"'He got that far and then here comes Spot out of the dark, not runnin' like he usually did, ready to jump all over him he was so glad to see him, but just walkin' waggin' his tail, and my dad dropped that lard bucket and stepped back. I don't know b'what he would have turned tail and run except his back hit the picket fence and then he just stood there, looking at the dog.'"
Stephen King? You know Stephen King, right? The guy who writes all the books set in Maine? The guy who shows up occasionally in the movies?
In Pet Sematary, a young married doctor moves to Maine and everything goes very wrong from there. No sooner is his family unpacking the car than some old guy from across the road is showing him around the local pet cemetery, and also showing him how to raise the dead.
It's a good book, even if the characters seem to make irrational choices. I suppose you could chalk the "irrational" part up to the influence of the Indian burial ground three miles away. What really hampers the narrative is the way King telegraphs an important death halfway through the book, thus negating the shock value this death might have had. Yes, we've all seen one of the two movies or both, but before either of the two movies appeared this aspect of the book had to be irritating.
If you've seen both of the movie adaptations you'll know that the first one is far superior to the second. The first one, as it happens, also streamlines the plot of the book quite a bit, and this makes for a more effective telling of the same story. The movie could easily be called "schlocky" whereas the book could be accused of meandering. I guess between "schlocky" and "meandering" you'd have to pick your poison. If you ask me, I think both are good for different reasons.
Just don't bother with the 2019 film. It's terrible.
Related Entries:
"It" by Stephen King (1986)
"The Devil Wears Prada" by Lauren Weisberger (2003)
The Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy by Cixin Liu (2014)
"Suttree" by Cormac McCarthy (1979)
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