Pet Sematary

Los clásicos no fallan. Pet sematary tiene una estructura sencilla y no por eso simple. King maneja los tiempos y la información de una manera impecable, como quien le da heroína a una rata de laboratorio. La historia también es tan simple como oa e Frankenstein o aquella en la que supongo que se inspira, La pata del mono, pero está llevada con tanta naturalidad y apego a los personajes que la trama, cocida a fuego lento, se desencadena en sus repercusiones obvias con tanta violencia como quien se pasó tres horas cocinando un plato delicioso y ahora está muerto de hambre porque mientras lo hacía se fumó dos porros. Pet sematary se devora y se disfruta, y tiene escenas que realmente se padecen por el genuino contenido macabro show more que también es dosificado a la perfección. Es una lección de narrativa tradicional. Las bases para un relato interesante y cautivante están definitivamente acá. Los que desprecian a King por no haber escrito En busca del tiempo perdido son unos nabos. show less

Wow. So this is marked as a favorite, I have only read this one twice. It's a lot to sit through. At times you hope there is going to be a break or some sort of happy ending. Instead we get a book about consequences and things perhaps set in motion by something dark that wanted to ruin a happy family. I have to say that I do love most of King's earlier works. They tend to be more raw and real to me. Pet Sematary made me cry when I read it as a teen and it made me cry again this weekend.

When the Creed family (Louis, Rachel, Ellie, and Gage) move from Chicago to Maine, Louis is hoping that his new position and home will be the beginning of a new start for his family. Moving next to Jud and Nora Crandall, Louis feels like for the first show more time ever he has a father in his life. The two men become great friends and pass the time having beers together and talking about life and death. When Jud takes the family to a nearby pet cemetery, the first dark tidings start to come out and King gives warnings throughout about what is coming next for the Creed.

All of the characters in this one really work. You end up having sympathy and sadness for everyone that you read about. Most of the story really focuses on Louis since he is the one that is starting to be warned about what is coming next for his family. But the book shifts at times to Rachel and Jud.

The writing is so good in this one as is the flow. Some of the stories that Jud tells Louis feel a bit long, but all are important to get to the larger part of the story.

The setting of this one is Maine. I swear based on all the goings on in King's books, I have maybe unconsciously stayed away from that state. King has a way of describing the inhabitants and locations with such description you often at times feel as if you are walking with Louis across the deadfall to the "true" burial ground.

I think the saddest thing about this whole book is that if the family had been able to actually talk about death and what it means without Rachel reacting so badly to it, perhaps Louis wouldn't have done what he did throughout the book. He wanted to make things good for his little girl and then wanted to make things right for his family. At one point he just goes past the point of no return and you are just forced to read until the very end. I always wondered why King didn't refer to the Creed family again in any of his other Castle Rock books since they seemed to very close to Jerusalem's Lot and the location of Cujo based on remarks made in this book.

This book is in my top five favorite of King's works. In order of my favorite it is:

1. Bag of Bones (last book I read with my dad and holds a place in my heart because of that)
2. Desperation
3. The Drawing of the Three
4. Lisey's Story
5. Pet Semetary show less

Well. Guess who fell for the Hollywood marketing machine? I have read Pet Sematary before, and seen the 1989 adaptation by Mary Lambert, but neither really stayed with me - or keep drawing me back with a strange compulsion like It. But then another version of the film came out, and guess which mug paid cinema prices to see the thing? I wasn't impressed by the new take on the story either - Jason Clarke is a terrible actor, and there were too many big changes for changes sake - but I thought, 'I'll read the book again, that has to be better than this'. Nope.

SPOILERS

To be fair to Jason Clarke, and Dale Midkiff in the 1989 film, the problem is the character of Louis Creed. He's a dick. And the plot doesn't hold up to close scrutiny either. show more But basically, Louis - and Rachel, to a lesser extent - is a parent who makes wildly selfish decisions to placate his own guilt. He's not thinking about Ellie, his six year old daughter, or his grieving wife, when he makes the worst decision in the history of horror novels, he's thinking about himself. And who would actually do what he does? The cat was one thing - that was mostly Jud's doing anyway - but what the hell, hero? Wanting to go back in time is one thing, but knowing what he knows about dicking with the 'Indian burial ground' behind the pet cemetery, Louis still thinks that he's acting out of love when he offers up another victim. He even tells himself - in one of the many boring chapters that are basically just Louis trying to rationalise his insanity - 'Do you want to resurrect a zombie from a grade-B horror picture? And even if you're able to be satisfied with that, how do you explain the return of your son from the dead?' None of part two makes any bloody sense! And yes, I know Louis has gone crazy with grief, but that whole section just shits on the characters and their love and sorrow for each other in the first half.

Louis the great idiot and terrible doctor aside, the plot is sooooo sloooow. Not in a pleasant way, or a constructive style - God knows Louis doesn't have much of a character to develop in the first place - but just slow. The story that everyone thinks they know - mostly from the 1989 film - happens in the last 100 pages of the book. I still love Jud and Victor Pascow, but again, from their portrayal in the first film more than King's novel. And Ellie deserves a sequel or a cameo in another book, because she's the only sympathetic character in the story - killing her off to avoid working with a demonic toddler in the new film was a mistake.

Another great idea badly executed by the King of Horror. show less

It’s 1983, and I’ve secured a paperback copy of a book that all my friends are talking about. It’s a horror book by this guy named Stephen King who I’ve never heard of before, but everyone in school is talking about this thing. Home from school, through the house without engaging in conversation with the parental units, slammed door, dumped school books, plop on bed, start reading. As the afternoon sun wans, I’m too riveted to get up and pull the drapes, a mistake I’ll regret when the dark descends in earnest. Banging on the door – it’s Wednesday, and I’ve lost track of time and will be late for the mid-week Bible service, but it’s just a quick walk across a parking lot to the church building. Through the singing and show more reading and praying, all I can think about is Victor Pascow, the reanimated, gooey harbinger in Louis Creed’s dreams, or was it a dream – Louis had scratches on his arm and pine needles in the bed. On the walk back across the parking lot, the dark is oppressive – it’s never been this dark. Back on the bed, only to realize an hour or so later, I still forgot to pull the drapes, but I’m not going over to that window now, safer in the bed. Book finished well into the night, maybe midnight or later. No sleep.

36 years later, I’ve never forgotten Victor Pascow, or Paxcow, as Louis Creed’s daughter calls him. Never forgotten the [Pet Sematary]. As I re-read the book for the first time in so long, I knew what was coming next. But what was fresh for me was the literary quality of the book. Back in 1983, I didn’t have as many books under my belt, and didn’t notice the slow burn King manages in the lead up to the horror. It’s like the moment you wake feeling something on your face, knowing something is crawling on you and afraid to open your eyes but, in the same moment, desperate to open your eyes and get whatever creepy-crawly it is off your face. The suspense is a low-voltage charge, building and building and building to what you know is going to be a heart-bursting conclusion.

King is much more literary in [Pet Sematary] than is evident from all the attention the horror elements in the book garner. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ you say, not buying it from a Constant Reader like me – here’s a couple quotes to prove my point:

"Louis Creed was no psychiatrist, but he knew there are rusty, half-buried things in the terrain of any life and that human beings seem compelled to go back to these things and pull at them, even though they cut."

"It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horrors which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls - as little as one may like to admit it, human experience tends, in a good many ways, to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one's sense of humor begins to reassert itself."

I dare you – I triple-dog dare you. Pull the drapes open and sit down with this great book.

Bottom Line:Close the drapes before you start, you’ll appreciate the other qualities of this book that don’t get enough attention.

4 ½ bones!!!!! show less

‘Pet Sematary’ is the third book in my Stephen King 2026 Reading Challenge and I’m setting it aside at 10%.

The decision to set the book aside is more about me than it is about the novel.

I started it two weeks ago, and I’ve only made it through the first two hours of the audiobook. That’s not because the book is hard to read. The prose is accessible. Michael C. Hall’s narration captures the nuance of the text and the dialogue. The characters are clearly drawn. The sense of place is strong, and the sense of threat is even stronger.

The problem is that this is not a book that I want to read. Why? Well, firstly, after the briefest of acquaintances, I decided that I don’t like Dr. Louis Creed. He’s judgmental, combative, show more condescending and more than a little wrapped up in himself. Secondly, and more importantly, I can sense the tsunami of grief that is going to crash over him and his wife, and I want none of it.

Stephen King says in his introduction that this is a book he was reluctant to publish because he felt it had crossed a line. I’ve barely scratched the surface of it, and I’m already conscious of the transgressive nature of the novel. This is going to be about death and grief and rage and despair, and I don’t want to go there, partly because I know that Stephen King will make those experiences traumatic by making them have the emotional weight that they deserve.

So, I’m moving on to the next book, ‘Rose Madder’, which is longer and perhaps sadder than ‘Pet Sematary’, but at least it is about a struggle where it’s possible for the protagonist to win through in the end. show less

I first read this book when I was 13 and I remember it being one of the few books I've ever found truly unsettling. There's not much truly "scary" in this book in the traditional horror sense, but the sense that something awful can happen, out of nowhere, to upend a family so quickly frightened me far more than the ghosts of The Shining ever did. Upon reread mumble years later, I find that the creeping dread that leads to the central tragedy is still there but I was more struck by the numbness inherent in Louis' grief as an adult. Ultimately, this one not only holds up but is richer with more experience, something I can't say for many books I loved as a teen. If you think you know Stephen King's writing and haven't read this one, I show more would say you don't know how good his work can be...yet. show less

Reading this on the heels of Christine showed up the sloppy inconsistencies in this book. Where Christine is sharp and laser focused, Pet Sematary is wobbly and weaves around like a drunk. Problems with tone and show versus tell are the biggest ones, but there are character annoyances, too. Maybe those aren't flaws, but they detracted from my enjoyment of this book.

Let's start with focus or lack of it. In Christine we are focused on tight set of characters and circumstances that all have bearing on the current events. Arnie, Dennis, their parents, Leigh, Lebay and Christine are basically the only players and their back stories and personal demons are all important, so when King goes down a rathole to explore one of them it has show more relevance. In Pet Sematary the biggest rathole has almost none and so was grating and took me out of the story. This was Rachel's back story; her psychological trauma and resulting mindless fear of death, the dead, coffins, funerals, hearses and anything else remotely connected with death. Shit, she was probably even afraid of grave markers she was so nutty. The idiotic way she was portrayed made me want to get a Zelda mask and creep up on her and say "boo!". In the end though, her irrational fears had pretty much no bearing on the main story which is the death of her kid. She made it to the funeral and the cemetery despite her psychological problems, so it didn't matter that she had them. Sloppy. Plus I usually enjoy the various nooks and crannies that fill out King's tales (some call this bloat, but I don't), but this time I didn't. Rachel was annoying and I personally rooted for Zelda.

The other thing that I found glaringly different from Christine was tone. The individual stories of each player and the events in their lives had the same feel to them and were presented in the same way. Both Arnie and Dennis found Christine's magical self-repairing creepy and unsettling. Leigh, too, found things to keep her awake at night. They were all of a piece and presented with the same loving concern for Arnie. When Christine's killing spree started, those were given to us in a cold, just the facts sort of way. When Leigh and Dennis set their plan in motion it took on a lot of the tone of Christine's parts, thus smoothing out the emotional and the documentary approaches. Not so in Pet Sematary.

The beginning of the story is set out with King's usual sentiment and romance. A man and his family begin a new chapter in their lives. Lou is a bit mystified to find himself in the role of father and breadwinner, but bends to his yoke happily enough, secure in the knowledge that he can bear it and it will feel light. When Jud comes into his life as surrogate father, he's almost delirious with happiness at his situation and so are we. We proceed to the deaths; Pascow, Church, Norma and lastly Gage. Each is presented with increasing sharpness, sentiment and sadness. Gage's in particular is gut-wrenching. The family breakdown is equally emotional and tortured. Jed is unsteady, Rachel is practically catatonic, Ellie is lost and Lou is foundering. But fast-forward to the very end and we're suddenly transported to Dawn of the Dead or Evil Dead…it's camp. Camp! After all that emotional turmoil, degradation and pain we get a zombie Michael Myers, just add clown suit. Thanks, Steve.

Lastly there is the show don't tell rule breaking that goes on. I don't know what happened exactly, but unlike Christine, King just has to keep repeating how the evil entity works its devilish magic. The innate sense of what's going on underneath just isn't conveyed the way it is in Christine. In that story we just feel that the already twisted Lebay and Christine are melded together as one malign entity. As soon as Christine comes into his life, Lebay is somehow completed and something greater is born. We don't know how or why, we just know. In Pet Sematary however, we have to be told (repeatedly) that the evil presence in the Micmac burying ground is controlling events and destroying men's sanity. Again, I don't know what's broken here, but that underlying assurance that there is a master plan just isn't present. I'm told that the Wendigo or whatever made Jud take Lou up there in the first place, laying the seeds for future reaping, but I don't feel it. Lou's disintegrating sanity is well done, but Jud's state of mind (control) isn't. A better student of fiction writing than I can probably come up with an explanation of what's missing in Pet Sematary, I just know it's there. Maybe instead of dwelling on Rachel's unimportant neuroses, we could have had more information about others who got sucked into the Wendigo's madness. Maybe had more about what happened to Jud, his dog and his friends (Jud's telling is very factual and not very spiritual, so maybe that's what makes it less felt as the fabric of the universe). Maybe some chapters from the POV of the malignancy itself like we had in Cujo. Either way, I think it would have helped solve a lot of the jarring ups and downs in the story. show less