Over the course of one week, all Hell breaks loose in Castle Rock, Maine…
My review of Needful Things by Stephen King in video (with closed captions) is below. I accidentally recorded both myself and my computer screen, but I have not the will to record it again to fix that. Cheers!
Grab the Lapels 
I enjoyed hearing you talk about the book Melanie. You are so articulate, and you didn’t appear to speak from notes! (My bookgroup has done this choose-a-book-by-a-particular-author twice in our 36 year history, with the second time being last year in tribute to a loved author of ours who died in early 2024. I love a lot about these sorts of meeting though of course they can be frustrating too.)
You won’t be surprised to know that I am not a big Stephen King fan, but I did buy Mr Gums many years ago Different seasons, which contains four King novellas, three of which had been made into movies – The Shawshank redemption, Stand by me, and Apt pupil. As I recollect, Apt pupil was the creepiest, but none were horror. I don’t know about the fourth one.
Anyhow, your wrapping up of Needful things was interesting. Your critique made sense and I could understand why you found the change part way through not to your liking. Did anyone else in your group choose that? Probably not given the size of King’s oeuvre and the size of that book. How many would choose an 800 page book if they could choose something shorter!!
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I didn’t have any notes, but I’m also used to thinking through things on the fly from my years as a professor. You just have to have an idea about darn near anything all the time. It’s interesting that you wouldn’t have the books from Different Seasons horror because I find both Shawshank and Stand by Me terrifying in the sense that vile, evil people exist, and we may not know their motives, or we do and it doesn’t matter. Often, the evil people in these stories are just humans, not paranormal, and that’s even scarier.
I think a lot of folks in the group chose longer novels? I should check in on the Facebook group and ask.
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That’s one of the reasons I decided not to become a teacher … I didn’t feel I could think on the fly – actually I can think on the fly but I can’t seem to get the words out in an articulate way. People who can impress me!
I understand exactly what you are saying about horror. But I feel opposite to you. If I’m going to read about “evil” (a word I don’t like a lot because it feels too laden with too many meanings) I’d rather read about “real” people. That sounds weird I know but I sort of feel why do I want to read someone’s imagined horror when we have enough of our own! You are probably going to say but in horror right is restored, but that’s not real to me so it doesn’t make me feel better? I’m mostly happier with uncertainty.
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In a lot of horror, good does not persevere. What I like is that horror is often working through metaphors to talk about something real. For example, there is an Iranian horror film called Under the Shadow. A woman and her son are in Iran, bombs dropping around them, but they don’t want to leave. They are menaced by a shadowy ghost. If you pay attention, you start to notice the ghost often looks like a veil, the kind some regimes require to oppress women. The name–Under the Shadow–can mean the shadow/ghost haunting her, or it can mean the shadow of the dictatorial regime, etc. Therefore, her story is not specific to one horrific situation connected to real life, but a stand in for all oppressed women in the middle east. That sort of thing. A specific, true story haunts me. I am not a fan of true crime because I don’t want to listen to or read about the real ways in which people destroy each other. I don’t learn anything or sympathize, I just feel bad.
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I understand … we are all different aren’t we even though in the end we are looking, mostly, for the same things, including insight and understanding.
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I loved watching this! You are so articulate as the comment mentions above, it was a great review.
I watched the trailer for this movie because I was curious, it does sound like a really interesting premise, but I don’t think I can read an 800 page novel. I just can’t, especially when all those new characters are introduced in the middle. Nope.
And I know it’s not like this, but your description of the beginning of the book, the small town vibe, reminded me of a cozy mystery, sort of like Cabot Cove Maine in Murder She Wrote. Obviously this book veers away from the cozy mystery vibe pretty quickly, but I always love a tale set in a small town. And what’s with Maine anyway? Why do so many people die there? lol
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Thanks for the complimentary words! I haven’t seen the movie since the 90s, but I do think there is a total small town vibe where everyone thinks they know everyone, but in this setting lots of folks keep their business to themselves, so it’s not so much secrets as just not sharing. I know King’s books are set in Maine because that’s where he lives, but maybe in Murder She Wrote they were looking for that cute, coastal, eastern shore vibe for Jessica Lange.
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