Present Out Of Books Gerald's Game
| Title | : | Gerald's Game |
| Author | : | Stephen King |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 332 pages |
| Published | : | September 1st 1992 by Smithmark Publishers (first published May 1992) |
| Categories | : | Horror. Fiction. Thriller. Suspense. Mystery. Adult. Audiobook |
Stephen King
Hardcover | Pages: 332 pages Rating: 3.52 | 128315 Users | 3881 Reviews
Interpretation Toward Books Gerald's Game
I've re-read Gerald's Game several times since its 1992 publication, and have just finished listening to it as an audiobook. Here's what I know for sure:
1) this story has lost none of its power over me, despite the fact I know everything that's going to happen (quite an impressive feat for a largely plot-driven suspense piece)
2) it is without question, one of King's most underrated, overlooked novels. As of this writing its Goodreads rating is 3.26. Keeping it company in the basement is the much maligned Tommyknockers (incidentally another favorite of mine) and From a Buick 8 (also 3.26 but as this is my least favorite King novel I tend to agree with that number).
3) finally, if you aren't already a raving fan of this book I'm not going to change your mind. That's fair. We can't all love the same thing, especially when it comes to books. What I hope I can do is capture just a smidge (like lightning in a bottle) the reasons why -- if you haven't yet -- you must give this book a chance.
For a lot of Constant Readers, Gerald's Game will always be linked to its sister novel -- Dolores Claiborne -- as both books were released the same year and King meant them to be companion novels to one another. Their narratives are cleverly linked by a solar eclipse. As a literary device it is an interesting one, but for me it isn't what makes these novels so special or spectacular. In fact, you could remove that connection and neither novel would suffer from its absence. No, what makes each novel memorable is the writing, the characterization and most of all, King's sheer balls to the wall commitment to the delivery of the story and its outcome.
As companion novels, there are some notable similarities; namely, the exploration of female abuse at the hands of male aggressors. There are painful descriptions of domestic battery and sexual molestation. King bravely (and quite successfully I would argue) enters the terrain of victim humiliation, degradation, and the lingering psychological effects such acts guarantee. In many ways, these are King's most feminist novels and I don't think it a coincidence that Gerald's Game is dedicated to his wife Tabitha and her five sisters.
Yet for me, this isn't what defines Gerald's Game which I would argue has much more in common with Misery, King's Bachman novel The Long Walk, and his short story "Survivor Type". I say this because in all of these what King is really doing is looking at the human body under brutalizing physical duress... at the body in extremis and what humans are genetically hardwired to do to survive and go on living another day. Excruciating physical peril undeniably comes with a psychological component and no one writes that better than King using his own heady and addictive brew of storytelling.
Jessie Burlingame -- our "damsel" in distress -- is facing certain death. She is trapped, chained in handcuffs to the bed she shares with her husband Gerald in their summer house on the lake. But it's not summer. It's fall, and the lake is empty. Everyone has gone home. There is no one to hear her scream or beg for release.
One of the reasons I love Gerald's Game so much is the "solve the puzzle" locked room mystery of it. It's like one of those brain teasers (you know the one about the melted icicle?) In this case, you have one woman handcuffed to a bed. How do you get her out of them (playing fair, no tricks, no deus ex machina). How will she suffer? What demands will be placed on her body, on her mind? This is where King shines. (view spoiler)[One of my favorite scenes from the entire novel is Jessie's quest for the glass of water resting on the bed's headboard. It is agonizing suspense I almost couldn't stand it. Sheer mastery of the craft I tell you. It would have had Hitchcock foaming at the mouth to film it. (hide spoiler)]
In telling Jessie's story King uncovers all the nitty-gritty minutia of human physical suffering and the desperation of one woman's attempt to end it. How far is any one person willing to go to keep on taking his or her next breath? Stephen King knows pretty damn far. Just ask Paul Sheldon or Ray Garraty. Or the castaway in "Survivor Type" -- him most of all. King also knows that the human body has an amazing capacity for trauma. It can withstand a lot -- so much so that the mind often breaks first.
King being King, it's not just enough to have Jessie at the mercy of handcuffs she can't merely wiggle out of. No, King being King, he introduces several other elements to the story to amp up the suspense and terror. Some may argue the story didn't need these elements (one element in particular), but I say Bravo! (view spoiler)[Our first introduction to the "Space Cowboy" -- There was a man in the room -- nearly caused me to faint from pure shock. I was in those handcuffs too, you see, in the dark, thirsty, exhausted and in pain. The sudden realization that I may not be alone after all, that there may be someone lurking in a dark shadow of the room watching me.... shiver.
I love how long King is able to prolong the suspense over this creature's existence -- is it or is it not a figment of Jessie's overtaxed imagination? I went back and forth several times during the last part of the novel, until finally the big reveal and I was satisfied, more than satisfied actually. The fact that he turned out to be real after all made my skin crawl. (hide spoiler)]
On the Stephen King Fans discussion forum here on Goodreads, a wonderful comment was made that really sums up the intensity of this novel for me, and its overwhelming, lingering appeal:
[Gerald's Game] goes straight to the oldest, reptilian part of the human brain: fight or flight -- but here, flight's out of the question. This is true horror -- helplessness.This novel is burned into my brain as if I've lived it. That's unforgettable storytelling and something you don't want to miss. Trust me. You do trust me, don't you?
Point Books Concering Gerald's Game
| Original Title: | Gerald's Game |
| ISBN: | 0831727527 (ISBN13: 9780831727529) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Jessie Mahout Burlingame, Gerald Burlingame, Ruth Neary |
| Setting: | Maine(United States) |
Rating Out Of Books Gerald's Game
Ratings: 3.52 From 128315 Users | 3881 ReviewsArticle Out Of Books Gerald's Game
Sometimes it takes heart to write about a thing, doesn't it? To let that thing out of the room way in the back of your mind and put it up there on the screen.This was, without a doubt, the most fucked up book I've ever read. So of course I loved it.For some reason, I went into this book thinking I'm not going to like it. Jessie, our main character, is handcuffed to a bed and can't move. Doesn't sound that much exciting, right? Well, wrong.I thought that the whole novel would be about JessieNot one of my favorites, but next in line to read for my goal of King stories in order of release. Not completely bad but King has written much better stories.
This book and I have a long history. When I was 9 or so, my mother gave me permission to read books from the adult section of the library. She gave me a note to hand to the librarian and all. So, after summer rec, I went into the library and decided I was ready to read some Stephen King. My sister read his books and she said they were better than the RL Stine ones. I had already gone through all the goosebumps and RL Stine teen books(dont know if they are called anything special) and was ready
4.5Gerald's Game really took me by surprise. I don't know what I was expecting, I knew it was essentially a one-character novel where a woman handcuffed to the bed has to deal with the external pressures of getting finding a way to get out of her situation, but it also dealt with the internal issues and memories she has been repressing for decades. So right up front, one of the only things that I didn't like about the story was the ending. It seemed to stretch out in an unnecessary way and
The regularity in which Stephen King writes 3 plus, 4 and 5 star books is staggering. What surprised me with Gerald's Game is after all these years Mr.King chose this book to spit in the face of horror. This book commences with a solid, voyeuristic 4 star plot. We move into the middle of the book like a hungry dog looking for it's next meal. Sniffing around for clues of what may happen next and how we would react. 3 plus/4 star writing pulls us into the story until it's no longer voyeuristic.
King likes to demonstrate that he is the pimp grandmaster of using one single setting to show us how it has to be done. Including childhood trauma, how far one might go to survive, married life and how it can develop, and switching between the terror of the seemingly hopeless situation and flashbacks to the mystery of what happened when the protagonist was a girl and how those events influenced the current happenings.The situation of being, just, alone in a remote area or helpless or bound or
This wasnt the smile, though. This was the grin--a version of it he seemed to save just for these sessions. She had an idea that to Gerald, who was on the inside of it, the grin felt wolfish. Piratical, maybe. From her angle, however, lying here with her arms raised above her head and nothing on but a pair of bikini panties, it only looked stupid, No...retarded. He was, after all, no devil-may-care adventurer like the ones in the mens magazines over which he had spent the furious ejaculations of
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.