Rage

I wanted to read this, because I discovered it was no longer in publication. Whenever I'm told I can't read something, it makes me want to read it more.

This was a very well written book about the breaking point of a youth who has grown up with difficult surroundings. I felt King did an incredible job of taking us inside the exhausted mind of a broken boy.

We watch as our main character holds a room of his peers 'hostage' and plays psychological games with them until he can make them snap.

An incredible read.

It's an interesting book, showing King before he had honed his craft as a writer. The story concerns a high school shooter with a never-disclosed mental illness who turns a hostage situation into a therapy session for his classmates. The true horror is when the classmates turn on a boy, rendering them little better than the protagonist. It had the potential to be so much more, but given the main character has zero redeeming qualities, it falls a little flat.

My #stephenking #readathon with @ame9022 and @wendysallison has moved on to RAGE, the first of the Bachman Books, the novels that Stephen King released early in his career under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.

This was a hard book to read, given the current state of gun violence in schools in our country, and seems very prescient in a way. The book follows one afternoon in a Maine high school, when student Charlie Decker kills his algebra teacher and takes the class hostage. What follows is an alternating narration of Charlie's troubled childhood with secrets held by the students in the class, as well as Decker's taunting of the school officials and police involved in trying to apprehend him.

The whole thing culminates with the students show more in the class turning on Ted Jones, the only student in the classroom who eventually doesn't seem to want to be there of his own volition. They beat Jones into unconsciousness and Decker gives himself up, and that's basically the story. Written when SK was in high school, and slightly cleaned up to be published under the Bachman alias, I feel it tries to be more ambitious that its capable of being. Given our current state of affairs with gun violence in schools, I'm sure I also read this with a slight bias against the story from the onset. I'm also fairly certain that this will be one of those books that I'm never going to feel a reason to revisit again.

King eventually let this book fall out of publication after it was discovered in the locker of Michael Carneal, the 14-year-old who opened fire on his fellow students at Heath High School in 1997.

#stephenking #horror #rage #richardbachman #thebachmanbooks #bachmanbooks #horrorbooks #horrorbookstagram #bookstagram #book #bookworm #booksbooksbooks #bookreview #frommybookshelf #frommybookshelfblog show less

RECENSIONE A CURA DEL BLOG "GLI OCCHI DEL LUPO" - Pamela Perretta

“Ossessione” è il primo libro scritto nel 1966 dal maestro dell’horror Stephen King con lo pseudonimo di Richard Bachman e pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1977.
La storia di questo libro è alquanto macabra e inquietante, non tanto per ciò che racconta, quanto per il fatto che pare strettamente collegata ad alcuni episodi di violenza avvenuti negli USA di cui fu ritenuto capo espiatorio. Infatti, nel 1996 a Washington e nel 1997 nel Kentucky due ragazzi nella propria scuola uccisero in totale 5 persone, ed entrambi avevano a casa una copia di “Ossessione”. Inoltre, il libro richiama molto il massacro della Columbine High School avvenuto in Colorado nel 1999. show more Tutti questi episodi sembravano perfette emulazioni di ciò che accade nel libro, dunque Stephen King decise di interromperne la produzione.
Ad oggi, “Ossessione” è ritenuto un capolavoro, un bestseller, un pezzo da collezione, è introvabile e le poche copie usate che si trovano nelle varie piattaforme di vendita di libri hanno dei costi che oscillano tra i 50 e i 100 € (io stessa ho faticato nel trovare la mia, ma alla fine ce l’ho fatta!).

“La follia nascosta
di un ragazzo come tanti”

“Ossessione” ci racconta la storia di Charlie, un ragazzo come tanti che però dietro un’apparenza tranquilla nasconde una personalità incapace di far fronte ai problemi di tutti i giorni. Tutta la sua rabbia e il suo risentimento esplodono una mattina a scuola, dove si reca con una pistola, uccide due insegnanti e tiene intrappolati tutti i suoi compagni di classe. Tutta la sua frustrazione si riversa sui suoi compagni che a poco a poco iniziano a rivelare particolari scottanti della propria vita, fino ad arrivare ad un punto in cui non ci sono più segreti da scoprire, un punto di non ritorno in cui tutti sanno tutto di tutti e escono allo scoperto gli antri più oscuri dell’animo umano. Fuori, nel frattempo, la polizia cerca di far ragionare Charlie per fargli liberare i suoi compagni e porre fine alla tragedia, ma Charlie ha un piano e ha intenzione di portarlo a termine a qualunque costo!

“La sensazione che stavo vivendo
era di essere fuori di me
ed era la prima volta che mi
sentivo così.
Come se al posto di guida ci fosse qualcun altro,
un altro io.
Io ero solo un ospite, seduto di fianco a me stesso.”

“Ossessione” è stata una lettura intensa, cruda, raccapricciante! King è riuscito perfettamente ad entrare nella testa di un adolescente: chi di noi durante la propria giovinezza non ha vissuto dei momenti in cui sentiva tutto il mondo contro? Bene, King ci fa arrivare perfettamente questa sensazione attraverso i gesti ma anche le storie raccontate da Charlie, rimettendo pian piano tutti i tasselli al proprio posto. Il personaggio di Charlie rispecchia il mezzo, attraverso la follia, con cui si vuole fare giustizia, non in senso letterale, piuttosto una giustizia vista come espiazione delle proprie “colpe” attraverso la rivelazione dei segreti scottanti che spesso si celano dietro un’esistenza perfetta.

La capacità di King di sondare i meandri più oscuri della mente umana non delude mai!
Un libro stupendo e profondo, per chi sa cogliere gli insegnamenti e le riflessioni celati tra le righe. show less

This book is the first that Stephen King published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1977. It deals with a high school student's descent into mental illness. Charlie Decker has inner demons...and when they break to the surface he takes a gun to school. There were warning signs.....he had behavior issues, trouble at home with his overbearing father, and assaulted a teacher so badly the man almost died. As he faces expulsion from high school and being sent to a reform school, Charlie breaks. He kills two teachers and takes an entire classroom hostage.

Stephen King has let this book fall out of print. The only way to read it is to find an old copy. I found an omnibus of four Bachman books from the 1980s called The Bachman Books. Newer show more editions of this collection do not include Rage. King had the book removed from the collection in 1997 following a school shooting in Kentucky. The Bachman Books was found in the shooter's locker after the incident. King is quite outspoken about gun control these days. I almost stopped reading the book out of respect for King's wishes to let this particular story disappear (and because as the mom of a teenage boy this was a really really hard book to read)....but I felt it was important to finish. I wanted to see inside the mind of a teenager who reached a point where he believed a gun was the answer to his problems.

Rage is not really about school shooters or the mental break that sends loners down that sort of violent path. For me it was more of a statement on the cruelty humans show to one another on a daily basis and how that can have lasting, horrible effects. Charlie starts his slide into mental instability as a young child witnessing his parent's toxic relationship. By the time he reaches high school, he just can't handle a world that makes him feel so small. We all endure high school....that little microcosm of society where any weakness, difference or mistake is exploited. It's a wonderful time and a horrible experience at the same time. As Charlie sits in a classroom with a gun pointed at 25 of his fellow students, we get a peek into The Truth. The real emotions, feelings and predatory behavior that they are all feeling. The gun is just the catalyst that pushes the situation into hard, cold reality.

This story was a very emotional and difficult one for me to read. As the parent of a teenage boy, I wonder sometimes about the safety of public school and the world my son will have to navigate as an adult. It's scary. I think Rage is somewhat dated. Charlie is portrayed as a sort of anti-hero....a misunderstood, abused and confused boy who needs mental help. This version of the school shooter is a bit different than the one seen today....loners who want to take out people they are jealous of or who they feel victimized them. Loners who crave instant attention or notoriety. Internet fame. Followers. A lasting infamy. A yearning to be important. The reality seems a lot more bleak and sad than fictional Charlie Decker from 1977.

I totally understand why Stephen King wants this book to just fade away. It's too real and seems to give an excuse for violence. I'm glad I finished it. I will have to mull it over in my head a bit longer to fully decide what I think about the story though. show less

Maybe describing Rage as 'Stephen King does The Breakfast Club' is too obvious, but there it is.

Charlie Decker decides to 'get it on' one day. He shoots his Algebra teacher and takes the class hostage. Rather than freezing up into a state of catatonia, the class becomes group therapy and there is much soul searching.

I have to be honest and say that I think the main character, Charlie is a pretty irritating character. I felt like my sympathies were misplaced. Ted (a character who is dumped on through the story) was a much better (and more sympathetic) character than our star.

And even though the novel was short at a hundred and seventy pages, at the end it felt like it was dragging. Despite the promising set up, this book didn't grab me. show more I'd say it's the weakest of his novels I've yet read. show less

There are portions through the first half of this book that show Stephen King as a still-new and not quite in control of his craft yet. There are sections that try too hard, sections that are awkward, and sections that are damn near embarrassing.

But in the back half? It simply seems to take off and soar.

This is obviously King's practice run at the high school culture he would later nail in [b:Carrie|10592|Carrie|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1166254258s/10592.jpg|1552134], but it's also his take on [a:William Golding|306|William Golding|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1198342496p2/306.jpg]'s [b:Lord of the Flies|14425|Lord of the Flies|William show more Golding|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|2766512], an oft-mentioned favourite of King's, and finally, he's mixed in a touch of The Breakfast Club albeit without the humour.

King had a lot to say here, probably more than he's said in most of his other works of fiction. That's both a good and bad thing. It's good, because he often nails it, or at least peels back the scab to allow us a good look at the wound. It's bad because there's times when it's so earnest that it's overwrought.

Still, for all of that, it's an early work, and it's an interesting glimpse into the author that would become a household name. show less