“Pet Sematary,” by Stephen King

FM's ratings:

1.      Premise 10

2.      Prose 10

3.      Plot 10

4.      Characters 10

5.      Overall 10

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)

I have been told by many that this book is one of King’s finest.  I have to agree.  King gets inside his characters’ heads better than almost any writer one can name.  His descriptive powers are nothing short of brilliant.  When he goes off on a tangent, the tangent is always fascinating.  (The practice of putting toe tags on corpses in morgues is said to have originated in New York City by attendants of Celtic descent, who were influenced by the ancient Celtic practice of tying the toes of the dead together so that their ghosts couldn’t walk!)  Here is an author that can write a very long novel without it getting tedious for a reader like me.  Horror?  His novels transcend the genre by a mile; this is true literature, and I still maintain that 200 years from now, King will be one of the handful of authors remembered from this era.  I’m fascinated that one of the most important scenes in this novel, the death of Gage, is revealed as memories of the other characters, rather than told in straight narrative form.  This wasn’t done because the author didn’t feel he could effectively paint such a traumatic scene in words – Kings is more than up to that task!  It wasn’t done to spare the reader from such an emotionally distressing scene – King pulls no punches!  It was done for effect, and effective it is.  I haven’t seen the movie that was made of this yet – (ALWAYS read the book before seeing the movie!) - but I have stumbled across clips from it online, and the scene of Gage’s death appears to be quite dramatic.  The “creep” factor alone makes this novel worth the time to read it, but the profound sub-text is a huge plus throughout the narrative.  As a bonus, I can now stop hearing, “What?! You haven’t read Pet Sematary yet?!"  Awesome book.