Book: Dolores Claiborne
Author: Stephen King
Published: 1993 (Viking)
Pages: 305
Crusty old New England lady lets loose about the time she murdered her husband by pushing him down the well! Now she’s testifying in the suspiciously similar death of her fellow crusty old New England lady employer! Aw, yeah, Stephen King, you work that regional dialect into one break-less story and add a complete solar eclipse just for good measure. We know how you do.
It’s such a pitch-perfect voice the whole way through. And the story leans completely on the horror of what regular human beings get up to when they get mean. The eclipse is nothing except the way to conceal revenge and heartache. It’s a straightforward psychological dissection channeled through a lady who would snort at that phrase and say she doesn’t know about no psychology, she’s just tellin it like it happened.
I got into it a little bit more than I got into Thinner because the narrator was so well-defined. If the mullet King is wearing in his author photograph is any indication with the copyright dates, these were of roughly the same writing era for him. A good vintage.
Donation Pile, Bookshelf, or Trash? Bookshelf. It’s not my favorite King book, but it’s my favorite voice of his.
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