Update: Week 8

Week 8

Novel: The Shining

Published: 1977

Pages read: 183-281 (/497)

Update: Week 7

Week 7

Novel: 'Salem's Lot

Published: 1975

Pages read: 383-478 (/478)

Novel: The Shining

Published: 1977

Pages read: 1-182 (/497)

‘Salem’s Lot: Review

I’ve wanted to read ‘Salem’s Lot for a long time, but for some reason or another I’ve never got round to it, but I’m glad I have done so now. This project, of reading nothing but Stephen King novels for a year, has given me the drive I’ve needed to read those books I’ve had on my shelves for years and have yet to pick up and open.

In the novel, the main hero, Ben Mears, is a writer of moderate success, who has returned to the town of his childhood, Jerusalem’s (‘Salem’s) Lot, in order to write a new book, and expel some inner demons that those formative years had instilled in him. When Ben arrives he intends to rent the Marsten House, which looms over the town like a dark watchman, and is the place of Ben’s turmoil. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), the house has been bought by the mysterious Mr Straker, and his allusive business partner, Mr Barlow.

Finding a room in the lodging house of Eva Miller, Ben sets to work writing his book. Ben also starts a relationship with a young woman in the town, Susan Norton, which doesn’t go down too well with Susan’s mother, or Susan’s ex-boyfriend, Floyd Tibbits.

Nothing seems out the ordinary until two boys go missing, Danny and Ralphie Glick, while on their way to their friend, Mark Petrie’s house. After Danny turns up a little while later, without Ralphie, and then later dies, things start to get worse for the people of ‘Salem’s Lot, as Danny returns as a vampire.

In ‘Salem’s Lot, vampirism spreads more like a disease, with the victims not really knowing what is happening to them at the beginning, except they feel a little ill and don’t like the sunlight. They also have no recollection of being bitten, or if they do they pass it off as a dream or nightmare, brought on by stress, and in some cases, as in Danny Glick’s mother, grief.

As Ben, Susan, Mark Petrie and a few others realise what is happening, they attempt to take on Straker and Barlow, and stop the situation getting worse.

King doesn’t give us any hard and fast rules regarding the vampires in ‘Salem’s Lot, and like his characters as they search the available myths and legends, find out which ones work and which ones don’t. It’s a “let’s try everything, and hope for the best” approach that we as the reader would attempt if it happened in real life, and it is this believability of the situation created by King’s writing, which makes the book so frightening. It is everything you would want not only from a Stephen King novel, but from a vampire novel in general.

Update: Week 6

Week 6

Novel: 'Salem's Lot

Published: 1975

Pages read: 261-382 (/478)

King's Vampires

Vampires are everywhere, in the realms of popular culture anyway, and it seems now more than ever. Granted, I’ve penned a vampire novel myself, Ritual of Blood (2003, 2nd edition 2009), and I don’t see these creatures of the night disappearing any time soon. Currently the vampire is coming over more and more as a romantic figure who is troubled by a vicious blood lust that they are fighting to control, such as in Stephanie Meyer's ‘Twilight’ series; an every teenage girls’ fantasy to be tamed despite of the danger. This has either drawn you in, making you long for a vampire lover of your own, or repulsed you, as a betrayal of everything the vampire legend stands for.

In King’s novel, ‘Salem’s Lot, the vampires are evil, plain and simple, using powers of hypnosis and sexual allure to draw their victims in and turn them also into the Undead. Traditional vampires, you might say, with a hint of the modern nature of the time (1975).

I have nearly finished reading ‘Salem’s lot, (and shall be reviewing it as soon as I have), and the influence of Bram Stoker’s classic, Dracula, leaps off the page of this book, and not to its detriment. It doesn’t need to re-write the rules, it assumes we know them, or know most of them, and when it adds a little here or takes away a little there, it doesn’t jar with the vampire myth.

What we discover about the vampires in ‘Salem’s Lot frightens us when it differs, and only ever so slightly, from what we expect from a vampire tale, for example, the mere bite of a vampire in ‘Salem’s Lot can begin the change into one, and the fact that while the victim is being bitten it provokes a state of sexual arousal.

‘Salem’s Lot has endured because of how King uses the vampire legends he grew up with and sets them in a story that it truly terrifying.

Update: Week 5

Week 5

Novel: 'Salem's Lot

Published: 1975

Pages read: 77-260 (/478)