book-movie adaption, some details are changed and ignored, but it is still a good film, for an 80's horror movie that is .

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French book cover

My week at my grandparent's house over, I moved to my other grandparent's house, where the library collection is much more full. My grandmother being a keen fan of police novels and thrillers, she has an extensive collection of Stephen King, Agatha Christie, Patricia Cornwall, and Mary Higgins Clark, among others. I took one Stephen King, entitled 'Riding the Bullet', a short book, with a big font. All the books are in French, however, so the French title being "Un tour sur le Bolid' ". The story is about a college boy named Alan who receives a call from his mother's neighbour telling him his mother suffered a minor heart attack, and she was now in the hospital. Alan decides to auto-stop immediately all the way to the hospital, since his car is broken down. He gets into a few cars which take him a part of the way, and then gets into a car driven by an old man, in a car that smells like urine, the car never exceeding 70 miles an hour. The old man is kind of crazy, and Alan can't take it anymore, so he gets off, saying he will find another car, and the man should go back to his original intentions for the night. Alan walks then on his own, along a great winding road in the middle of the forest, in the moonlight. After a while, he stops from shear exhaustion, resting on a little wall encircling a cemetery on the side of the wall. He explores the cemetery and finds a grave with the name George Staub. He slips and barely misses a gravestone from hitting him on the back of the head. He sees headlights and quickly sticks out his thumb, getting picked up by the Mustang. They introduce themselves, the single driver giving the name George Staub... Alan finds himself in a tricky situation, where he is asked to choose between him and his mother.

I didn't enjoy reading this novel. I just didn't. The beginning was interesting enough, it showed a great potential for a great story, but after the middle, I found it just all went downhill. The ending was very strange, and quite random. I also find that the roller coaster 'The Bullet', has nothing to do with the story, and all it did for me was confuse me. I just can't seem to be able to find a proper storyline, you know, beginning, middle and end. This was written just after King's life threatening car accident, and according to other reviewers, it contains allusions to how silly life and death is, or something like that. I myself am not really talented nor interested in the symbology in books and stories, so that is maybe why I didn't understand this novella. My mom proposed the idea that I should read it in English, as a kind of experiment, to see whether I understand it better. So maybe I will come back to this blog to add the results, once I get my hands on an English copy.

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Stephen King's main house with me in front.

We passed through the Maine to arrive at Québec, and on the way, we passed by Stephen King's house. I unfortunately did not see him, but he passed our car just as we were arriving to his house. Both my parents saw him in the driver's seat, but all I saw was a faint silhouette going further and further away.
We still toke our pictures, not staying any longer than a few minutes in respect of the Kings. This post is going to be for those of you unfortunate souls who have no idea who Stephen King is, or for those of you who know you have heard his name somewhere before.
Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine, on the 21st of September 1947. He is a writer of horror stories, novels, short stories, and also movie scripts. He was the son of Nellie Ruth Pillsbury and Donald Edwin King. When Stephen was two, his father left with the pretext of 'going to buy a pack of cigarettes', and he never came back.

Stephen King

Ellie King had to take care of Stephen and his older adopted brother David all alone, with some financial stress. They moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, then to Stratford, Connecticut, and finally back to Durham, Maine, where Nellie could take care of her age-incapacitated parents. As a child, Stephen supposedly witnessed his friend being struck and killed by a passing train, although he has stated that he has absolutely no memory of this. Some people consider the fact that this trauma may the source for some of his more gruesome works, but Stephen himself denied this speculation. He entered into the University of Maine, where he graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Science in English. He had random jobs as well as the occasional boost of selling a short story to men's magazines. In 1970, his first daughter, Naomi Rachel, was born, and in 1971, he married Tabitha Spruce, a fellow student of the University of Maine. In the same year he was hired as an English teacher in a highschool. It was also in the same year that he developed a drinking problem. In 1972, his second child, Joseph Hillstrom (often called Joe Hill), was born. And the following year, his first great succes with the publishing industry came with his novel 'Carrie'. After winning $200,000 with the book, Stephen and his family moved further down in Maine so that they could take care of Stephen's ill mother. During this time he began writing his second novel, 'Salem's Lot, which was published in 1975. In 1974, his mother died of uterine cancer, and Stephen's drinking was very severe at the time, he was drunk while giving the eulogy at his mother's funeral. After her death, the Kings moved to Boulder, Colorado, where Stephen wrote 'The Shining'. They shortly after returned to Maine, where Stephen wrote his fourth novel, 'The Stand', which is considered by many fans to be his best work so far (I haven't read all his books yet, so I can't say for myself). In 1977, the family travelled briefly in England with the newest member, Owen Phillips, but they returned to Maine again, where Stephen began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine, while still continuing to write on the weekends. He has lived primarily in Maine ever since. He does spend to cold Maine winters in his second house in Florida however, but he considers his house in Maine as his home. After years of writing, he produced over 40 books, many of which were adapted to film.

Movie poster for the film adaptation of King's novel 'It'

In the late 1970s-early 1980s, Stephen published a few short stories and novels under the name of Richard Bachman. He did this because the publishing standards at the time allowed only one book to be published per year. He also did it as an experiment to see if his fame was just luck, or if he really was super talented. He published the stories, and soon Richard Bachman had received a lot of attention, and this is when many fans suspected that the Richard and Stephen were one and the same. However, Stephen still went along with the story, and when Richard 'died' of a cancer, his widowed wife found a box full of finished stories, which were published after his 'death'. Perhaps she will 'find' another box full of ready novels sometime in the future.
In 1987, Stephen's family intervened with his addictions to nicotine, alcohol, Xanax, cocaine, marijuana, diazepam, NyQuil, and dextromethorphan (cough medecine). After his family's intervention, he realised his problem, and got help. He has been sober from all drugs and alcohol since the late 1980s.
On June 19th 1999, while taking his usual walk, he was on the shoulder of Route 5, in Lovell, Maine, when Bryan Smith, distracted by his unrestrained dog in the back seat, ran Stephen over, causing him a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of his right leg, scalp laceration and a broken hip. His lawyers bought Bryan Smith's vehicle for $1,500, saying it was to prevent it appearing on eBay. It was destroyed in a junkyard after Stephen had severely beaten it with a baseball bat, stating that he wanted to destroy it himself with a sledgehammer. He later stated that he would stop writing, but he still toke up writing again, but he made it clear that his imagination had becoming being much less productive, and that he would write at a much slower pace. He currently has three grand children, his two sons are published authors, and his daughter went into religion and became a homosexual as well as a gay activist.
I hope this enlightened you about how Stephen King is. I did not name much of his novels, but simply typing into google search 'stephen king's works', will give you all you need to know.

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First official cover for the book.

Pet Sematary, is a horror novel written by Stephen King in 1983. It got nominated with a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1984, and was then later made into a film. It is the story of the Creed family moving into the countryside from Chicago. Their home appears safe and their only neighbors are elderly, friendly people. The only real threat is the road passing by their new house, with the constant passing of large trucks. Louis Creed, a doctor and the man of the house, had gotten a job at a local university at the infirmary, and on his first day of proper work, he receives a patient who is surely going to die. The road accident victim, Victor Pascow, dies in the arms of Louis and haunts him continually in his dreams. When Church, the family cat, becomes a road kill while Louis' wife (Rachel), his barely two year old son (Gage), and his five year old daughter (Ellie), are in Chicago visiting relatives, Jud Crandall, the friendly, elderly neighbor, helps him by taking him to beyond the Pet Sematary. The Pet Sematary, built and looked after by the children of the village (hence the misspelling), was built for all the animals who were run over by the dreadful trucks and some animals who died of old age or disease. But what was beyond the Pet Sematary, through the woods which used to belong to Indian tribes? Louis, led by Jud, found another cemetery, this an old Indian one hard to reach. When instructed to bury the cat there, Louis did and the following day, the cat returned alive. Slightly changed, and clumsy and untrusting, but still alive. When Louis' son, Gage dies in another road accident, and Louis buries him in the Indian cemetery, Gage comes back much changed, in a very evil way.

Movie poster for Pet Sematary

I liked this book because firstly, it was written by Stephen King (who I think is awesome), and secondly because the story contains a lot of intrigue and suspense. Although at times some little plots are so obvious, the ending comes with some surprise. This being said, the ending is more of an open one, letting the reader imagine what they want to complete the story. This is a very frustrating and yet exciting way to read this novel. Frustrating because you do not know if your made up ending is the intended one, and exciting because you feel the author trusts you with his narrative.

This was made into a movie in 1988. It was directed by Mary Lambert, and Stephen King appeared in it as a small role of a priest at a funeral. A sequel movie was also made, Pet Sematary 2, but this movie was met with less critical and financial success. The movie does differ greatly in some very important details, sometimes the details were left out or else completely changed. The end also has an alternative feel to it. It does not have the same unfinished ending the book displays, forcing a definite end on the watcher. But I still think both the movie and the book were good in their own rights. I definitely recommend both of them.

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