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Book Cover |
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Excerpt |
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"Pleeeeeeeeee,
Duh-lorrr-issss!"
I braced
m'self on my left hand and shone the light down into the well again. It
was hard as hell to make myself do that, especially now that it was
almost completely dark. He'd managed to get to his feet somehow, and I
could see the flashlight beam reflecting back at me from three of four
wet spots around the workboots he was wearin. It made me think of the
way I'd seen the eclipse in those busted pieces of tinted glass after he
got tired of chokin me and I fell on the porch.
Lookin down
there, I finally understood what'd happened--how he'd managed to fall
thirty or thirty-five feet and only get bungled up bad instead of bein
killed outright. The well wasn't completely dry anymore, you see. It had
filled up again--if it'd done that I guess he woulda drowned like a rat
in a rainbarrel--but the bottom was all wet n swampy. It had cushioned
his fall a little, n it prob'ly didn't hurt that he was drunk, either.
He stood
with his head down, swayin from side to side with his hands pressed
against the rock walls so he wouldn't fall over again. Then he looked up
and saw me and grinned. That grin struck a chill all the way through me,
Andy, because it was the grin of a dead man--a dead man with blood all
over his face n shirt, a dead man with what looked like stones pushed
into his eyes.
Then he
started to climb the wall.
I was looking right at it n
still I couldn't believe it. He jammed his fingers in between two of the
big rocks stickin out of the side and yanked himself up until he could
get one of his feet wedged in between two more. He rested there a
minute, and then I seen one of his hands go gropin up n over his head
again. It looked like a fat white bug. He found another rock to hold
onto, set his grip, and brought his other hand up to join it. Then he
pulled himself up again. When he stopped to rest the next time, he
turned his bloody face up into the beam of my light, and I saw little
bits of moss from the rock he was holding onto crumble down onto his
cheeks n shoulders.
He was still grinnin.
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Synopsis |
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Dolores Claiborne shows up
at the police station on Little Tall Island, Maine, to tell them her
story. She claims that she did not kill her employer of thirty years,
Vera Donovan, but she did kill her husband back on July 20, 1963 during
a full solar eclipse. Her story starts of when she was in her
mid-thirties and started working for the rich woman in her house. Vera
was a terror. She watched everyone with eagle eyes and had no qualms
about firing an employee for the smallest of infractions.
To push
Dolores' buttons, she often threw her own crap all over her room.
Dolores' home life wasn't much better. Her husband of fifteen years, Joe
St. George, had always beat her just for the fun of it. He also had
recently started molesting their 14-year old daughter, but thankfully,
had not completed the job. One night, when Dolores finally stood up to
him, their middle child, Joe Jr., witnessed his mom standing over his
bloodied father while holding and axe .
Dolores' husband lied to his
oldest boy and tried to turn him against his mother. On the other hand,
their youngest son, Pete, adores his father and walks around
imitating his father. Dolores realizes that she must rescue her children
form this man and goes to close out their college funds so they can
escape the island. But Joe had already beaten her to the punch and
stolen all of the money that she had earned and opened a new account in
his name only. This was the last stray.
Dolores was trapped. After
breaking down one day and talking to Vera, she learns that there is
another way out of the mess she is in. All it involves is a little
murder.
Dolores Claiborne is
a story by Stephen King. This story is written as if a woman with a
fairly heavy accent from Maine were talking. There are no chapters in
the book. It is a fictional tale about one woman remembering the murder
of her husband after being blamed for the death of her employer.
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Review |
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Dolores Claiborne
isn't so much a horror story, as it is a good fictional story. I found
that the first 100 or so pages really kinda dragged on for me. But
Stephen King books are usually that way. Once we got past learning about
how much of a "bitch" Vera Donovan is, we finally started getting to the
meat of the story: Joe St. George.
Joe is your classic uneducated,
redneck, controlling husband. He beats on his wife and abuses his kids.
He thinks he is smarter than his wife, but learns how wrong he is. Not
having chapters bothered me some, as I love getting to the end of a
chapter. It also bothered me that there wasn't a lot of dialog, as the
story is told more as a narrative, as Dolores is confessing in the
police station.
To top it off, the text is written phonetically as
Dolores speaking, which makes for awkward reading since she has a thick
Maine accent. Like I said, I really did not get into the story right
away, but when the focus shifted to the man I knew Dolores was going to
kill, I couldn't wait to find out how she did it.
Near the end, I had a
very hard time putting the book down. Once again, Stephen King does a
fantastic job with character development, which is one of his strongest
talents as a writer. The action slowly builds . . . and builds . . . and
builds until there is the wonderful climax Stephen King usually creates.
No one does it better.
So, if you are looking for a book that isn't so
much horror as it is a good story, pick up Dolores Claiborne.
Nothing really scary here.
I rated this book an 8 out of
10. |
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