Needful Things: The Last Castle Rock Story

I think this might be my favourite Stephen King novel (generally speaking I find him hit and miss), pipping Desperation, Under the Dome, or 11.22.63) by a whisker. The story is a clever slow-burn which moves us along from a bit of small town mischief centred around the new antique shop in Castle Rock to absolute carnage and mass casualties.

Leland Gaunt is one of King's best villains and is brilliantly drawn. There is a huge cast of other characters, as is normal for a King tome, so you need to keep your wits about you to remember who everyone is. Young Brian Rusk who is the closest there is to another central figure is a lovely little character who is so well drawn and ultimately corrupted that the reader is pulled in by an irresistible show more force.

I've read this three times now. show less

I'm on a Stephen King reread kick--it's very interesting to me to see which books I still enjoy, and which I think are complete trash.

I absolutely loved this book; I obviously knew what happened, but I couldn't put it down. Some might be turned off by the excess of characters and subplots, but that is actually one of the things I really enjoyed. . . when a character appeared who did NOT have a complex subplot, that was actually what disappointed me (I wanted to hear what happened with EVERYONE!). The end is a little slow, as it gets to be fairly obvious how things are going to wind up, but I was still entertained by the "finale."

Fascinating, intricate character work, underscored by a consistent theme throughout. Certainly more "brain show more candy" than high-minded literature, but don't we all deserve a sweet or two now and then? show less

This is another Uncle Stevie re-read, and another that stands the test of time. Most people know the story, either from the book or the film version - an outsider opens a curiosity shop in a small Maine town, and the bargains he strikes for each item are more costly than they appear.

Interestingly, I always thought of this book as a subtle shift on the vampire story. But this read made it clear that King sees Leland Gaunt as a demon of sorts. It's a detail I didn't recall from my earlier reads.

The characters, true to King's best, are infinitely complex and captivating, their struggles between right and wrong/good and evil playing out throughout every page. The only thing that keeps this one from 5 bones is the cutting meanness which show more takes on too sharp an edge occasionally. Perhaps it's unpalatable right now because that meanness has emerged in every day life too often these days.

4 1/2 bones!!!!!
Highly recommended show less

Ahh..."The Last Castle Rock Story"... and what a good one it is! The Devil has come to town, and he finds quite a willing group of citizenry to do his bidding! He/Stephen King then hotwires, and then cross wires the "good" folks of Castle Rock and sits back to watch the fireworks. Literally! Neighbor versus neighbor, Sherriff versus Ace, and even the Catholics against the Baptists! I really liked the way this one is set up... and then torn apart! Bye-bye Castle Rock. Rest in pieces.

Ahh..."The Last Castle Rock Story"... and what a good one it is! The Devil has come to town, and he finds quite a willing group of citizenry to do his bidding! He/Stephen King then hotwires, and then cross wires the "good" folks of Castle Rock and sits back to watch the fireworks. Literally! Neighbor versus neighbor, Sherriff versus Ace, and even the Catholics against the Baptists! I really liked the way this one is set up... and then torn apart! Bye-bye Castle Rock. Rest in pieces.

NEEDFUL THINGS is one Stephen King book that sat on my shelf far too long before I got around to reading it. It uses one of his basic tropes, that of the small community beset by an outside evil, one that worms its way into the heart of said community, and then wrecks havoc. In SALEM’S LOT, the title town met the evil that was Mr. Barlow, the vampire; in IT, the town is Derry and the villain is Pennywise the Dancing Clown, in THE TOMMYKNOCKERS, it’s the little town of Haven overrun by an alien presence let loose from a long buried spacecraft. In this book, the town in question is Castle Rock, Maine, the setting of a number of King’s previous works, and the evil, which sets up shop on Main Street, is Leland Gaunt, the proprietor of show more a new knickknack store called Needful Things. Those who enter Gaunt’s establishment find an item that is their heart’s desire, be it a Sandy Koufax baseball card, a pair of sunglasses worn by Elvis himself, a Bazun fishing rod, or a charm that miraculously cures arthritis. Once the unsuspecting lay eyes on the item they secretly lust after, they will do anything to have it, and it is their lucky day, for Mr. Gaunt doesn’t ask for payment in currency, instead asking his ensnared customers to perform a “harmless” prank on another member of the community. These pranks are anything but benign; instead they push the buttons of their victims, hitting them right in their fears, hates, and resentments. Soon, a chain reaction of escalating violence is rippling through the town of Castle Rock, building toward a bloodbath while Mr. Gaunt patiently waits inside his store for it all go down.

I liked this book a lot, it’s not THE STAND or THE SHINING, but for a plot that is a basic potboiler, King gets everything out of it that he possibly could. Maybe a more subtle writer might have done more with the story, it certainly has possibilities, but subtlety is not why I read Stephen King. My paperback copy comes in at 700+ pages, so there is space to set the table and introduce the varied citizens of Castle Rock, recognizable to any Constant Reader as his usual crew of narrow minded, covetous, foul tempered and foul mouthed small town Maine residents. One particular rotten apple has a first name of Danforth, which surely was a swipe at J. Danforth Quayle, who was Vice President at the time the book was written, and who was considered to be rather feckless by his critics. There are references to VCRs, fax machines, Princess Phones, the movie YOUNG GUNS, that does date the book to the early ‘90s, but once I was immersed in the story, I didn’t really notice. The pace in the middle section does sag a bit – Ace Merrill’s trip to Boston goes on too long – but once the story really gets going at the end of the second act, it becomes a real page turner. Alan Pangborn and Polly Chambers, the novel’s main characters, are the kind of flawed protagonists King writes well, and Leland Gaunt is the kind of antagonist familiar to King’s books, an evil that is never quite truly explained, and that’s just fine. Like the malevolent force behind the doors at the Overlook Hotel, Gaunt appears to be an entity who feeds upon human weakness, and in Castle Rock, he finds a buffet. There’s a creepy spider, and plenty of gore, but one of the more horrific aspects of the story was how well King gets into the tyranny of constant pain, as with Polly’s arthritis of the hands. There are references to earlier King books set in and around Castle Rock – CUJO, THE BODY, THE DEAD ZONE, THE SUN DOG, THE DARK HALF – that are a real treat for us Constant Readers. This being a Stephen King book, there are some heavy handed knocks at organized religion, and having one prominent town resident being a closeted homosexual comes off as a tired cliché now. In the end, if NEEDFUL THINGS (an apt description of Gaunt’s unwary victims) doesn’t quite measure up to King’s best books, it is because we have seen its premise, themes, and tropes in earlier books. Still, there’s nothing wrong with using familiar chords to play a different tune.

After this book, King washed his hands of Castle Rock, but reading this novel now, and looking back at the passage of time, I wish King in the latter part of his career might reconsider, and give us a story that tells us what happened to that town in the years since. If not, at least King should think about bringing back Leland Gaunt for another appearance in a different book, he’s a great villain. And looking back, maybe we shouldn’t have had so much fun at Dan Quayle’s expense, we’ve seen much worse than him come and go in the years since. show less

With this tome of Stephen King small town horror, I'm constantly amazed that I had missed picking this up and geeking out over it when it first came out.

I'm certain that I would have. It has all the things I'd been learning to geek out about with his general horror universe, including Cthulhu references, homages to his previous works including events and characters, all of them strung up as if on a map of homicide victims on a perp board, and of course, Castle Rock, itself.

Castle Rock Entertainment, indeed. This is the grand blowout of the town, with evil creeping in and changing all of its residents from a patina of middle-class respectability and Rockwellian charm into roving bands of gleeful murderers with very dark hearts.

And can we show more really blame it entirely upon Antique Madness? Roadshow Antiques? That equally weird craze of the early 90's, turned EVIL? Or was it just Mr. Gaunt, aka (Flagg, maybe?) stirring up loads of crap? Nah, it's just the greed and pride of humanity, stoked in just the right way, and that's what Stephen King is really known for.

His supernatural aspects are generally underplayed and always in direct support of deep characterizations, of twisting flawed people into even more atrocious examples of humanity, with usually only a few semi-heroic survivors at the end that *sometimes* manage to make it through the fire.

This novel is a shining example of all this, taking all the best simmering-pot boil-over of 'Salem's Lot, the twisted madness of Tommyknockers, and throwing in an epic battle of two older ladies eviscerating each other in broad daylight on the street. :)

Truly a charming novel. :) show less