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'Salem's Lot
This a previously-published edition of ISBN 9781444708141.
"Turn off the television—in fact, why don't you turn off all the lights except for the one over your favourite chair?—and we'll talk about vampires here in the dim. I think I can make you believe in them." Stephen King, from the Introduction.
'Salem's Lot is a small New England town with the usual quota of gossips, drinkers, weirdos and respectable folk. Of course there are tales of strange happenings—but not more than in any other town its size.
Ben Mears, a moderately successful writer, returns to the Lot to write a novel based on his early years, and to exorcise the terrors that have haunted him since childhood. The event he witnessed in the house now rented by a new resident. A newcomer with a strange allure. A man who causes Ben some unease as things start to happen: a child disappears, a dog is brutally killed—nothing unusual, except the list starts to grow.
Soon surprise will turn to bewilderment, bewilderment to confusion and finally to terror . . .
"Turn off the television—in fact, why don't you turn off all the lights except for the one over your favourite chair?—and we'll talk about vampires here in the dim. I think I can make you believe in them." Stephen King, from the Introduction.
'Salem's Lot is a small New England town with the usual quota of gossips, drinkers, weirdos and respectable folk. Of course there are tales of strange happenings—but not more than in any other town its size.
Ben Mears, a moderately successful writer, returns to the Lot to write a novel based on his early years, and to exorcise the terrors that have haunted him since childhood. The event he witnessed in the house now rented by a new resident. A newcomer with a strange allure. A man who causes Ben some unease as things start to happen: a child disappears, a dog is brutally killed—nothing unusual, except the list starts to grow.
Soon surprise will turn to bewilderment, bewilderment to confusion and finally to terror . . .
751 pages, Paperback
First published October 17, 1975
About the author
Stephen King
2,599 books860k followersStephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 22,978 reviews
November 21, 2018
4.5 stars
I feel like there has been a lot of debate over Stephen King's last few books about what genre he might be considered anymore. Mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, general fiction, etc. etc. etc. - you just don't hear Stephen King = horror all that much anymore. Well, if you want to get back to the roots, Salem's Lot is pure, raw, old school Stephen King horror at its finest!
I am doing a re-read of most of Stephen King's books chronologically and Salem's Lot was the next after Carrie. I read it originally sometime back in the 90s. I am so glad I did because, honestly, I don't remember any of it!
Salem's Lot is a vampire story influenced by vampire fiction, like Stoker's Dracula, as well as vampire horror flicks. The influence of both these mediums is very evident, while at the same time King crafts a new, unique, and terrifying vampire story of his own. If you are a fan of the original, raw, pure evil vampire (not ones that sparkle), you need to make sure and read this book!
Those of you out there who have heard about King, haven't read him before, and are wondering where to start, this would be a great place to do so! I think many would agree that this is up there with King's horror fiction at its best.
I feel like there has been a lot of debate over Stephen King's last few books about what genre he might be considered anymore. Mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, general fiction, etc. etc. etc. - you just don't hear Stephen King = horror all that much anymore. Well, if you want to get back to the roots, Salem's Lot is pure, raw, old school Stephen King horror at its finest!
I am doing a re-read of most of Stephen King's books chronologically and Salem's Lot was the next after Carrie. I read it originally sometime back in the 90s. I am so glad I did because, honestly, I don't remember any of it!
Salem's Lot is a vampire story influenced by vampire fiction, like Stoker's Dracula, as well as vampire horror flicks. The influence of both these mediums is very evident, while at the same time King crafts a new, unique, and terrifying vampire story of his own. If you are a fan of the original, raw, pure evil vampire (not ones that sparkle), you need to make sure and read this book!
Those of you out there who have heard about King, haven't read him before, and are wondering where to start, this would be a great place to do so! I think many would agree that this is up there with King's horror fiction at its best.
Read
July 13, 2022Jahoobies...iykyk
November 26, 2023
2023 reread:
And so I reread it again — thank you, Fiona, for a wonderful buddy read! — and this time it’s like I was transported back to being young and discovering this book for the first time. I loved it again.
This time I was really taken by King’s ability to paint the setting. His prose is excellent, and the way he brings the small town with all its secrets to life is almost unparalleled. He just has this way with words, zeroing right on to the defining qualities of people and places. Even a very young King understood the darkness of people and small isolated places. Because there’s not too much of a supernatural push is even required to unleash the inner monsters of people; the inner low level of nastiness in the ordinary folks can only be outweighed by the inner decency of the others.
“The Lot” chapters are what those looking for “a great American novel” need to read.
4.5 stars.
—————
2022 reread through older eyes:
In my teens and early 20s I inhaled King’s books. He was THE writer, to the point when I actually disappointed my university literature professor who would have liked if I had preferred Dostoyevsky instead. And as I got older, King’s books mostly held up, and some even gained extra appreciation (ahem, Needful Things, you got better as you got older).
‘Salem’s Lot is a very young King, apparently started when he was 25, and it shows. It’s still good though, and is full of all that I like in King’s stories as even back then he was first and foremost a gifted storyteller: the creepy vibe of small towns and their inhabitants, and nastiness that lives inside regular people even before any actual “big” evil comes into their lives. And if there’s a hint of immaturity there — well, duh, the guy wasn’t born 75.
I was still fascinated by his signature meanderings that tell stories within stories, and the gradual ratcheting up of tension that’s better than any pay-off there can be.
3.5-4 stars on reread which I’m rounding up because, well, whaddya want from Constant Reader of Uncle Stevie’s yarns here?
————
————
Review from circa 2014 based on a few feverish reads of this book back in my teens:
There was a time once when vampires were ruthless predators and not the misunderstood brooding and essentially harmless creatures. Ahhhh, good old scary times...
Vampire stories have been around for a long time - after all, people love a good scare, and what is more terrifying than a monster showing up at night and sucking the life essence out of you? But leave it to Stephen King to turn the terror up a notch, add a whole new layer to it. How? Simply - using the winning formula that he continues to employ in the vast majority of his work.
In addition to showing us the monsters of the night, he also brings into the picture the monsters and the darkness that are already with us, that live in the deep dark recesses of everyone's soul.
The eponymous 'Salem's Lot is a small town in Maine, and it is not a stranger to secrets and darkness. It's quaint and pastoral on the surface, but once you look deeper you are bound to discover what lurks behind its respectable surface. And trust me, that's the discoveries that you can easily go without for the darkness of the human soul as presented by Stephen King beats everything that any monster or boogeyman can ever send your way. The small town of 'Salem's Lot can boast your usual lies, bullying, corruption, and prejudice - and spices it up with well-hidden child abuse, violence, and murders. Not so quaint, is it?
It is this portrayal of everyday people's secrets, of the towns being almost like living breathing organisms that is one of the big reasons why I am a huge fan of Stephen King's works.
From the very first pages of the novel we know that some terrible fate made 'Salem's Lot a ghost town with apparently only a couple of survivors. It doesn't take the reader long to realize, as we go back in time to see how the events unfolded, that the mysterious menacing Marsten House welcomed new evil that tends to lurk at night, floating past your (hopefully, tightly shut) windows.
The story itself is rather straightforward, steadily moving along to its almost-conclusion that we have glimpsed in the first few pages, and we watch with bated breath as our bunch of good guys - Ben, Mark, Susan, Matt - are trying to take on the supernatural horror. Oh, and did I forget Father Callahan?
King is excellent with the plotting and the pacing (since this was only his second novel, he was still a stranger to writing larger-than-life brick-sized tomes). The story never lags, the suspense and sense of foreboding are rampant, and there are quite a few truly nailbiting situations. Nothing distracts the reader from the vampire story unfolding on the background of small-town horrors. There are no heavy-handed lessons to be learned, no deep morals to take out of the story - all we get is a thrilling and quite scary ride that may make you (a) sleep with a light on, and (b) be very careful about who you invite into your home.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
And so I reread it again — thank you, Fiona, for a wonderful buddy read! — and this time it’s like I was transported back to being young and discovering this book for the first time. I loved it again.
This time I was really taken by King’s ability to paint the setting. His prose is excellent, and the way he brings the small town with all its secrets to life is almost unparalleled. He just has this way with words, zeroing right on to the defining qualities of people and places. Even a very young King understood the darkness of people and small isolated places. Because there’s not too much of a supernatural push is even required to unleash the inner monsters of people; the inner low level of nastiness in the ordinary folks can only be outweighed by the inner decency of the others.
“The Lot” chapters are what those looking for “a great American novel” need to read.
4.5 stars.
—————
2022 reread through older eyes:
In my teens and early 20s I inhaled King’s books. He was THE writer, to the point when I actually disappointed my university literature professor who would have liked if I had preferred Dostoyevsky instead. And as I got older, King’s books mostly held up, and some even gained extra appreciation (ahem, Needful Things, you got better as you got older).
‘Salem’s Lot is a very young King, apparently started when he was 25, and it shows. It’s still good though, and is full of all that I like in King’s stories as even back then he was first and foremost a gifted storyteller: the creepy vibe of small towns and their inhabitants, and nastiness that lives inside regular people even before any actual “big” evil comes into their lives. And if there’s a hint of immaturity there — well, duh, the guy wasn’t born 75.
I was still fascinated by his signature meanderings that tell stories within stories, and the gradual ratcheting up of tension that’s better than any pay-off there can be.
3.5-4 stars on reread which I’m rounding up because, well, whaddya want from Constant Reader of Uncle Stevie’s yarns here?
————
————
Review from circa 2014 based on a few feverish reads of this book back in my teens:
There was a time once when vampires were ruthless predators and not the misunderstood brooding and essentially harmless creatures. Ahhhh, good old scary times...
Vampire stories have been around for a long time - after all, people love a good scare, and what is more terrifying than a monster showing up at night and sucking the life essence out of you? But leave it to Stephen King to turn the terror up a notch, add a whole new layer to it. How? Simply - using the winning formula that he continues to employ in the vast majority of his work.
In addition to showing us the monsters of the night, he also brings into the picture the monsters and the darkness that are already with us, that live in the deep dark recesses of everyone's soul.
""The town knew about darkness."
"The town has its secrets, and keeps them well."
"The town cares for devil's work no more than it cares for God's or man's. It knew darkness. And darkness was enough."
The eponymous 'Salem's Lot is a small town in Maine, and it is not a stranger to secrets and darkness. It's quaint and pastoral on the surface, but once you look deeper you are bound to discover what lurks behind its respectable surface. And trust me, that's the discoveries that you can easily go without for the darkness of the human soul as presented by Stephen King beats everything that any monster or boogeyman can ever send your way. The small town of 'Salem's Lot can boast your usual lies, bullying, corruption, and prejudice - and spices it up with well-hidden child abuse, violence, and murders. Not so quaint, is it?
It is this portrayal of everyday people's secrets, of the towns being almost like living breathing organisms that is one of the big reasons why I am a huge fan of Stephen King's works.
From the very first pages of the novel we know that some terrible fate made 'Salem's Lot a ghost town with apparently only a couple of survivors. It doesn't take the reader long to realize, as we go back in time to see how the events unfolded, that the mysterious menacing Marsten House welcomed new evil that tends to lurk at night, floating past your (hopefully, tightly shut) windows.
The story itself is rather straightforward, steadily moving along to its almost-conclusion that we have glimpsed in the first few pages, and we watch with bated breath as our bunch of good guys - Ben, Mark, Susan, Matt - are trying to take on the supernatural horror. Oh, and did I forget Father Callahan?
King is excellent with the plotting and the pacing (since this was only his second novel, he was still a stranger to writing larger-than-life brick-sized tomes). The story never lags, the suspense and sense of foreboding are rampant, and there are quite a few truly nailbiting situations. Nothing distracts the reader from the vampire story unfolding on the background of small-town horrors. There are no heavy-handed lessons to be learned, no deep morals to take out of the story - all we get is a thrilling and quite scary ride that may make you (a) sleep with a light on, and (b) be very careful about who you invite into your home.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
February 9, 2017
Well this is annoying times two. I just wrote a review and lost it, and then there's the *other* issue.
What other issue?
Oh, the one where my 14 year old self of infinite wisdom and experience remembered a boring tale lacking truly epic blood and guts from what should be a vampire tale in a small town. If that 14 year old could have had his way, then 80% of the novel would have been excised for being too-character driven, too-focused on hundreds of characters only set up to be knocked down in gruesome death (or undeath), and too detail-driven and poorly-paced for a thriller.
Damn, I was a dipshit. I'm not saying that I'm no longer a dipshit, mind you, just that I think that kid was a real idiot. I mean, I'd only been reading anything at all for less than a year and 8 months of that was focused on learning *how* to read. Of course I was going to be influenced more by the all the slasher movies rather than novel construction. I even watched the crapfest that I considered the made for tv movie based on this book, and I think I might have been a *little* too harsh on it, too.
So flash-forward to now, when I jump up the rating from a scathing 3 stars to a full-blown 5, an adult reading an adult novel of suspense, emotionally invested characters, subtle humor, more high-brow words than I remember Stephen King usually using in his novels, and beautifully crafted passages of hometown life falling into what might as well have been a modern retelling of a medieval town falling under the spell of the Black Plague, with all the horror and sadness and superstition that entails.
This novel was gripping and intense to my adult sensibilities. Do I feel like a fool for my old memories? Yes. Am I embarrassed? Yes. Am I absolutely impressed and amazed that the very first "trash" novelist I got into as a kid actually turned out to be a consummate master of the writing craft? Yes.
All the things I hated as a kid happen to be the things I love the most, here. The characters were absolutely gorgeous. I fell into them, and later, I fell into love with the whole town. The fact that it had a cancer that was eating away at it from the inside, slowly, was only a tension-driver. This may be a vampire novel, but it is really a tragedy, through and through. We expect to love and lose our loved ones, and this is the true horror. Not just the eyes like stars or the breath that smells of pure putrescence or the image of a supernatural horror that no longer needs keys because, now, the dead can squeeze between door jams.
Of course, Part 3 was all action all the time, with the stakes as high as it can be. It was all for the sake of pure survival. But Part 1 (the get to know you) and Part 2 (something isn't right) were some of the best readings of Stephen King, like, ever. :) Believe me, he has a personal formula when it comes to his writing, but I know of no one who's able to pull off exactly what he pulls off. He makes everyone so damn real to me. :)
Fun fact! There's a dead John Snow who knows nothing in this novel! Isn't that fun?
So, I've eaten crow and said that I'm sorry for being an childhood idiot, but what I really mean is that There Are No Sparkles. This is a novel of horrible anticipation and and deep sadness, of exciting vampire hunting with truly intelligent foes. There are no levelled-up vamps or long antihero arcs or Master Vampire Hunters. And best of all, there are no werewolves.
There is, however, a sense of reality and loss and fear, and if you are missing a huge dose of that in your life, if only to hold up as a mirror to your own life to say that things aren't so bad with you, then you really ought to jump out there and pick up a copy. I can't believe this is only SK's second novel! Wow!
What other issue?
Oh, the one where my 14 year old self of infinite wisdom and experience remembered a boring tale lacking truly epic blood and guts from what should be a vampire tale in a small town. If that 14 year old could have had his way, then 80% of the novel would have been excised for being too-character driven, too-focused on hundreds of characters only set up to be knocked down in gruesome death (or undeath), and too detail-driven and poorly-paced for a thriller.
Damn, I was a dipshit. I'm not saying that I'm no longer a dipshit, mind you, just that I think that kid was a real idiot. I mean, I'd only been reading anything at all for less than a year and 8 months of that was focused on learning *how* to read. Of course I was going to be influenced more by the all the slasher movies rather than novel construction. I even watched the crapfest that I considered the made for tv movie based on this book, and I think I might have been a *little* too harsh on it, too.
So flash-forward to now, when I jump up the rating from a scathing 3 stars to a full-blown 5, an adult reading an adult novel of suspense, emotionally invested characters, subtle humor, more high-brow words than I remember Stephen King usually using in his novels, and beautifully crafted passages of hometown life falling into what might as well have been a modern retelling of a medieval town falling under the spell of the Black Plague, with all the horror and sadness and superstition that entails.
This novel was gripping and intense to my adult sensibilities. Do I feel like a fool for my old memories? Yes. Am I embarrassed? Yes. Am I absolutely impressed and amazed that the very first "trash" novelist I got into as a kid actually turned out to be a consummate master of the writing craft? Yes.
All the things I hated as a kid happen to be the things I love the most, here. The characters were absolutely gorgeous. I fell into them, and later, I fell into love with the whole town. The fact that it had a cancer that was eating away at it from the inside, slowly, was only a tension-driver. This may be a vampire novel, but it is really a tragedy, through and through. We expect to love and lose our loved ones, and this is the true horror. Not just the eyes like stars or the breath that smells of pure putrescence or the image of a supernatural horror that no longer needs keys because, now, the dead can squeeze between door jams.
Of course, Part 3 was all action all the time, with the stakes as high as it can be. It was all for the sake of pure survival. But Part 1 (the get to know you) and Part 2 (something isn't right) were some of the best readings of Stephen King, like, ever. :) Believe me, he has a personal formula when it comes to his writing, but I know of no one who's able to pull off exactly what he pulls off. He makes everyone so damn real to me. :)
Fun fact! There's a dead John Snow who knows nothing in this novel! Isn't that fun?
So, I've eaten crow and said that I'm sorry for being an childhood idiot, but what I really mean is that There Are No Sparkles. This is a novel of horrible anticipation and and deep sadness, of exciting vampire hunting with truly intelligent foes. There are no levelled-up vamps or long antihero arcs or Master Vampire Hunters. And best of all, there are no werewolves.
There is, however, a sense of reality and loss and fear, and if you are missing a huge dose of that in your life, if only to hold up as a mirror to your own life to say that things aren't so bad with you, then you really ought to jump out there and pick up a copy. I can't believe this is only SK's second novel! Wow!
March 21, 2021
I am so nostalgically looking back to a better time when certain fantasy creatures were still true monsters and not twinkling, soft, freaking feeling emo snobs.
Somehow the Lovecraftian, subtle, rising horror aspect King was so strong at the beginning of his career diminished over the years and there was not much of it left in the newer books I´ve read. Characterization, descriptions, action scenes, suspense, everything great as usual in the new works, but this special meta cosmic existential horror vibe and feeling of the first few and the drug fueled King years went missing afterward. Especially his first short story collections show this, they are epic, gothic horror masterpieces, while his new ones are much more dealing with human related meta topics dipped in some mystery and horror ghost magic. I love all, fanboy for life, jay, but somehow this old school style was more unique, especially because it sadly isn´t manufactured anymore nowadays, shame on you, damn mainstream ruining everything.
Some soft spoilers ahead, but nothing too specific worth mentioning, just meta.
So enjoy it even more if it´s the first time, look at all the red herrings, McGuffins, and Chekhovs King is throwing around to mix them with symbolism and innuendos, enjoy how the pathetic, weak humans stagger towards perdition, laugh whenever evil scores the next bloody goal, and be a happy witness of the moment when the legend of the greatest horror writer of all times starts unfolding by using the ancient trope of rabies symptoms made folk tales.
Google that, by the way, it´s so cool, the time until someone infected with rabies dies, how they behave to smell and light, what happens to their brains and libido, nature is amazing. It must have been so much fun to be locked up during long, cold, mountain winters with no change to escape, knowing that a few of the citizens and families may turn into real, freaking vampires. „Mommy is eating daddy, I fear she'll come for us when she is hungry again.“ Thanks to stupid rabies vaccination and general scientific, social, and medical progress, these amazing massive real life zombie vampire role playing games are now sadly just a reminiscence of the past, but at least literature can let one undergo it again.
Did I read Dracula? I am not sure, but the pop culture reference potential of both the original and this darker retelling is immense and how King let it escalate seems to be much more entertaining than what I know about the original. Sorry, classic literature, King just owns you. This idea of whatever evil coming to town, or always being in town and waking up again, becoming more and more extreme in its manifestations is one of the core elements of both King´s work and humankind itself. Could also be seen as an allegory about a snowball effect, tiny origin, huge massacre style. Or, how appropriate and contemporary, a virus.
It´s kind of making me twinkle in anger when I think about how true, hard topics have been mainstream flanderized
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
until nothing of the cool, original content was left to fit to appeal to the teeny target audience. Shame on you, americanization and disneyfication, you murdered evil, torturing monsters to turn them into sensible, romantic love interests that freaking understand woman, what´s wrong with you? That´s so sick and disgusting, I will possible once unsubscribe my Disney+ account in a beer ridden anger act of defiance. Just joking, they have Marvel and Star Wars too. Wait, my long time memory is just telling me in one of its rare appearances that I don´t watch TV anymore. Damn.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
Somehow the Lovecraftian, subtle, rising horror aspect King was so strong at the beginning of his career diminished over the years and there was not much of it left in the newer books I´ve read. Characterization, descriptions, action scenes, suspense, everything great as usual in the new works, but this special meta cosmic existential horror vibe and feeling of the first few and the drug fueled King years went missing afterward. Especially his first short story collections show this, they are epic, gothic horror masterpieces, while his new ones are much more dealing with human related meta topics dipped in some mystery and horror ghost magic. I love all, fanboy for life, jay, but somehow this old school style was more unique, especially because it sadly isn´t manufactured anymore nowadays, shame on you, damn mainstream ruining everything.
Some soft spoilers ahead, but nothing too specific worth mentioning, just meta.
So enjoy it even more if it´s the first time, look at all the red herrings, McGuffins, and Chekhovs King is throwing around to mix them with symbolism and innuendos, enjoy how the pathetic, weak humans stagger towards perdition, laugh whenever evil scores the next bloody goal, and be a happy witness of the moment when the legend of the greatest horror writer of all times starts unfolding by using the ancient trope of rabies symptoms made folk tales.
Google that, by the way, it´s so cool, the time until someone infected with rabies dies, how they behave to smell and light, what happens to their brains and libido, nature is amazing. It must have been so much fun to be locked up during long, cold, mountain winters with no change to escape, knowing that a few of the citizens and families may turn into real, freaking vampires. „Mommy is eating daddy, I fear she'll come for us when she is hungry again.“ Thanks to stupid rabies vaccination and general scientific, social, and medical progress, these amazing massive real life zombie vampire role playing games are now sadly just a reminiscence of the past, but at least literature can let one undergo it again.
Did I read Dracula? I am not sure, but the pop culture reference potential of both the original and this darker retelling is immense and how King let it escalate seems to be much more entertaining than what I know about the original. Sorry, classic literature, King just owns you. This idea of whatever evil coming to town, or always being in town and waking up again, becoming more and more extreme in its manifestations is one of the core elements of both King´s work and humankind itself. Could also be seen as an allegory about a snowball effect, tiny origin, huge massacre style. Or, how appropriate and contemporary, a virus.
It´s kind of making me twinkle in anger when I think about how true, hard topics have been mainstream flanderized
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
until nothing of the cool, original content was left to fit to appeal to the teeny target audience. Shame on you, americanization and disneyfication, you murdered evil, torturing monsters to turn them into sensible, romantic love interests that freaking understand woman, what´s wrong with you? That´s so sick and disgusting, I will possible once unsubscribe my Disney+ account in a beer ridden anger act of defiance. Just joking, they have Marvel and Star Wars too. Wait, my long time memory is just telling me in one of its rare appearances that I don´t watch TV anymore. Damn.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
October 13, 2022
“And all around them, the bestiality of the night rises on tenebrous wings. The vampire’s time has come.”
Spook-tacular, Fang-tastic and 4 ‘bloodthirsty’ stars for a book by an author that needs no introduction, and this time delivers a vampire-ology story about a town under siege from a growing number of vampires in Jeru-salem’s Lot.
Chilling, haunting and horrifyingly fang-tastic – once it got going!!! and my first addition to my spooky month reading list.
The Plot
With the image of Marsten House still haunting his mind, Ben Mears returns to his home town to finally put the ghosts of his childhood to rest, by writing a book about this seemingly haunted house.
“The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king.”
However, Ben’s arrival coincides with the disappearance of more of the town’s folk – but only slowly and with no connection which helps supress the towns hysteria and suspicion, and creates that perfect hunting atmosphere. Add to this, Marsten House finds itself a new owner. The strange and reclusive Straker who brings his own brand of mystery and menace, but it is the investigation, discovery and hunt for the vampires that delivers the most in suspense, thrills, and chills.
With Susan, his new love and former college student, and Matt (the schoolteacher), all three embark on this classic hunt for answers and ultimately the vampires. Although not an easy task because this breed, unlike other vampire stories, can operate in daylight which added to the ever-present sense of doom and evil.
Review and Comments
We had a lot of peripheral characters in this story, which was probably needed for the numbers the vampires eventually kill off – a blood thirsty lot!!! Other than that, the characters did not add much to the story. It was this and the very slow pace at the start that brought this down to a 4 star read. However, the rest of the book was spook-tacular.
The pacing in the rest of the novel was just right, which helped create the perfect atmosphere and tone for this spine-chilling book. The evil was accretive, gradual, and penetrating and the events were so well articulated and put together, that on occasions I found myself at the edge of my seat or doing my Meerkat impersonation with every noise around me. Ok, horror is not my thing for a reason.
I do love authors who dare to kill off some of the main characters, instead of playing safe. So, in all a wonderful and compelling book for Halloween month, a timeless, eerie, and creepy classic and a recommendation to anyone who enjoys a bit of yearly fright or horror stories in general.
Lingering, ominous, and spine chilling without the gore.
“If a fear cannot be articulated, it can’t be conquered.”
Ok I confess my fear - this scared the pants of me, in some chapters - now I’ve conquered. Sorted!!!
Spook-tacular, Fang-tastic and 4 ‘bloodthirsty’ stars for a book by an author that needs no introduction, and this time delivers a vampire-ology story about a town under siege from a growing number of vampires in Jeru-salem’s Lot.
Chilling, haunting and horrifyingly fang-tastic – once it got going!!! and my first addition to my spooky month reading list.
The Plot
With the image of Marsten House still haunting his mind, Ben Mears returns to his home town to finally put the ghosts of his childhood to rest, by writing a book about this seemingly haunted house.
“The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king.”
However, Ben’s arrival coincides with the disappearance of more of the town’s folk – but only slowly and with no connection which helps supress the towns hysteria and suspicion, and creates that perfect hunting atmosphere. Add to this, Marsten House finds itself a new owner. The strange and reclusive Straker who brings his own brand of mystery and menace, but it is the investigation, discovery and hunt for the vampires that delivers the most in suspense, thrills, and chills.
With Susan, his new love and former college student, and Matt (the schoolteacher), all three embark on this classic hunt for answers and ultimately the vampires. Although not an easy task because this breed, unlike other vampire stories, can operate in daylight which added to the ever-present sense of doom and evil.
Review and Comments
We had a lot of peripheral characters in this story, which was probably needed for the numbers the vampires eventually kill off – a blood thirsty lot!!! Other than that, the characters did not add much to the story. It was this and the very slow pace at the start that brought this down to a 4 star read. However, the rest of the book was spook-tacular.
The pacing in the rest of the novel was just right, which helped create the perfect atmosphere and tone for this spine-chilling book. The evil was accretive, gradual, and penetrating and the events were so well articulated and put together, that on occasions I found myself at the edge of my seat or doing my Meerkat impersonation with every noise around me. Ok, horror is not my thing for a reason.
I do love authors who dare to kill off some of the main characters, instead of playing safe. So, in all a wonderful and compelling book for Halloween month, a timeless, eerie, and creepy classic and a recommendation to anyone who enjoys a bit of yearly fright or horror stories in general.
Lingering, ominous, and spine chilling without the gore.
“If a fear cannot be articulated, it can’t be conquered.”
Ok I confess my fear - this scared the pants of me, in some chapters - now I’ve conquered. Sorted!!!
October 25, 2024
‘The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king.’
Stephen King is a master of weaving together the narrative of a community with the aesthetics of horror. It’s part of what makes him so truly frightening: his horrors lurk in every day realities and often the community at large is just as threatening as the monsters that infiltrate in secret. ‘We’d all be scared if we knew what was swept under the carpet of each other’s minds,’ King writes in ’Salem’s Lot, and in this tale of good vs evil the ways the everyday folks of the town silently allow their neighbor’s traumas to brood and boil over onto each other becomes just as unsettling as the vampires drawn to the bad vibes. The watching eyes of a predator is just as eerie be it an undead monster or the judgemental gaze from a neighbors window.
It’s a perfect set-up of small town scaries that tap into the real fears of small towns quite literally dying out, a topic that fueled a lot of political discourse in rural areas in the last few decades of 20th century in the US. A factory would close or an industry would dry up and suddenly the infrastructure of a town would cave in on itself with no jobs and no future prospects. Kids would flee the moment they could to avoid being pulled under with it. So begins ’Salem’s Lot, with the flight from a small town in Maine seeming like another victim of a collapsed local economy on the surface, but with a darker secret bruising within. ‘The town knew about darkness,’ King writes, ‘it knew about the darkness that comes on the land when rotation hides the land from the sun, and about the darkness of the human soul.’ The bad behavoirs of the town, with the abusers, affairs, and general selfish fuckery have opened an opportunity for far worse predators to nestle in and take control.
Which brings us to the title and name of the town. Jerusalem's Lot. This may be a stretch but King does frequently play with biblical elements, and the shortened version, ‘Salem’s Lot sure feels adjacent to Sodom and Gomorrah as well as Lot from Genesis (one could also argue Salem where the witch trials occurred, seeing as a religiously tinged “purifying by fire” plays into the ending but more on that later). In reality, the town is based on Durham, Maine where King explored the real Marsten House (an abandoned home of the same name there) as a kid. But the story of Sodom and Gomorrah involves a town being destroyed because of—according to Isaiah and Jeremiah—greed, adultery, inhospitality, and lies. In Ezekial 16:49 it is written: ‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.’ The larger context here is that Jerusalem is as bad, if not worse, than Sodom. I’ve had people also tell me the “real” reason is lack of remnant, basically failure of the church, which is sort of happening here as well though Father Callahan does some ass kicking later on. So here we are in Jerusalem's Lot, where pretty much everyone is lying, cheating, and inhospitable. Bam, vampire time. I do love a good vampire time (and as vampires are often written as some lusty folks, SO DO THEY).
This is a genuinely creepy novel that maintains a growing tension of terrors through it’s hefty length. King is an author that can thrill and chill in the moment of reading but, like the monsters lurking out of sight, the lingering terror always strikes from your mind later on when you realize how you too could have walked right into the frights that occur in his books. Like I wrote about for Pet Sematary, the scariest bits are dropped into normal, mundane reality. Each October I love to over indulge in horror novels. I love the genre, it really works for me, and I always think “why don’t I read more like this all year?” But then something will happen, my imagination will run wild and I’ll swear off horror novels until the wheel of seasons rolls around again. This year I didn’t really have that moment and was just blissfully downing scary stories, thrilled to keep going into November while reading this book along with Nataliya (read here excellent review here). I had to feed my neighbor’s cat last weekend, and their electronic door lock isn’t working so getting it to unlock and lock was a bit of a hassle. It was late in the evening as I was walking down into the darkness of their basement where the cat dish is when suddenly my mind decided to pelt the intrusive thought “don’t think about the Marsten House” at me like a brick. Well, fuck, now I’m hoping I don’t turn around for Marsten’s dead ass chasing after me down the stairs. I did my chore SO fast and as I’m trying to lock the door, which isn’t cooperating, the windy night is creating a draft that makes it feel like the door is trying to be pulled back open from the inside. ‘The basis of all human fears,’ King says here, ‘a closed door, slightly ajar.’ YUP. So you got me King, that was my memorable imagination-run-wild fright of 2022.
‘Small towns have long memories and pass their horrors down ceremonially from generation to generation.’
I love the atmosphere of this novel. It’s a small town vibe that reminds me of the small towns in Michigan’s upper peninsula where I would spend my summers as a kid. The town itself is creepy and oppressive though. Everyone knows everyone else’s business (a bit too much), everyone is kind of a shit, and generational trauma is running rampant. It becomes sort of a question of were the people being shits the reason the town became evil or was the town being evil the reason the people are shits. Once the vampires get someone they sort of become the worst version of themselves, which is rather in keeping with the first vampire novel: The Vampyre by John William Polidori. In it, anyone who is drawn to the enigmatic vampire is met with ruin and becomes terrible versions of themselves on their descent. The vampire was based on Lord Byron and this whole road to ruin was pretty expected for anyone who decided to buddy themselves with him. There is a lot of standard vampire lore in this book that sort of lets the reader’s predisposition towards vampire knowledge fill in a lot of gaps, though the use of it is all a bit muddy.
It’s King’s early work and it shows. The writing is great but some of the book exists without much clarifications because, well, that’s just what makes the plot work. The crucifix is a key tool for fighting vampires because thats just how fighting vampires works. There is a lot of symbolism around the church, though Barlow does inform us ‘the Catholic Church is not the oldest of my opponents.’ It just happens to be a tradition that is also an effective weapon against him. It is less that it is a tool from God, but, as Ben observes, ‘a direct pipeline to the days when werewolves and incubi and witches were an accepted part of the outer darkness and the church the only beacon of light.’ It also opens the opportunity for some great moments with Mark getting vampire murdering down with a toy cross. King always does utilize childhood innocence in a great way, something that is very characteristic of a lot of his works. A very 'suffer the little children' vibe juxtaposed with the power of their innocence.
In the vibes of a small town dying out, there is a large theme about the part and reclaiming memory. Marsten House is largely a symbol for the trauma’s of Ben’s past that he has come to revisit. Why? He did it for literature (see also: profit—‘tapping into the atmosphere…to write a book scary enough to make me a million dollars’) Ben wants to dig into his past and write a good book, but also because he wants to reclaim the magic of time now gone.
This resonates with the ideas of dying towns and wanting to reclaim the past, or where people hold to a golden age nostalgia to resist change or progress. You can’t reclaim the past though, and memory is often much rosier than the reality. The house becomes the general base for the vampiric plot, but its also convenient to the plot because Ben can center all the evils into one idea: Marsten House. ‘If a fear cannot be articulated, it can’t be conquered,’ King writes (I love this line, and have written frequently elsewhere about how naming a thing takes away its power or gives you power over it as seen in fairy tales) and there’s almost a metafictional aspect of articulating all the evil into Marsten House in a book about writing a book about evil. It’s King winking at us seeing if we catch the references to fairy tale theory more or less.
‘Purification should count for something.’
Okay, we gotta talk about the ending. Or non-ending really. I mean, this book hits some HIGHS that are truly terrifying (those teeth, ahhhhh!) but, as is the complaint about King so common they spoofed on it in the new film remake of It, King often struggles to stick the landing. While I’m into the On that note, Night Shift also contains the story Jerusalem’s Lot, written as an homage to H.P. Lovecraft and connects the town to the Cthulhu mythology (it was written before the novel but appeared in print after). But I would have been into the book abruptly ending when Ben says ‘I’ll be back’ like he’s Vampire Terminator. Imagine him riding out of town on a motorcycle if you want. I’ve always been into King’s tongue-in-cheek warning going into the end of Dark Tower, and with many of his books you can probably quit and write your own final few pages and he’d be into that.
‘Salem’s Lot is a wild ride of frights and fun that is worth the hefty size of the narrative. It’s early King and a few parts read as clunky (Ben’s interactions with women are a bit awkward too) but it’s a well told story that is worth the price of admission. There's a lot to talk about here and I do really appreciate the efforts made here to make horror into a work of literature by having a lot of symbolism and references that give some good depth to it. So enter, if you dare.
3.75/5
Stephen King is a master of weaving together the narrative of a community with the aesthetics of horror. It’s part of what makes him so truly frightening: his horrors lurk in every day realities and often the community at large is just as threatening as the monsters that infiltrate in secret. ‘We’d all be scared if we knew what was swept under the carpet of each other’s minds,’ King writes in ’Salem’s Lot, and in this tale of good vs evil the ways the everyday folks of the town silently allow their neighbor’s traumas to brood and boil over onto each other becomes just as unsettling as the vampires drawn to the bad vibes. The watching eyes of a predator is just as eerie be it an undead monster or the judgemental gaze from a neighbors window.
It’s a perfect set-up of small town scaries that tap into the real fears of small towns quite literally dying out, a topic that fueled a lot of political discourse in rural areas in the last few decades of 20th century in the US. A factory would close or an industry would dry up and suddenly the infrastructure of a town would cave in on itself with no jobs and no future prospects. Kids would flee the moment they could to avoid being pulled under with it. So begins ’Salem’s Lot, with the flight from a small town in Maine seeming like another victim of a collapsed local economy on the surface, but with a darker secret bruising within. ‘The town knew about darkness,’ King writes, ‘it knew about the darkness that comes on the land when rotation hides the land from the sun, and about the darkness of the human soul.’ The bad behavoirs of the town, with the abusers, affairs, and general selfish fuckery have opened an opportunity for far worse predators to nestle in and take control.
Which brings us to the title and name of the town. Jerusalem's Lot. This may be a stretch but King does frequently play with biblical elements, and the shortened version, ‘Salem’s Lot sure feels adjacent to Sodom and Gomorrah as well as Lot from Genesis (one could also argue Salem where the witch trials occurred, seeing as a religiously tinged “purifying by fire” plays into the ending but more on that later). In reality, the town is based on Durham, Maine where King explored the real Marsten House (an abandoned home of the same name there) as a kid. But the story of Sodom and Gomorrah involves a town being destroyed because of—according to Isaiah and Jeremiah—greed, adultery, inhospitality, and lies. In Ezekial 16:49 it is written: ‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.’ The larger context here is that Jerusalem is as bad, if not worse, than Sodom. I’ve had people also tell me the “real” reason is lack of remnant, basically failure of the church, which is sort of happening here as well though Father Callahan does some ass kicking later on. So here we are in Jerusalem's Lot, where pretty much everyone is lying, cheating, and inhospitable. Bam, vampire time. I do love a good vampire time (and as vampires are often written as some lusty folks, SO DO THEY).
This is a genuinely creepy novel that maintains a growing tension of terrors through it’s hefty length. King is an author that can thrill and chill in the moment of reading but, like the monsters lurking out of sight, the lingering terror always strikes from your mind later on when you realize how you too could have walked right into the frights that occur in his books. Like I wrote about for Pet Sematary, the scariest bits are dropped into normal, mundane reality. Each October I love to over indulge in horror novels. I love the genre, it really works for me, and I always think “why don’t I read more like this all year?” But then something will happen, my imagination will run wild and I’ll swear off horror novels until the wheel of seasons rolls around again. This year I didn’t really have that moment and was just blissfully downing scary stories, thrilled to keep going into November while reading this book along with Nataliya (read here excellent review here). I had to feed my neighbor’s cat last weekend, and their electronic door lock isn’t working so getting it to unlock and lock was a bit of a hassle. It was late in the evening as I was walking down into the darkness of their basement where the cat dish is when suddenly my mind decided to pelt the intrusive thought “don’t think about the Marsten House” at me like a brick. Well, fuck, now I’m hoping I don’t turn around for Marsten’s dead ass chasing after me down the stairs. I did my chore SO fast and as I’m trying to lock the door, which isn’t cooperating, the windy night is creating a draft that makes it feel like the door is trying to be pulled back open from the inside. ‘The basis of all human fears,’ King says here, ‘a closed door, slightly ajar.’ YUP. So you got me King, that was my memorable imagination-run-wild fright of 2022.
‘Small towns have long memories and pass their horrors down ceremonially from generation to generation.’
I love the atmosphere of this novel. It’s a small town vibe that reminds me of the small towns in Michigan’s upper peninsula where I would spend my summers as a kid. The town itself is creepy and oppressive though. Everyone knows everyone else’s business (a bit too much), everyone is kind of a shit, and generational trauma is running rampant. It becomes sort of a question of were the people being shits the reason the town became evil or was the town being evil the reason the people are shits. Once the vampires get someone they sort of become the worst version of themselves, which is rather in keeping with the first vampire novel: The Vampyre by John William Polidori. In it, anyone who is drawn to the enigmatic vampire is met with ruin and becomes terrible versions of themselves on their descent. The vampire was based on Lord Byron and this whole road to ruin was pretty expected for anyone who decided to buddy themselves with him. There is a lot of standard vampire lore in this book that sort of lets the reader’s predisposition towards vampire knowledge fill in a lot of gaps, though the use of it is all a bit muddy.
It’s King’s early work and it shows. The writing is great but some of the book exists without much clarifications because, well, that’s just what makes the plot work. The crucifix is a key tool for fighting vampires because thats just how fighting vampires works. There is a lot of symbolism around the church, though Barlow does inform us ‘the Catholic Church is not the oldest of my opponents.’ It just happens to be a tradition that is also an effective weapon against him. It is less that it is a tool from God, but, as Ben observes, ‘a direct pipeline to the days when werewolves and incubi and witches were an accepted part of the outer darkness and the church the only beacon of light.’ It also opens the opportunity for some great moments with Mark getting vampire murdering down with a toy cross. King always does utilize childhood innocence in a great way, something that is very characteristic of a lot of his works. A very 'suffer the little children' vibe juxtaposed with the power of their innocence.
In the vibes of a small town dying out, there is a large theme about the part and reclaiming memory. Marsten House is largely a symbol for the trauma’s of Ben’s past that he has come to revisit. Why? He did it for literature (see also: profit—‘tapping into the atmosphere…to write a book scary enough to make me a million dollars’) Ben wants to dig into his past and write a good book, but also because he wants to reclaim the magic of time now gone.
’What was he doing, coming back to a town where he had lives for four years as a boy, trying to recapture something that was irrevocably lost? What magic could he expect to recapture by walking roads that he had once walked as a boy and were probably asphalted and straightened and logged off and littered with tourist beer cans?’
This resonates with the ideas of dying towns and wanting to reclaim the past, or where people hold to a golden age nostalgia to resist change or progress. You can’t reclaim the past though, and memory is often much rosier than the reality. The house becomes the general base for the vampiric plot, but its also convenient to the plot because Ben can center all the evils into one idea: Marsten House. ‘If a fear cannot be articulated, it can’t be conquered,’ King writes (I love this line, and have written frequently elsewhere about how naming a thing takes away its power or gives you power over it as seen in fairy tales) and there’s almost a metafictional aspect of articulating all the evil into Marsten House in a book about writing a book about evil. It’s King winking at us seeing if we catch the references to fairy tale theory more or less.
‘Purification should count for something.’
Okay, we gotta talk about the ending. Or non-ending really. I mean, this book hits some HIGHS that are truly terrifying (those teeth, ahhhhh!) but, as is the complaint about King so common they spoofed on it in the new film remake of It, King often struggles to stick the landing. While I’m into the On that note, Night Shift also contains the story Jerusalem’s Lot, written as an homage to H.P. Lovecraft and connects the town to the Cthulhu mythology (it was written before the novel but appeared in print after). But I would have been into the book abruptly ending when Ben says ‘I’ll be back’ like he’s Vampire Terminator. Imagine him riding out of town on a motorcycle if you want. I’ve always been into King’s tongue-in-cheek warning going into the end of Dark Tower, and with many of his books you can probably quit and write your own final few pages and he’d be into that.
‘Salem’s Lot is a wild ride of frights and fun that is worth the hefty size of the narrative. It’s early King and a few parts read as clunky (Ben’s interactions with women are a bit awkward too) but it’s a well told story that is worth the price of admission. There's a lot to talk about here and I do really appreciate the efforts made here to make horror into a work of literature by having a lot of symbolism and references that give some good depth to it. So enter, if you dare.
3.75/5
October 14, 2019
From the 1979 movie version of Salem’s Lot
”It would be years before I would hear Alfred Bester’s axiom ‘the book is the boss,’ but I didn’t need to; I learned it for myself writing the novel that eventually became Salem’s Lot. Of course, the writer can impose control; it’s just a really shitty idea. Writing controlled fiction is called ‘plotting.’ Buckling your seatbelt and letting the story take over, however...that is called ‘storytelling.’ Storytelling is as natural as breathing; plotting is the literary version of artificial respiration.”
This nugget of wisdom is shared by Stephen King in the introduction to the 2005 illustrated edition of Salem’s Lot. I have to say that I completely agree with this philosophy. I have talked to many would-be writers who are so bogged down in getting the outline of their story completely figured out that they never actually get to the writing part of the process. I like having a few concepts in my head before I start whacking away at that mesmerizing whiteness of the blank page, but if I have it all figured out,...then why write it? The fun part is discovering the nuances of the maze before I find the exit.
Stephen King grew up in a small town in New England, and it seems like he has been waging war on small towns every since. ”There’s little good in sedentary small towns. Mostly indifference spiced with an occasional vapid evil--or worse, a conscious one. I believe Thomas Wolfe wrote about seven pounds of literature about that.” I, too, grew up in a small town and fully intend, in the scope of my writing, to eviscerate some of the more heinous aspects of small town “values.”
I love Paul Bettany’s line from the movie Knight’s Tale. Chaucer: “I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity.” I always like to say that my career is littered with the corpses of my enemies.(Hyperbole) Just a word of warning for those still breathing: I will reveal you for the bloody bastards/bitches you are in my fiction. If you think it isn’t you...it probably is. #evillaughwahaha
Jerusalem’s Lot is that typical small town that King loves to destroy on a regular basis, and this time his weapon is...vampires. The Marsten House, the scene of unspeakable tragedies, has been left empty for many years. It is a grand mansion falling into ruin by the very evilness that seems to fester in the walls and the rafters clear down to the bedrock. Ben Mears has come back to town to write about the place and intends to actually stay on the premises, but learns on his arrival that the house has been sold. Who would really want to stay there anyway? ”The house smelled. You wouldn’t believe how it smelled. Mildew and upholstery rot and a kind of rancid smell like butter that had gone over. And living things--rats or woodchucks or whatever else that had been nesting in the walls or hibernating in the cellar. A yellow, wet smell.”
The Marsten House is the perfect place for a vampire named Barlow and his assistant R. T. Straker to take up residence. The first clue should have been the initials; remember Dracula’s assistant...R. M. Renfield. The one word name as well...Barlow…. What does he think—he is Prince?
Yes, he does, and much, much more. He is, ultimately, a God fashioning people in his own image.
As Barlow picks off the residents of Jerusalem's Lot one by one and turns them into an army of hungry vampires, a small band of misfits start to fight back. After all, who else, but the freaks and oddballs would believe that there really are vampires? ”An old teacher half-cracked with books, a writer obsessed with his childhood nightmares, a little boy who has taken a postgraduate course in vampire lore from the films and the modern penny-dreadfuls.”
Barlow has certainly had better men and women than these who have tried to destroy him. He has become overconfident and underestimates the courage and resolve of this disenfranchised band of eccentrics he is dealing with. Check out this condescending speech he lays on Ben Mears:
”Look and see me, puny man. Look upon Barlow, who has passed the centuries as you have passed hours before a fireplace with a book. Look and see the great creature of the night whom you would slay with your miserable little stick. Look upon me, scribbler. I have written in human lives, and blood has been my ink. Look upon me and despair!”
No one is more shocked than Stephen King that his idea for a vampire hoard destroying one of his loathed small towns turns into an inspiring, uplifting novel of the weak fighting back against the most powerful. It is a slow burn of a plot. King uses the early pages of the novel to let us get to know these people before we see them tested beyond normal human endurance. Fortunately, his working title of Second Coming was vetoed for the published title by his wife Tabitha who, rightly so, decided it would be a better title for a sex manual. It is a nice ode to the classic vampire myth and manages to add some original stake splattering moments to the genre. Salem’s Lot has become a classic of fanged literature. King proves his storytelling chops.
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September 14, 2017
Vampires.
Years after I first read it, I can truthfully say that this is still on a short list of scariest books I have ever read.
King at his best.
An American re-telling of Dracula, King stays close to the vampire myth but with some of his own storytelling thrown in and some subtle changes that make for an original novel. I cannot help but think that Barlow helped to usher in a new generation of vampire literature, of which we have now been inundated for the past few years.
Years after I first read it, I can truthfully say that this is still on a short list of scariest books I have ever read.
King at his best.
An American re-telling of Dracula, King stays close to the vampire myth but with some of his own storytelling thrown in and some subtle changes that make for an original novel. I cannot help but think that Barlow helped to usher in a new generation of vampire literature, of which we have now been inundated for the past few years.
October 31, 2024
As with many King's, I loved this even more upon reread.
This story will always hold a special place in my heart, but more than that, I'm considering proclaiming it my FAVORITE BOOK OF ALL TIME!!!
🖤💚🖤💚🖤💚🖤💚🖤💚🖤💚🖤
'Salem's Lot was the first King novel I ever read. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say it shaped who I am as a Reader.
The year was 1987, I was 9-years old and I have never turned back. Surprisingly, this is one of the few early-Kings that up until now, I had only read once. I'm so excited that I finally revisited this childhood favorite!
The standout to me, as with most King novels, is the detailed character work and incredibly-palpable sense of place. This book also has some terrifying scenes as the drama builds, and it's truly hard to put down once you start.
I love this entire cast, Ben and Mark, as well as Father Callahan, being personal favorites. As luck would have it, MAX is set to release an new adaptation of this one and I am anxiously-anticipating it. I can't wait to see how they choose to bring it to the screen.
King's stories are always better as books, but the trailer looks promising. I'm willing to give it a shot.
If you haven't read this before, you should. An absolute classic and besides Dracula, arguably the best vampire novel ever written. It's perfect for this time of year, as you can sit back and truly let the atmosphere overtake you.
There's nothing else I really feel compelled to say about this. I love it so much, it would be impossible to capture in words how special this story is to me. This won't be the last time I read it, that's for sure.
This story will always hold a special place in my heart, but more than that, I'm considering proclaiming it my FAVORITE BOOK OF ALL TIME!!!
🖤💚🖤💚🖤💚🖤💚🖤💚🖤💚🖤
'Salem's Lot was the first King novel I ever read. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say it shaped who I am as a Reader.
The year was 1987, I was 9-years old and I have never turned back. Surprisingly, this is one of the few early-Kings that up until now, I had only read once. I'm so excited that I finally revisited this childhood favorite!
The standout to me, as with most King novels, is the detailed character work and incredibly-palpable sense of place. This book also has some terrifying scenes as the drama builds, and it's truly hard to put down once you start.
I love this entire cast, Ben and Mark, as well as Father Callahan, being personal favorites. As luck would have it, MAX is set to release an new adaptation of this one and I am anxiously-anticipating it. I can't wait to see how they choose to bring it to the screen.
King's stories are always better as books, but the trailer looks promising. I'm willing to give it a shot.
If you haven't read this before, you should. An absolute classic and besides Dracula, arguably the best vampire novel ever written. It's perfect for this time of year, as you can sit back and truly let the atmosphere overtake you.
There's nothing else I really feel compelled to say about this. I love it so much, it would be impossible to capture in words how special this story is to me. This won't be the last time I read it, that's for sure.
January 18, 2015
A novel about a creepy town and deadly vampires. This should've received 5 stars from me, but I was a bit disappointed with this novel.
I swear I wanted to love this novel, but it was an okay read for me. An okay read from the King. I'm 100% sure that something is wrong with me, and not the novel.
My main problem with the novel would be the fact that it took almost 350 pages for it to become really interesting. The character and plot introduction felt 150 pages longer than it should've been. Aside from that, the only character that I really liked would be Ben Mears. I guess it's also a good thing that I really liked the main character, but it's also a bad thing that everyone else were a bit flat and lifeless.
The plot was not bad, and the execution was also quite good. This novel dealt with the mystery of the town more than the creepiness of the vampires. I like a good town mystery story, but the whole mystery of the town was not that interesting for me. I heard that this novel is quite similar to Dracula, so maybe I should've read Dracula first? Similar in a way that the novel doesn't revolve around the vampires, but of the setting. King is good with setting centered novels (Pet Sematary), so I'll be redundant and repeat that I'm probably the problem here, and not the novel.
3.5/5 stars. I made the review short because I know that I'll have a better opinion of this novel after my reread in the future. Looking back, I'm reminiscing violent scenes and picturing the ending vividly. As of now I can't bump it up to 4 stars because it didn't blow me away. I'd be lying if I say that I enjoyed this a lot. I enjoyed some parts, but the most were a bit boring for me. Hoping for a good reread in the future. Go ahead and read this novel, and don't trust my 3 star rating.
I swear I wanted to love this novel, but it was an okay read for me. An okay read from the King. I'm 100% sure that something is wrong with me, and not the novel.
My main problem with the novel would be the fact that it took almost 350 pages for it to become really interesting. The character and plot introduction felt 150 pages longer than it should've been. Aside from that, the only character that I really liked would be Ben Mears. I guess it's also a good thing that I really liked the main character, but it's also a bad thing that everyone else were a bit flat and lifeless.
The plot was not bad, and the execution was also quite good. This novel dealt with the mystery of the town more than the creepiness of the vampires. I like a good town mystery story, but the whole mystery of the town was not that interesting for me. I heard that this novel is quite similar to Dracula, so maybe I should've read Dracula first? Similar in a way that the novel doesn't revolve around the vampires, but of the setting. King is good with setting centered novels (Pet Sematary), so I'll be redundant and repeat that I'm probably the problem here, and not the novel.
3.5/5 stars. I made the review short because I know that I'll have a better opinion of this novel after my reread in the future. Looking back, I'm reminiscing violent scenes and picturing the ending vividly. As of now I can't bump it up to 4 stars because it didn't blow me away. I'd be lying if I say that I enjoyed this a lot. I enjoyed some parts, but the most were a bit boring for me. Hoping for a good reread in the future. Go ahead and read this novel, and don't trust my 3 star rating.
September 12, 2019
1.24.19-I just finished my third read of SALEM'S LOT, this time via audiobook. The narrator, Ron McClarty worked well for me and I found this tale as satisfying as it ever was.
11.1.2014-Original review.
I just finished a re-read of this book with the Horror Aficionados group here at Goodreads. I'm so glad that I participated!
Remember little Danny Glick?
I first read this book in junior high or high school. It's been about 30 years since then, unfortunately. I've read The Stand and IT a couple of times each, but I never did pick this one up again. Finally, that has been rectified and what a payoff!
I forgot how well this story wrapped its arms around the reader and refused to let them go. We meander through the town, meeting its residents and learning about their daily lives. (I think Stephen King excels at this, mostly because you can tell he knows what he's talking about.) We focus our attentions on a few different characters-some strong, some weak-but they're all human with characteristics, (both good and bad, )that we recognize.
Quote: "The town cares for devil's work no more than it cares for God's or man's. It knew darkness. And darkness was enough."
I feel that's all I need to say. I have nothing new to bring to a review of a book that has thousands of reviews already. If you haven't read this tale, you should.
11.1.2014-Original review.
I just finished a re-read of this book with the Horror Aficionados group here at Goodreads. I'm so glad that I participated!
Remember little Danny Glick?
I first read this book in junior high or high school. It's been about 30 years since then, unfortunately. I've read The Stand and IT a couple of times each, but I never did pick this one up again. Finally, that has been rectified and what a payoff!
I forgot how well this story wrapped its arms around the reader and refused to let them go. We meander through the town, meeting its residents and learning about their daily lives. (I think Stephen King excels at this, mostly because you can tell he knows what he's talking about.) We focus our attentions on a few different characters-some strong, some weak-but they're all human with characteristics, (both good and bad, )that we recognize.
Quote: "The town cares for devil's work no more than it cares for God's or man's. It knew darkness. And darkness was enough."
I feel that's all I need to say. I have nothing new to bring to a review of a book that has thousands of reviews already. If you haven't read this tale, you should.
July 9, 2022
The note to my 13 years old self: thank you for being wise enough to choose this book and keep reading the King of authors’ books for years!
This was my first Stephen King book. I never be a fan of vampires! ( I was a little clueless why the hell people lost their sh*ts when they read and watch the entire Twilight series but there’s another review to tell) But as you can imagine I was drawn into my King’s story at first read and I kept suffered from nightmares for years, seeing Danny Flick floating outside my bedroom window!
Nearly three decades later, I’m rereading this beauty which made me one of the biggest fans of the King of the authors! Another sleepless night is probably waiting for me! But it’s truly worth it! Damn you Danny Flick!
I recently watched the trailer of latest movie adaptation! It seems so promising with its brilliant cast! It will be released on September 9, 2022. I loved Gary Dauberman’s previous King adaptations. ( even though the second movie of “It” was way too much longer) I’m looking forward to watch it!
This was my first Stephen King book. I never be a fan of vampires! ( I was a little clueless why the hell people lost their sh*ts when they read and watch the entire Twilight series but there’s another review to tell) But as you can imagine I was drawn into my King’s story at first read and I kept suffered from nightmares for years, seeing Danny Flick floating outside my bedroom window!
Nearly three decades later, I’m rereading this beauty which made me one of the biggest fans of the King of the authors! Another sleepless night is probably waiting for me! But it’s truly worth it! Damn you Danny Flick!
I recently watched the trailer of latest movie adaptation! It seems so promising with its brilliant cast! It will be released on September 9, 2022. I loved Gary Dauberman’s previous King adaptations. ( even though the second movie of “It” was way too much longer) I’m looking forward to watch it!
October 24, 2019
Salem’s Lot by Stephen King is a 2011 Anchor Books publication. (Originally published in 1975)
I read a decent amount of horror novels when I was a teenager. My first introduction to Stephen King was with ‘Carrie’. But it was the heyday of pulp horror novels, with lots of books to choose from out there and long story short, I never got around to reading this book until the early eighties. I had read other King books by that time, and if memory serves, I’d watched the made for TV movie before I read this book. Eventually, I got around to getting a paperback copy of the book, and while I’m sure it would have given me a few restless nights under ordinary circumstances, I had a unique, humorous and unforgettable experience while reading this book, which was truly nightmarish-
I was only a little way into the book, when my roommate invited me to stay at her parents’ house one weekend. Apparently, her family had just purchased a fixer upper Victorian and were eager to show off their latest renovations. As it turns out, the house was located out in the middle of nowhere, which is great, during the daylight hours. My room was on the top floor, and as always, even way back then, I’d packed a paperback with me. As everyone settled in for the night, the quiet, the inky, pitch-black dark, an unfamiliar house, out in the middle of nowhere… and reading Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King, made for a sleepless night spent tossing and turning and jumping at every little sound. I kept imagining Danny Glick floating outside one of those second story windows. This book scared the crap out of me!! And I loved it!! 🦇🦇
When I joined Goodreads, I automatically slapped a five- star rating on the book, but I have only read it the one time. With Halloween approaching, I was in the mood for an old-school horror novel, one from ‘my era’. Several books were up for consideration, and this was one of them. Remembering my experience while reading the book, grinning at how scared silly I’d been, I had to wonder if the book would have the same atmosphere now… or if I would find it dated, and maybe even a little cheesy? So, I decided to find out. Thankfully, my library had a copy of the book and Scribd came through with the audio- something I thought might be fun to try. (The audio is read by Ron McLarty, a veteran narrator.)
The book gets off to a good start and as the story progressed, my memory kicked in and many details I’d long forgotten started to come back to me. King follows the traditional vampire lore in the novel. An old house, rumored to be haunted is purchased by a wealthy man, whose assistant is seen a lot more often than the owner. Meanwhile, a boy goes missing, then his brother comes down with strange anemia-like symptoms and pretty soon, the entire town is gripped in terror. Crucifix’s, stakes through the heart, and all the customary vampire traditions apply here. For its time this was a gripping, updated spin on the conventional vampire tale. Through the years, vampires have morphed into something less confined, with the power to enjoy light and withstand the sight of a crucifix… and some of them even sparkle. 😁😁
But I miss the time-honored folklore of bloodsucking vampires, the scary undead creatures who never age, kill indiscriminately, can’t walk around in the daylight, and can only be conquered by beheading them and driving a stake through the heart. King’s vampires are more ruthless and are in no way conflicted or remorseful. They are pure evil.
This second reading of the book was a different experience, of course. Although I had both an e book and the audio version, the story was bit too long and lost momentum on several occasions. Of course, a book written back in 1975 will have some references that are dated now, but by no means was the book cheesy. The story is as atmospheric as I recall and stands the test of time- and yes, it still scared the crap out me!! 😨😓😱
4.5 stars
I read a decent amount of horror novels when I was a teenager. My first introduction to Stephen King was with ‘Carrie’. But it was the heyday of pulp horror novels, with lots of books to choose from out there and long story short, I never got around to reading this book until the early eighties. I had read other King books by that time, and if memory serves, I’d watched the made for TV movie before I read this book. Eventually, I got around to getting a paperback copy of the book, and while I’m sure it would have given me a few restless nights under ordinary circumstances, I had a unique, humorous and unforgettable experience while reading this book, which was truly nightmarish-
I was only a little way into the book, when my roommate invited me to stay at her parents’ house one weekend. Apparently, her family had just purchased a fixer upper Victorian and were eager to show off their latest renovations. As it turns out, the house was located out in the middle of nowhere, which is great, during the daylight hours. My room was on the top floor, and as always, even way back then, I’d packed a paperback with me. As everyone settled in for the night, the quiet, the inky, pitch-black dark, an unfamiliar house, out in the middle of nowhere… and reading Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King, made for a sleepless night spent tossing and turning and jumping at every little sound. I kept imagining Danny Glick floating outside one of those second story windows. This book scared the crap out of me!! And I loved it!! 🦇🦇
When I joined Goodreads, I automatically slapped a five- star rating on the book, but I have only read it the one time. With Halloween approaching, I was in the mood for an old-school horror novel, one from ‘my era’. Several books were up for consideration, and this was one of them. Remembering my experience while reading the book, grinning at how scared silly I’d been, I had to wonder if the book would have the same atmosphere now… or if I would find it dated, and maybe even a little cheesy? So, I decided to find out. Thankfully, my library had a copy of the book and Scribd came through with the audio- something I thought might be fun to try. (The audio is read by Ron McLarty, a veteran narrator.)
The book gets off to a good start and as the story progressed, my memory kicked in and many details I’d long forgotten started to come back to me. King follows the traditional vampire lore in the novel. An old house, rumored to be haunted is purchased by a wealthy man, whose assistant is seen a lot more often than the owner. Meanwhile, a boy goes missing, then his brother comes down with strange anemia-like symptoms and pretty soon, the entire town is gripped in terror. Crucifix’s, stakes through the heart, and all the customary vampire traditions apply here. For its time this was a gripping, updated spin on the conventional vampire tale. Through the years, vampires have morphed into something less confined, with the power to enjoy light and withstand the sight of a crucifix… and some of them even sparkle. 😁😁
But I miss the time-honored folklore of bloodsucking vampires, the scary undead creatures who never age, kill indiscriminately, can’t walk around in the daylight, and can only be conquered by beheading them and driving a stake through the heart. King’s vampires are more ruthless and are in no way conflicted or remorseful. They are pure evil.
This second reading of the book was a different experience, of course. Although I had both an e book and the audio version, the story was bit too long and lost momentum on several occasions. Of course, a book written back in 1975 will have some references that are dated now, but by no means was the book cheesy. The story is as atmospheric as I recall and stands the test of time- and yes, it still scared the crap out me!! 😨😓😱
4.5 stars
October 28, 2022
“Thin clouds form, and the shadows lengthen out. They have no breadth, as summer shadows have; there are no leaves on the trees or fat clouds in the sky to make them thick. They are gaunt, mean shadows that bite the ground like teeth. As the sun nears the horizon, its benevolent yellow begins to deepen, to become infected, until it glares an angry inflamed orange. It throws a variegated glow over the horizon.”
Salem’s Lot is the story of a small town being overtaken by vampires, and a brave band of people who come together to fight an ancient evil. The story centers around Ben Mears. Ben has returned to Salem’s Lot in hopes that exploring the history of the Marsten House, an old mansion long the subject of rumor and speculation, will help him cast out his personal devils and provide inspiration for his new book. But when two young boys venture into the woods, and only one returns alive, Ben begins to realise that something sinister is at work, in fact, his hometown is under siege from forces of darkness far beyond his imagination. And only he, with a small group of allies, can hope to contain the evil that is growing within the borders of this small and fragile town….
Salem’s Lot builds slowly and this is where Stephen King uses his time to do what he does best, build great characters and create fascinating back stories. The town of Salem’s lot feels like a soap opera with characters that will make you feel nostalgic and disgusted at the same time. They beat their children, cheat on their husbands, drink and bully. Yet its hard to pin them on a good vs bad board, there are shades of grey with everyone you meet.
Once this entire foundation has been laid Stephen King ups the ante and unveils the full horror of the vampires and it unravels like a dream!
Salem’s Lot is a brilliant work of vampire/horror fiction. It is genuinely scary at times, it has the ability to raise the hairs on your arms and neck and gives you a genuine sense of foreboding.
This town is more a charcter than a setting and you realise the evil man can do is more destructive to society than a thousand year old vampire. It’s the townspeople that drive the action and turn Salem’s Lot into an apocalypse.
This is a rich story full of great themes about society, the power of faith, men vs boys and even love and salvation.
It was an absolute dream to read!
I Highly recommend 👌🏻
Salem’s Lot is the story of a small town being overtaken by vampires, and a brave band of people who come together to fight an ancient evil. The story centers around Ben Mears. Ben has returned to Salem’s Lot in hopes that exploring the history of the Marsten House, an old mansion long the subject of rumor and speculation, will help him cast out his personal devils and provide inspiration for his new book. But when two young boys venture into the woods, and only one returns alive, Ben begins to realise that something sinister is at work, in fact, his hometown is under siege from forces of darkness far beyond his imagination. And only he, with a small group of allies, can hope to contain the evil that is growing within the borders of this small and fragile town….
Salem’s Lot builds slowly and this is where Stephen King uses his time to do what he does best, build great characters and create fascinating back stories. The town of Salem’s lot feels like a soap opera with characters that will make you feel nostalgic and disgusted at the same time. They beat their children, cheat on their husbands, drink and bully. Yet its hard to pin them on a good vs bad board, there are shades of grey with everyone you meet.
Once this entire foundation has been laid Stephen King ups the ante and unveils the full horror of the vampires and it unravels like a dream!
Salem’s Lot is a brilliant work of vampire/horror fiction. It is genuinely scary at times, it has the ability to raise the hairs on your arms and neck and gives you a genuine sense of foreboding.
This town is more a charcter than a setting and you realise the evil man can do is more destructive to society than a thousand year old vampire. It’s the townspeople that drive the action and turn Salem’s Lot into an apocalypse.
This is a rich story full of great themes about society, the power of faith, men vs boys and even love and salvation.
It was an absolute dream to read!
I Highly recommend 👌🏻
November 18, 2020
A slow build vampire story, which missed the mark for me!
Author Ben Mears returns to Salem's Lot, where he spent some of his childhood, to write his next book, but discovers something evil residing there.
This was my least favourite Stephen King novel so far. It was about vampires, so why was it so boring and uninteresting?! At least they didn't sparkle though...
'Salem's Lot did have a few interesting characters, I liked Matt Burke and Mark Petrie, and Ben Mears was okay, but there were way too many other characters! At the start I got them all mixed up, as they were all so one dimensional and flat, and there were just too many of them thrown at me, one after the other! When things started to happen to the town's people, I just didn't care! Call me cold hearted, but I just wasn't invested in their characters.
Barlow and Straker were scary, but they weren't in it enough! Barlow especially!
The pace.. what pace? This was slower than a snail! The introduction was far too long and dull, it was about 200 pages, or so it seemed! Urgh there was just so much unnecessary information, and the author regularly went off on little random tangents, which irritated me, like get to the story damnit!
I did like the Marsten house, that was scary, and well described! I also liked the part with the removal men, that gave me chills!
I feel that King did describe the small town accurately, and it was easy to imagine what it was like there. The few action scenes included were well done, I liked the part at the boarding house. I also liked the scene in Mark Petrie's bedroom, with his visitor at the window.
However, I struggled with this one. The narration was slow and dull, and I had to up the speed of the audio for the first time ever!
To sum up, if you cant scare or interest me with a freaking vampire story, then the book hasn't really done it's job has it? It pains me to rate this low, and everyone else seems to love it, but this book was just not for me 🤷
Author Ben Mears returns to Salem's Lot, where he spent some of his childhood, to write his next book, but discovers something evil residing there.
This was my least favourite Stephen King novel so far. It was about vampires, so why was it so boring and uninteresting?! At least they didn't sparkle though...
'Salem's Lot did have a few interesting characters, I liked Matt Burke and Mark Petrie, and Ben Mears was okay, but there were way too many other characters! At the start I got them all mixed up, as they were all so one dimensional and flat, and there were just too many of them thrown at me, one after the other! When things started to happen to the town's people, I just didn't care! Call me cold hearted, but I just wasn't invested in their characters.
Barlow and Straker were scary, but they weren't in it enough! Barlow especially!
The pace.. what pace? This was slower than a snail! The introduction was far too long and dull, it was about 200 pages, or so it seemed! Urgh there was just so much unnecessary information, and the author regularly went off on little random tangents, which irritated me, like get to the story damnit!
I did like the Marsten house, that was scary, and well described! I also liked the part with the removal men, that gave me chills!
I feel that King did describe the small town accurately, and it was easy to imagine what it was like there. The few action scenes included were well done, I liked the part at the boarding house. I also liked the scene in Mark Petrie's bedroom, with his visitor at the window.
However, I struggled with this one. The narration was slow and dull, and I had to up the speed of the audio for the first time ever!
To sum up, if you cant scare or interest me with a freaking vampire story, then the book hasn't really done it's job has it? It pains me to rate this low, and everyone else seems to love it, but this book was just not for me 🤷
May 8, 2022
This was Stephen King's second published novel - the very haunting Salem's Lot sees his second venture into getting underneath the reality of a small town. What very quickly became a King trademark, sees him set the scene of an idyllic American town on the surface with something a lot darker going on underneath seemingly emanating from an isolated mansion and the people therein. The story is seen through the eyes of people new in town. No hanging about for King after his debut novel looked at the supernatural, this second published novel goes for the jugular... literally! :). 8 out of 12.
2016 read; 2006 read; 2003 read
2016 read; 2006 read; 2003 read
December 30, 2019
“At three in the morning the blood runs slow and thick, and slumber is heavy. The soul either sleeps in blessed ignorance of such an hour or gazes about itself in utter despair. There is no middle ground.”
Once again, I am left speechless by King. I am without speech. I think that when a period of times passes by wherein you haven’t read much classic King, you kinda forget what he is capable of. Rereading The Shining and ‘Salem’s Lot these past two months has really reinforced for me why King is the goddamn Master.
No one writes a small town like King. The way he carefully crafts and builds a town and all its residents is incredible, and ‘Salem’s Lot is one of his best. To learn about and to become part of this small town, only to watch it disintegrate and fall victim to a dominant evil force, is one of the most addictive reading experiences! It’s a slow burner, but it really needs to be in order for King to gradually increase the dread and terror.
October is the optimal time to read ‘Salem’s Lot, as it means you’ll pretty much be reading it in real time. The descriptions of autumn are some of my favourite pieces of King’s writing. He just nails it. He honestly just nails this entire book in my opinion.
Prior to my reread I often thought of Ben and Susan in a negative light, like “oh Salem’s Lot is awesome, shame about some of the characters..” but this time around, I appreciate them more. Susan may be quite one-dimensional but I really admired the way she stood up to her mother at times. As for Ben, he isn’t the most exciting either, but he doesn’t shy away when the horrors unfold, he’s pretty badass.
And Mark Petrie!! Still one of my favourite King child characters. He goes through so much, some of his sections really bring me the feels. And shout-out to Father Callahan, as well! And Jimmy... and Matt... the whole crew basically!
I also had forgotten how chilling this book could be. Matt hearing someone upstairs... the childish giggle... the visitor at the window... the knives... I loved how spooked I felt at times!
Truly a favourite King of mine. 5 stars.
Once again, I am left speechless by King. I am without speech. I think that when a period of times passes by wherein you haven’t read much classic King, you kinda forget what he is capable of. Rereading The Shining and ‘Salem’s Lot these past two months has really reinforced for me why King is the goddamn Master.
No one writes a small town like King. The way he carefully crafts and builds a town and all its residents is incredible, and ‘Salem’s Lot is one of his best. To learn about and to become part of this small town, only to watch it disintegrate and fall victim to a dominant evil force, is one of the most addictive reading experiences! It’s a slow burner, but it really needs to be in order for King to gradually increase the dread and terror.
October is the optimal time to read ‘Salem’s Lot, as it means you’ll pretty much be reading it in real time. The descriptions of autumn are some of my favourite pieces of King’s writing. He just nails it. He honestly just nails this entire book in my opinion.
Prior to my reread I often thought of Ben and Susan in a negative light, like “oh Salem’s Lot is awesome, shame about some of the characters..” but this time around, I appreciate them more. Susan may be quite one-dimensional but I really admired the way she stood up to her mother at times. As for Ben, he isn’t the most exciting either, but he doesn’t shy away when the horrors unfold, he’s pretty badass.
And Mark Petrie!! Still one of my favourite King child characters. He goes through so much, some of his sections really bring me the feels. And shout-out to Father Callahan, as well! And Jimmy... and Matt... the whole crew basically!
I also had forgotten how chilling this book could be. Matt hearing someone upstairs... the childish giggle... the visitor at the window... the knives... I loved how spooked I felt at times!
Truly a favourite King of mine. 5 stars.
October 27, 2024
5/5 ⭐
King has done it ✨again✨
I don't even understand why I'm still surprised when another Stephen King novel becomes my new favourite, but here we are again...in utter shock and awe...
Jokes aside, this book is fantastic and proves to me one more time that 70s and 80s King was something else.
There is something about vampire stories in a junk food kind of way. You realise it's not good for your health, but you can't stop because it's just so good. That was me with vampire books this year. This one however was more of a Dracula-Nosferatu crossover rather than a Twilight-TVD one. But hey, it was juicy
King is a natural storyteller and here, he managed to tell the story of a whole town by just having special chapters where we followed different inhabitants of this said town, Jerusalem's Lot, throughout their cursed little days. And you could very well see how, as the story moved on, the daily activities of the townspeople became darker and more unusual.
You could really witness the change.
The downside is that there were so many characters at some point you couldn't keep up with them, not really. But after some time passes, you start to get the hang of it so fret not!
I loved the eerie atmosphere, I loved the mystery and the kind of internal pressure you get to feel right in your chest while reading something that you know very well that might frighten you. The psychological horror in this is extraordinary, the suspense is excellent and the scary bits come at you when you least expect them (aka when it's night and you are home alone and nothing really scary happened and you're allowing yourself one more chapter and that chapter proves to be the scary one).
Given the fact that Salem's Lot is one of King's early works if you read it after you read his other masterpieces such as The Shining and IT , you realise what inspired what and where and how because there are many common ideas and leitmotifs in all these three works that really seem to tie all of his stories together in one big universe.
I do believe that this is the perfect read for those of you who love spooky October reads and maybe consider celebrating KINGtober each year as I've been doing for the past few years. If this is on your list somewhere, move it to the top for this KINGtober, because it's going to be your new favourite!
King has done it ✨again✨
I don't even understand why I'm still surprised when another Stephen King novel becomes my new favourite, but here we are again...in utter shock and awe...
Jokes aside, this book is fantastic and proves to me one more time that 70s and 80s King was something else.
There is something about vampire stories in a junk food kind of way. You realise it's not good for your health, but you can't stop because it's just so good. That was me with vampire books this year. This one however was more of a Dracula-Nosferatu crossover rather than a Twilight-TVD one. But hey, it was juicy
King is a natural storyteller and here, he managed to tell the story of a whole town by just having special chapters where we followed different inhabitants of this said town, Jerusalem's Lot, throughout their cursed little days. And you could very well see how, as the story moved on, the daily activities of the townspeople became darker and more unusual.
You could really witness the change.
The downside is that there were so many characters at some point you couldn't keep up with them, not really. But after some time passes, you start to get the hang of it so fret not!
I loved the eerie atmosphere, I loved the mystery and the kind of internal pressure you get to feel right in your chest while reading something that you know very well that might frighten you. The psychological horror in this is extraordinary, the suspense is excellent and the scary bits come at you when you least expect them (aka when it's night and you are home alone and nothing really scary happened and you're allowing yourself one more chapter and that chapter proves to be the scary one).
Given the fact that Salem's Lot is one of King's early works if you read it after you read his other masterpieces such as The Shining and IT , you realise what inspired what and where and how because there are many common ideas and leitmotifs in all these three works that really seem to tie all of his stories together in one big universe.
I do believe that this is the perfect read for those of you who love spooky October reads and maybe consider celebrating KINGtober each year as I've been doing for the past few years. If this is on your list somewhere, move it to the top for this KINGtober, because it's going to be your new favourite!
February 17, 2018
لوهلة ظننت أن الرواية عن مصاصي الدماء، رعب تقليدي فحسب، لكم كنت مخطئا
الرواية عن الشر نفسه والظلام الذي لا نراه إلا بعد فوات الأوان
"لقد تغير مفهوم الكنيسة الكاثوليكية للشر عموما بشكل جذري في القرن العشرين بسبب فرويد..فلم يعد الشر هو ذاك الشيطان الأحمر بقرون وذيل وحوافر، أو ثعبانا يزحف في حديقة، الشيطان طبقا لإنجيل فرويد، له هوية مركبة عملاقة، هو اللاوعي أو العقل الباطن الخاص بنا جميعا"قصة مدينة صغيرة يرسم لك ستيفين كينج بشكل بانورامي اخر ايامها قبل اختفاءها الغامض
ممتزج بها فلسفة عميقة مقدمة بشكل مبسط عن مخاوف الطفولة وتغير البشر والبيوت المهجورة والكهرباء والمدن الصغيرة التي يهجرها سكانها والكتب والتأليف والأساطير وفرويد وحتي الحروب
تروي من وجهة نظر مؤلف وقع في حب فتاة حسناء، وولد صغير يتغلب علي مخاوفه بشجاعة، وكاهن يختبر ايمانه، ومدرس كبير في السن لم يتصور ان يؤمن بمصاصي الدماء يوما
والأكبر هو وجهة نظر كل سكان مدينة صغيرة بأكملها...تتعرض لقصة مصاصي الدماء بشكل بانورامي متقن
ماذا تقول؟ قلت لك انني ظننت انها رواية عن مصاصي الدماء
أعذرني انها الذاكرة ، نعم يا صديقي هي عن مصاصي الدماء
"هو مفهوم مذهل وهائل بالطبع أكثر من العفريت الأحمر ذو القرون والذيل، ذو الأنف الحساسة الذي يتم طرده ونفيه تماما بـ'ريح' من رجل دين مصاب بالإمساك
مفهوم الشر بالنسبة لفرويد ضخم بالطبع ولكنه مبني للمجهول، غير شخصي قاس بلا رحمة، نفيه وإستئصاله مستحيل إستحالة طلب تاجر البندقية إستئصال رطل من اللحم دون أسالة الدماء"
الرواية عن مصاصي الدماء فعلا ...وفي 3 أجزاء في 650 صفحة
كدت اتراجع عن قراءتها، فكل ما اردته تلك الفترة هو فكرة المدينة التي تختفي والبيت المهجور الغامض، الرواية لن تقدم لي جديدا، الأفلام هرست فكرة مصاصي الدماء وعصرتها حتي فضلاتها وبذورها أنتجت توايلايت
ويكفي قرائتي لبرام ستوكر اصل كل هذا والتي حتي لم تثيرني كروايات أحدث مثلا
ريفيو دراكولا لبرام ستوكر
ما يزيد الأمر سوءا أن كينج كتبها من 1972 الي 1975...وهي ثاني رواياته ، يعني رواية سبعيناتي وكمان تاني رواية للمؤلف
ولكن لا شئ ينتهي كما يبدو ظاهرياً ، هناك سبب ان يكون ستيفين كينج هو كينج ادب الغموض والرعب...الرواية متقنة والأسلوب جذاب ومثير وقوي بعكس عادة الأعمال الأولي
بالأخص في اغلب ما يقدم علي الساحة الأن من هراء يلقب بأدب الرعب لبعض المؤلفين الجدد كالمنحوس والمرسوس واستخربوص وغيره، هذا الهراء الذي ملأ معرض كتاب 2016 وبعضه العمل الثالث لمؤلفيه العظماء
الأسلوب وسلاسة اللغة يجعل قراءة 100 صفحة في اقل من 4 ساعات امرا ليس مرهقا بحق وكان رقما قياسيا بالنسبة لي في رواية ليست شبابية
اما المفاجأة فأثناء كتابتي للريفيو اكتشفت ان الرواية هي الرواية المفضلة لستيفين كينج نفسه والأقرب لقلبه
بل واستخدم نفس المدينة "ساليم لوت" وتيمتها في بضعة القصص القصيرة لاحقا، واحدي الشخصيات الهامة بها في سلسلة برج الظلام
The Dark Tower
ولكن فعلا الأمر لا يقتصر علي الرعب والأسلوب المميز الرواية بل فلسفتها هي أكثر ما جعلني اشيد بها بهذه القوة.. ولا عجب ان تكون رواية المؤلف الاقرب لقلبه….لماذا؟ فلنبدأ بــ
الأحداث
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"الكنيسة أجبرت لإعادة تفسير نهجها تجاه الشر ,قصف كامبوديا بالقنابل ,الحرب في أيرلندا والشرق الأوسط ,قتل رجال الشرطة , أعمال شغب الأحياء اليهودية, مليارات من الشرور الصغيرة منطلقة في العالم كل يوم كوباء الناموس
لتتخلص الكنيسة من جلدها القديم و لتظهر بشكل اجتماعي معاصر, لتثبت قدميها في هذا العالم , حيث لا وجود للساحرات ,لا ارواح شريرة ولا مصاصي دماء .فقط مؤذوا الأطفال , زنا المحارم , وهتك وتشويه البيئة"
تبدأ الرواية برجل ما وشاب صغير يسافران سويا من بلدة لآخري، يحاولون الإبتعاد عن الولايات المتحدة قدر الإمكان ،حتي يقرأ الرجل خبر حول مدينة ساليم لوت، واختفاء اغلب سكانها تماما وانتقال القليل منهم لمدن اخري بعيدة، والشائعات التي تنسج حولها من اصوات غريبة وانوار واختفاءات لبعض السكان بالمدن المجاورة لها
ليضطر الرجل والفتي الرجوع…..ونرجع نحن ايضا معهم بالذكريات
ليبدأ الجزء الأول
تبدأ قصة اخر اسبوعين تقريبا للمدينة..من أواخر سبتمبر حتي 6 اكتوبر، حيث في يوم باواخر الصيف وبداية الخريف حضر بين ميرز، مؤلف متوسط النجاح، للمدينة الصغيرة التي عاش بها طفولته، ليتعافي من حادث فقد بسببه زوجته، وليكتب رواية جديدة ترتبط بمواجهته مخاوف طفولة قديمة تخص بيت مارستن، بيت مهجور علي تلة في اقصي شمال غرب المدينة كئيب الشكل وصار مهجورا،فقد كان مشيده رجلا مجنونا عذب زوجته حتي الموت وانتحر مشنوقا...وظل البيت بلا سكان، وعندما دخله بين كتحدي طفولي منذ اكثر من 20 عاما شعر انه رأي جثة الرجل مازلت مشنوقة في غرفة نومه، انها خيالات الطفولة
يتعرف علي سوزان بالصدفة في الحديقة وهي تقرأ احد رواياته، ويحدث بينهما إعجاب وحب، تعرفه علي امها المتشككة وابيها الذي يعجب بشخصية بين القوية العملية، ويسكن بين في نزل ايفا ،ارملة فقدت زوجها في حريق شهير كاد يقضي علي البلدة في الخمسينات
يحاول بين الذهاب للبيت مرة اخري تأجيره من محامي البلدة ليكتب به ولكن المحامي يخبره بأن البيت تم بيعه منذ أيام قليلة لرجل نمساوي ،بارلو، متوقع ان ياتي خلال ايام.. والذي اشتري ايضا محلا ضخما مع شريكا له انجليزيا يدعي ستاركر ليبيع به انتيكات اجنبية واثرية
تأتي الصناديق من الجمارك ، من بينهم صندوق كبير ثقيل جدا يجد عمال الشحن صعوبة في حمله، لكن ستاركر يحمله بكل سهولة...ستاركر هو الواجهة بينما بارلو لم يقابله احد بعد في المدينة حيث انه في سفريات عمل
ربما الجزء الماضي الخاص بالصناديق من دولة اجنبية سيذكرك برائعة برام ستوكر...وأعتقد ان سيكون لديك فكرة عاما ما سيأتي بها
ولكن لا تقلق ، فالمؤلف أشار لرواية برام ستوكر بنفسه اكثر من مرة خلال الأحداث ، فلا احد في الحقيقة اشياء سخيفة كمصاصي الدماء....هذا شغل روايات كما قيل في تلك الرواية نفسها
أعتقد أنه من الأسهل للناس التصديق علي أشياء كالتخاطر عن بعد أو الاستبصار او التجسد. طالما إيمانهم هذا لن يكلفهم أي شئ. لن يصيبهم بالأرق طوال الليل. لكن فكرة ان الشرور الذي قد يفعله أحدهم قد يعيش حتي بعد وفاته فإن تلك الامور غير مريحة
ثم تبدأ الأحداث في السخونة بنهاية الجزء الأول وبداية الجزء الثاني
لتبدأ الأحداث في منعطفات خطيرة، قتل وتشويه كلب، اختفاء ولد صغير بينما اخيه الاكبر وجد مغشيا عليه ليموت بعدها بأيام قليلة من انيميا حادة وفقر دم مفاجئ، مدرس أعزب تخطي الستين يعيش وحيدا يقضي ليلة من الجحيم مع حفار قبور القرية تجعله يشك في وجود فعلي لمصاصي دماء ككتب الروايات الخيالية
ليستعين ببين لخبرته كمؤلف ليتأكد من شكوكه الجامحة...ولكن الامر لن يصدقه الكثيرين
لا احد يري الظلام الا بعد فوات الأوان
ولاكتفي بثلث احداث الرواية -الجزء الأول فقط -لاتحدث عنه ولنتحدث لم هذه الرواية ربما من اجمل ما قرأت في هذه التيمة، تيمة مصاصي الدماء ولأستعرض -باختصار!!- بعض النقاط الفلسفية التي لاحظتها بوضوح كقارئ عادي في تلك الملحمة الضخمة عن البلدة الصغيرة
Salem's Lot..
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**الظلام ووهج نور الكهرباء ووهج نور الإيمان **
"ربما سبب التغير في مفهوم الشر ليس كله بسبب فرويد فحسب , ربما جانب كبير منه سببه يرجع لإختراع الأضاءة الكهربائية, والتي قتلت الظلال في عقل الانسان
الشر والظلال مازال موجودا ولكنه الأن تحت الوهج القوي القاسي للمبات الفلوريسينت والنيون الذي بلا روح ولمبات الإضاءة مائة وات الموجودة بالملايين
الجنرالات يخططون استراتيجيات تحت وهج الكهرباء اللامعقول وكل شئ خارج عن السيطرة كعربة اطفال تنزل منحدر بأقصي سرعة وبلا فرامل
"لقد كنت أنفذ الأوامر"حقا هذا صحيح لقد كنا جميعا جنودا, فقط ننفذ الأوامر المكتوبة لنا , لكن من اين تأتي الأوامر عاما؟ "خذني إلي قائدك" ولكن أين مكتبه؟ انا فقط كنت أتبع الأوامر, لقد أنتخبني الشعب ولكن من أنتخب الشعب؟
اعتقد هي اكثر ما أثار انتباهي بتلك الرواية الرائعة المثيرة
الظلام الذي من حولنا ولكننا لا نراه بسبب نور التقدم الذي صرنا به
الكهرباء, النيون , التليفزيون , والأن الفيس والتويتر
لسبب ما هناك امرا ما لاحظته مع ستيفين كينج في رواية كتبها بعد تلك بثلاثين عاما عن الكهرباء
ريفيو إعادة إحياء لستيفين كيج
يحاول ستيفين كينج هنا محاولة التأكيد أن الظلام مازال موجودا برغم كل التطور والوهج الكهربائي الذي وصلنا له والذي قد يعمينا من رؤية هذا الظلام..قد يطفئ الإيمان ووهجه ونوره الحقيقي
مازال هناك شيطان..ولكننا لا ندركه..هو من يأمر بتلك الفوضى
بالحروب التي من اجل العرق والدين والبترول والأرض
بقتل المتظاهرين
بقتل الجنود والضباط
بقتل الشباب
مازال هناك من يحرض ويخطط ويشيع الظلام
لا أدري لم شعرت بهذا طيلة الأحداث أن تلك التيمة الأساسية..بل وصدقني حتي كتابة هذه السطور لم أحاول البحث في تفسيرات لأنك إن ما قرات الرواية ستش��ر بهذا ,فهذا واضحا في الاجزاء التي ترجمتها السابقة من الرواية تشعر انها مباشرة جدا
هل معني هذا أن الرواية عن الأيمان في الديانة المسيحية فحسب؟ بالعكس ، الرواية تشعر فعلا انها عن المعني المطلق للإيمان بالخالق نفسه وليس الرموز
في مشهد ممتاز قرب ذروة الأحداث هناك شخصية ما -كي لا احرق لك الأحداث- يحمل الصليب ليشع بوهج إيمانه وليحاول صد ونفي مصاص الدماء، وما أن يتردد تلك الشخصية ويبدأ في التشكك ويحاول أن يحل الأمر بنفسه دون ايمانه يزول الوهج عن الصليب بل و ينجح مصاص الدماء في انتزاعه من يد الشخصية وكسره بسهولة بالرغم من انه في البداية كان يخشي منه وقت توهجه
لا يا صديقي ليس مجرد ان تلوح بصليبك والماء المقدس سيبعد عنك الشر، كما أنه ليس بترديد المعوذتين وحمل مصحف سيمنع عنك الشر، ليس معني ركوعك وقيامك وسجودك بشكل روتيني يجعل منك مؤمنا بحق
ما يمنحك القوة الداخلية هو إيمانك نفسه بالرب، ايمانك بالله هو ما سيصد عنك الشر ،ايمانك بدينك الحقيقي
تؤدي مشاعرك الدينية لخالقك بإيمان وتستعن به لمنحك قوتك الداخلية ليخرجك من مواجهاتك مع الشرور الذي نقابله في حياتنا يوميا
هل انا وحدي من شعر بهذا المعني عندما قرأت ذلك المشهد الغريب الي يضيء فيه يد الشخص بعد غمسها في الماء المقدس بوهج،وكذلك الصليب… دعك من ان المشهد هوليوودي ومبالغ فيه ولكن اعتقد ان الرسالة واضحة في الأحداث بعكس كثير من الروايات العميقة او بالأصح تتصنع العمق
وهج الإيمان الحقيقي هو ما يقويك
حتى لو تم تصويره بوهج مشع حقا ... فلا لا تنس انك تقرأ قصة أساسا عن مصاصي الدماء
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**الرجولة ومصاصي الدماء **
ربما شعرت ايضا انه يرمز لنقص عنصر الرجولة الحقيقية في بعض الشباب وقتها - تذكر إنها تدور في السبعينات ، ولكن...هل تظن أن الوضع تغير الأن تماما؟ بكل هذه الذقون والشعر المشعث؟
فمثلا وصف صديق سوزان السابق والذي وقع في حبها البطل ، ستجد ان امها مقتنعة بذلك ذو الشعر المموج الطويل والعيون الحالمة , الشاب الرقيق الحساس، بينما أبيها قد ارتاح لبين الرجل بحق والذي لا يمانع استكمال عمله بعد العشاء
ربما رمز مصاصي الدماء يعبر عن التغيرات العجيبة التي صارت تتفشي اكثر بكثير من الماضي، كالتحرر المبالغ فيه، او بالاخص التحولات الجنسية، هذا لم يتم ذكره بالطبع مباشرة ولكني استشعرته عندما قام المؤلف بتشبيه في النهاية
الشوارع الخالية جعلته يشعر بالبرودة في عظامه، وبدر لذهنه صورة غلاف البوم روك اند رول قديم عليه صورة متحول جنسيا في غلافه الأمامي، صورة بروفايل بخلفية سوداء ، الوجه الرجولي يدمي باحمر الشفاه وبودرة التجميل ، عنوان الالبوم : إنهم فقط يخرجون ليلا
وعند ربط ذلك المشهد بالمقارنة بين الشاب والمؤلف ستجد ان ستيفين كينج يحاول ان يصرخ صرخة ما هنا
قيم مفقودة ربما, انهيار ليس فقط في حروب العالم -تذكر انها السبعينات , فيتنام , الشرق الاوسط...وغيرها , بل في نمط حياتنا
من خلال تصوير نمط الحياة في تلك البلدة الصغيرة في بداية السبعينات
ربما عن تحول البشر عاما للسهر عاما لأوقات تصل الفجر بينما الحياة الصباحية تنقض والتي أيضا صورها ببراعة بالمقارنة بين الفصل الأول كيف تستيقظ المدينة منذ الصباح الباكر بشكل بانورامي خلاب وبينها وبين فصل المدينة الأخير وهي خاوية تقريباً إلا من قليل
أليست أعراض التحول التي سببها مصاص الدماء هذا تشبه اعراض الإنترنت والتليفزيون في وقتنا الحالي اذا مأتم إساءة استخدامهما...حولت البعض لكائنات ليلية؟
ربما كان يقصد الكثير وربما لم يقصد شيئاً. ..من يدري؟
كان هذا في الجزء الاخير من الرواية .."المدينة الخاوية" ،والذي به ذروة الأحداث والاكثر رعبا واثارة وفلسفة بنفس الوقت
كفاني فلسفة لهذا الحد … ولكن في النهاية هناك ايضا مقارنة ممتازة بين المخاوف بين الاطفال والكبار اعجبتني جدا
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**مخاوف الطفولة**
قلت لك لن اتفلسف هنا… ساكتفي بترجمة هذا النص وايضا بلا حرق احداث حقيقي
وجد نفسه يفكر وليس لاول مرة عن غرابة البالغين. يأخذون المسهلات والمشروبات الروحية أو الاقراص المنومة لتمحي مخاوفهم ويستطعون النوم, ومخاوفهم سهل ترويضها جدا وأليفة : العمل , المال , ماذا سيظن المدرس اذا لم استطع شراء ملابس افضل لجيني , هل زوجتي مازالت تحبني , من اصدقاءي الحقيقيون. هي مخاوف شاحبة مقارنة بالمخاوف التي يستلقي الطفل علي مخدته في غرفة نومه المظلمة ولا أحد ليعترف له أملا في أن يتفهم أحد بشكل جيد تلك المخاوف سوي طفلا أخر مثله. لا يوجد جماعات علاج نفسي ولا دكتور نفسي ولا جمعيات خدمات اجتماعية للأطفال التي يجب ان تتأقلم مع الشئ القابع اسفل سريره او في الدولاب كل ليلة. الشئ الذي يزحف ويهدد وهو خارج نطاق البصر. نفس المعركة يجب ان يحارب بها الطفل وحده ليلة وراء ليلة والعلاج الوحيد في النهاية هو تعرية وتحليل عوامل الخيال والتخيل...وهذا ما يسمي بالبلوغ
بأختصار ,هذه الأفكار مرت بعقله. في الليلة الماضية "مات بيرك" واجه شيئا مظلما وبعده اصيب بأزمة قلبية من الخوف.. وهذه الليلة "مارك بيتري" واجه نفس الشئ , وبعد عشر دقائق استلقي علي فراش النوم وهو مازال متمسكا بالصليب البلاستيكي في يده اليمني كلعبة اطفال. هذا هو الفرق بين الرجال والأطفال.
هذا هو الشئ الذي واجهة الطفل مارك..أعز اصدقاءه يناديه من خارج شباك الدور الثاني ويطلب منه ان يدعوه للدخول للعب سويا
نعم هو احد المشاهد المقبضة بها
ماذا تقول ياصديقي ؟ قلت لك انها رواية عميقة تحوي بعض الفلسفة؟
بل أنها رواية عن مرعبة عن بيت مهجور مسكون بظلال من الماضي
وعن مدينة يختفي سكانها كالكثير من المدن الأمريكية
وعن مصاصي الدماء
نعم , انها عن مصاصي الدماء ياصديقي
محمد العربي
من 2 فبراير 2016
الي 7 فبراير 2016
ملحوظات
----
بعد تلك الرواية بدأ كينج في كتابة تحت القبة بمنتصف السبعينات عن مدينة صغيرة ايضا ولكنه توقف لان الفكرة لم تختمر جيدا وقتها ليعود لها بعد 25 عاما
ريفيو تحت القبة لستيفين كيج
في قصة ممتازة اخري عن المدن الصغيرة
المقال ببداية الرواية يروي بعض القصص الحقيقية عن مدن امريكة اختفت وسبب الظاهرة وتفسيرها الطبيعي وتلميح للتفسيرات الماورائية لتلائم الرواية
وقد استخدمه بشكل كبير احمد خالد توفيق في عدد جديد من سلسلة ماوراء الطبيعة في 2016
ريفيو تلك المدينة لاحمد خالد توفيق
عندما بدأت البحث عن صور لاضيفها في الريفيو فوجئت للمستوي الهوليوودي الرخيص في تصميم شكل مصاصي الدماء للافلام المبنية علي الرواية , مبالغ فيه جدا .. الرواية صورت الموضوع بصورة اكثر واقعية تجعل تخيلها اكثر قبولا مما يجعله ايضا اكثر رعبا, وسهولة في استخراج الرمز به
فأنس الفيلم وابدأ بالرواية
وعذرا لسوء ترجمة المقاطع من الرواية
April 9, 2022
'Salem's Lot, Stephen King
'Salem's Lot is a 1975 horror novel by American author Stephen King. It was his second published novel. Ben Mears, a writer who spent part of his childhood in Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, has returned after 25 years to try to write his next novel.
He quickly becomes friends with high school teacher Matt Burke and strikes up a romantic relationship with Susan Norton, a young college graduate with ambitions of leaving town. Ben has returned to "the Lot" to write a book about the long-abandoned Marsten House, where he had a bad experience as a child when he saw a hanging ghost.
He learns that the house (the former home of Depression-era hit-man Hubert "Hubie" Marsten) has been purchased by Kurt Barlow, ostensibly an Austrian immigrant who has arrived in the Lot to open an antique furniture store. Barlow is supposedly on an extended buying trip; only his business partner, Richard Straker, is seen in public.
The truth, however, is that Barlow is an ancient vampire and Straker is his human familiar. The duo's arrival coincides with the disappearance of a young boy, Ralphie Glick, and the death of his 12-year-old brother, Danny, who becomes the town's first vampire turned by Barlow.
Barlow also turns town dump custodian Dud Rogers and telephone repairman Corey Bryant. Danny turns other locals into vampires, including the graveyard digger, Mike Ryerson; a newborn baby, Randy McDougall; a man named Jack Griffen; and Danny's mother, Marjorie. Danny fails to turn his classmate Mark Petrie, who resists him by holding a plastic cross in Danny's face. To fight the spread of the new vampires, Ben and Susan are joined by Matt and his doctor, Jimmy Cody, along with Mark and the local priest, Father Callahan. Susan is captured by Barlow, who turns her. She is eventually staked through the heart by Ben. ...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز هشتم ماه ۀوریل سال2020میلادی
عنوان: سیلمز (اورشلیم) لات؛ نویسنده: استیون (استفان) کینگ؛ مترجم سودابه تصاعدیان؛ ویراستار محسن نیکو؛ تهران، آذرباد، سال1399؛ در580ص؛ شابک9786227314076؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
کتاب «سیلمز لات» رمانی ترسناک، از نویسنده ی «آمریکایی»، «استفان کینگ» است، که در سال1975میلادی نگاشته شده، این کتاب دومین رمان منتشر شده از «استیون (استفان) کینگ» است؛ در این داستان، نویسنده ای به نام «بن میرس (میرز)» به شهر «سیلمز لات»، جایی که از پنج سالگی تا نه سالگی در آنجا زندگی میکرده، باز میگردد، اما درمییابد که ساکنان آنجا، در حال بدل شدن به خون آشام هستند؛ «بن میرس (میرز)»، پس از بیست و پنج سال بازگشته، و میخواهد رمان دیگر خویش را بنگارد، او با دبیر دبیرستان «مت بورک» دوست، و یک دلدادگی عاشقانه ی پرشور را با «سوزان نورتون» در آستین خویش دارد، «سوزان نورتون» جوان دانش آموخته ی دانشگاه است و آرزو دارد «سیلمز لوت» را پشت سر اندازد، او میخواهد به «نیویورک» برود، «بن میرس (میرز)» برای نگاشتن کتابی درباره ی «خانه ی مارستن»، که مدتهاست متروک شده به شهر «سیلمز لات» بازگشته، جایی که در کودکانگی تجربه بدی را در آن خانه از سر بگذرانده، و در آنجا شبحی را دیده بود، «میرس (میرز)» درباره ی مالک کنونی و پیشین خانه پژوهش میکند، و چیزهایی درمییابد که ماجراهای دیگر را در پی دارد
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 15/06/1400هجری خورشیدی، 19/01/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
'Salem's Lot is a 1975 horror novel by American author Stephen King. It was his second published novel. Ben Mears, a writer who spent part of his childhood in Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, has returned after 25 years to try to write his next novel.
He quickly becomes friends with high school teacher Matt Burke and strikes up a romantic relationship with Susan Norton, a young college graduate with ambitions of leaving town. Ben has returned to "the Lot" to write a book about the long-abandoned Marsten House, where he had a bad experience as a child when he saw a hanging ghost.
He learns that the house (the former home of Depression-era hit-man Hubert "Hubie" Marsten) has been purchased by Kurt Barlow, ostensibly an Austrian immigrant who has arrived in the Lot to open an antique furniture store. Barlow is supposedly on an extended buying trip; only his business partner, Richard Straker, is seen in public.
The truth, however, is that Barlow is an ancient vampire and Straker is his human familiar. The duo's arrival coincides with the disappearance of a young boy, Ralphie Glick, and the death of his 12-year-old brother, Danny, who becomes the town's first vampire turned by Barlow.
Barlow also turns town dump custodian Dud Rogers and telephone repairman Corey Bryant. Danny turns other locals into vampires, including the graveyard digger, Mike Ryerson; a newborn baby, Randy McDougall; a man named Jack Griffen; and Danny's mother, Marjorie. Danny fails to turn his classmate Mark Petrie, who resists him by holding a plastic cross in Danny's face. To fight the spread of the new vampires, Ben and Susan are joined by Matt and his doctor, Jimmy Cody, along with Mark and the local priest, Father Callahan. Susan is captured by Barlow, who turns her. She is eventually staked through the heart by Ben. ...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز هشتم ماه ۀوریل سال2020میلادی
عنوان: سیلمز (اورشلیم) لات؛ نویسنده: استیون (استفان) کینگ؛ مترجم سودابه تصاعدیان؛ ویراستار محسن نیکو؛ تهران، آذرباد، سال1399؛ در580ص؛ شابک9786227314076؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
کتاب «سیلمز لات» رمانی ترسناک، از نویسنده ی «آمریکایی»، «استفان کینگ» است، که در سال1975میلادی نگاشته شده، این کتاب دومین رمان منتشر شده از «استیون (استفان) کینگ» است؛ در این داستان، نویسنده ای به نام «بن میرس (میرز)» به شهر «سیلمز لات»، جایی که از پنج سالگی تا نه سالگی در آنجا زندگی میکرده، باز میگردد، اما درمییابد که ساکنان آنجا، در حال بدل شدن به خون آشام هستند؛ «بن میرس (میرز)»، پس از بیست و پنج سال بازگشته، و میخواهد رمان دیگر خویش را بنگارد، او با دبیر دبیرستان «مت بورک» دوست، و یک دلدادگی عاشقانه ی پرشور را با «سوزان نورتون» در آستین خویش دارد، «سوزان نورتون» جوان دانش آموخته ی دانشگاه است و آرزو دارد «سیلمز لوت» را پشت سر اندازد، او میخواهد به «نیویورک» برود، «بن میرس (میرز)» برای نگاشتن کتابی درباره ی «خانه ی مارستن»، که مدتهاست متروک شده به شهر «سیلمز لات» بازگشته، جایی که در کودکانگی تجربه بدی را در آن خانه از سر بگذرانده، و در آنجا شبحی را دیده بود، «میرس (میرز)» درباره ی مالک کنونی و پیشین خانه پژوهش میکند، و چیزهایی درمییابد که ماجراهای دیگر را در پی دارد
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 15/06/1400هجری خورشیدی، 19/01/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
August 4, 2021
'Salem's Lot by the legendary Stephen King is genuinely not only one of his greatest novels of all-time but is a horror masterpiece! The way he builds Jerusalem’s Lot piece by piece and all its interesting characters, you’ll be hooked immediately from the start. I could not put this book down and took my time reading it as it’s that immersive.
As 'Salem's Lot unfolds, whether you read it many moons ago or are just reading it for the first time, the way King is able to keep you on the edge of your seat is surreal. He set the tone for his incredible writing career back in 1975 when this was originally published and decades later, it still holds up. As a matter of fact, many readers will tell you it’s the best novel he’s ever written, yes, even scarier than “It”. I’ve read many horror novels in my life and can tell you that 'Salem's Lot is up there in the “best of the best” category without even thinking about it twice.
This is 5/5 stars in my book and is something I’d recommend to anyone that either loves King’s work or is a fan of horror. If you’re into reading novels about vampires but written in a way that stands out from anything else, 'Salem's Lot is for you. Just make sure to leave the lights on...
As 'Salem's Lot unfolds, whether you read it many moons ago or are just reading it for the first time, the way King is able to keep you on the edge of your seat is surreal. He set the tone for his incredible writing career back in 1975 when this was originally published and decades later, it still holds up. As a matter of fact, many readers will tell you it’s the best novel he’s ever written, yes, even scarier than “It”. I’ve read many horror novels in my life and can tell you that 'Salem's Lot is up there in the “best of the best” category without even thinking about it twice.
This is 5/5 stars in my book and is something I’d recommend to anyone that either loves King’s work or is a fan of horror. If you’re into reading novels about vampires but written in a way that stands out from anything else, 'Salem's Lot is for you. Just make sure to leave the lights on...
October 17, 2024
Salem's Lot is one of the few books that might actually warrant a sequel.
Now, I love the way it ended. It was perfect, and I'm glad King didn't double dip with his vampire classic. But a small part of me wants to hear more about this modern-day Van Helsing and his sidekick.
You in the back with your hand up, ready to tell me about One for the Road, sit down. I mean a proper sequel and you know it.
So what makes this one stick to your ribs is that King modernized Dracula.
Which, if you haven't read it, isn't really all that interesting by today's horror standards. I'm not saying it isn't good, I'm just saying most people (especially non-readers) wouldn't be all that impressed with the "real" story. Stephen King would probably be the first to disagree with me on this because he says the book changed his world. But I'm sticking by my opinion that the classic tale wouldn't cut the mustard with the vast majority of today's audience.
And while most of you have probably read an updated Dracula, I think King was one of the first to do it well. Mainly because this works as an excellent vampire tale even if you haven't read Stoker's version. His idea was to tell the story of what would happen to a town if Dracula and Renfield had access to things like electric lights and cars. How quickly could a nest of vampires take over if they were to start chewing on their friends and neighbors in the present day?
And maybe more importantly, who would stop them?
In a world that has forgotten to fear the things that go bump in the night, who will put two and two together and come up with an ancient evil that has been written off as a myth believed by superstitious peasants?
For me, this holds up as an excellent vampire story. <-- whether you're a Stephen King fan or not
Recommended.
Now, I love the way it ended. It was perfect, and I'm glad King didn't double dip with his vampire classic. But a small part of me wants to hear more about this modern-day Van Helsing and his sidekick.
You in the back with your hand up, ready to tell me about One for the Road, sit down. I mean a proper sequel and you know it.
So what makes this one stick to your ribs is that King modernized Dracula.
Which, if you haven't read it, isn't really all that interesting by today's horror standards. I'm not saying it isn't good, I'm just saying most people (especially non-readers) wouldn't be all that impressed with the "real" story. Stephen King would probably be the first to disagree with me on this because he says the book changed his world. But I'm sticking by my opinion that the classic tale wouldn't cut the mustard with the vast majority of today's audience.
And while most of you have probably read an updated Dracula, I think King was one of the first to do it well. Mainly because this works as an excellent vampire tale even if you haven't read Stoker's version. His idea was to tell the story of what would happen to a town if Dracula and Renfield had access to things like electric lights and cars. How quickly could a nest of vampires take over if they were to start chewing on their friends and neighbors in the present day?
And maybe more importantly, who would stop them?
In a world that has forgotten to fear the things that go bump in the night, who will put two and two together and come up with an ancient evil that has been written off as a myth believed by superstitious peasants?
For me, this holds up as an excellent vampire story. <-- whether you're a Stephen King fan or not
Recommended.
April 2, 2017
I was a bit of a wimp before I entered my teen years...so I stayed away from anything vampire. My first vampire experience was Love at First Bite, and not knowing it was a comedy (yes, it was before you could Google) I put on a brave face for the friend that invited me- and entered the movie theater terrified by what I would see. Luckily the evenly tanned George Hamilton awaited me...along with some mighty impressive disco dancing. The scary blood suckers would have to wait to frighten me.
Next was Fright Night...again not so scary- I would have welcomed Christopher Sarandon nibbling at my neck for all eternity. A year later I was hooked on Interview with a Vampire's beautiful and tragic characters....but nothing to panic about yet...
Enter into my life- the book SALEM'S LOT!!! Now these were vampires that kept me awake at night- pulling my covers up just under my nose. Not that flimsy cotton sheets would be enough to protect me from impending doooooooooooom...but so far no blood has been spilled. Knock on wooden cross.
Writer Ben Mears has come back home to Jerusalem's Lot after twenty-five years, to write a book and face his fears...
The Marsten House, an abandoned house- that has haunted Ben since he was a child has recently been purchased by a Kurt Barlow- and Ben is curious about both house and owner.
...but as he settles into town- one boy goes missing and another turns up dead...or undead should I say....
Hands down my favorite Stephen King- and no matter how many newer, shinier, sparkly vampires- come along to try to tempt me- none can compare to SALEM'S LOT.
Next was Fright Night...again not so scary- I would have welcomed Christopher Sarandon nibbling at my neck for all eternity. A year later I was hooked on Interview with a Vampire's beautiful and tragic characters....but nothing to panic about yet...
Enter into my life- the book SALEM'S LOT!!! Now these were vampires that kept me awake at night- pulling my covers up just under my nose. Not that flimsy cotton sheets would be enough to protect me from impending doooooooooooom...but so far no blood has been spilled. Knock on wooden cross.
Writer Ben Mears has come back home to Jerusalem's Lot after twenty-five years, to write a book and face his fears...
The Marsten House, an abandoned house- that has haunted Ben since he was a child has recently been purchased by a Kurt Barlow- and Ben is curious about both house and owner.
...but as he settles into town- one boy goes missing and another turns up dead...or undead should I say....
Hands down my favorite Stephen King- and no matter how many newer, shinier, sparkly vampires- come along to try to tempt me- none can compare to SALEM'S LOT.
October 31, 2007
I hate vampires. I hate them and I hate books about them. I hate the way they're romanticized and sexualized and just generally presented in modern fiction. That's why I loved this book. King doesn't shy away from the fact that vampires are creatures of horror and he presents them as such. They are vile, violent, and everywhere, and that's the way I like them.
The characters pitted against them, particularly the priest, are compelling and almost too human to face the vampires. And, in the end, they don't actually triumph. They escape but that's about it. It's tragic and horrible and the perfect vampire book.
The characters pitted against them, particularly the priest, are compelling and almost too human to face the vampires. And, in the end, they don't actually triumph. They escape but that's about it. It's tragic and horrible and the perfect vampire book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 13, 2022
October 2022 -
You know a book is great when it’s accidentally become an annual reread. I always love coming back to this one in October. I snuck in a reread of Carrie last month, and this is such a huge step forward for just King’s second book. I guess I have to reread The Shining soon and just keep rolling through early King books in order. This wasn’t part of the plan, but everything is eventual.
October 2021 - Spooky Season Reread.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
It’s always nice to revisit old school Stephen King.
Like Ben Mears, it was great to come back to the Lot and see some old friends, make some new ones, check out the old Marsten House.
Until the second half of the book when playtime is over and all hell breaks loose.
My old review is below. Still a solid four stars for me.
——————————————————————
Hey.
I’m not a vampire fan, okay?
I mean, I am cool with scary books, and I read scary books, but vampires...
They’re just not really my thing.
If I had to power rank my favorite types of horror novels, and I can’t imagine a time where I would have to do that, except now, obviously...
Vampires would be near the bottom of the list.
Vampires would be one or two spots above werewolves.
Werewolves are stupid, and so are books about them.
Werewolves, give me a break.
Now, I am a Stephen King fan.
Not all the time, but his early stuff especially. This is his second book.
And in his second book Stephen King wrote a story about vampires.
Thank God he didn’t write a story about werewolves for his second book. If he did that, he would probably not even be a thing today. He would have probably had to stop being a writer and get a job doing something else. Selling insurance or Lyft or something.
Anyway, I’m not giving this story four stars because of the vampires.
I’m giving this book four stars because he managed to take something I’m not really crazy about, namely vampires, and built a pretty fantastic story.
He best parts of Salem’s Lot have very little to do with vampires anyway.
After writing Carrie, King added a lot more pages to his next book, and he really takes his time with this one.
There are whole chapters called The Lot, and they are about the town and the people in it, and those are some of the best chapters in the book.
King creates this amazing world set into a small town with characters who inhabit it and have meaning and importance. Even the minor characters get their moments to shine and breathe a little bit.
King spends pages just talking about the Lot and how it came to be, how it’s changed, what kind of people live there and why...
... and vampires.
The terror builds slowly. You know what’s happening. You know where the story is going. But in the end it goes there and then way, way past what you think, and...
... oh man.
I think in every King review I write I say this. I say something along the lines of King being a better writer than a horror writer. He’s at his best when he isn’t trying to scare you.
I always say that, and I still agree with myself.
However...
In this book he excels at both. He takes the time to build up the horror and suspense in the first half, and the second half really pays off.
Even with vampires.
Hopefully, you’ve read this before. If not, read it in October. Or now. Or whenever. Don’t read it even. You should read it, but not reading it is your choice. It’s not the right choice, but it’s yours. You get to make it.
However, and this is my last “however” and the last thing I’m going to write...
However... oops...
If you don’t read this, and you read a book about werewolves, and I can make an exception for Book 5 of the Dark Tower series. It has wolves in the title, so it’s fine. That’s the only exception.
If you do that, we can’t be friends. I’m sorry. We can be friends. It’s fine. We shouldn’t be, but let’s be friends anyway. Choices are great, aren’t they?
Good night guys.
You know a book is great when it’s accidentally become an annual reread. I always love coming back to this one in October. I snuck in a reread of Carrie last month, and this is such a huge step forward for just King’s second book. I guess I have to reread The Shining soon and just keep rolling through early King books in order. This wasn’t part of the plan, but everything is eventual.
October 2021 - Spooky Season Reread.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
It’s always nice to revisit old school Stephen King.
Like Ben Mears, it was great to come back to the Lot and see some old friends, make some new ones, check out the old Marsten House.
Until the second half of the book when playtime is over and all hell breaks loose.
My old review is below. Still a solid four stars for me.
——————————————————————
Hey.
I’m not a vampire fan, okay?
I mean, I am cool with scary books, and I read scary books, but vampires...
They’re just not really my thing.
If I had to power rank my favorite types of horror novels, and I can’t imagine a time where I would have to do that, except now, obviously...
Vampires would be near the bottom of the list.
Vampires would be one or two spots above werewolves.
Werewolves are stupid, and so are books about them.
Werewolves, give me a break.
Now, I am a Stephen King fan.
Not all the time, but his early stuff especially. This is his second book.
And in his second book Stephen King wrote a story about vampires.
Thank God he didn’t write a story about werewolves for his second book. If he did that, he would probably not even be a thing today. He would have probably had to stop being a writer and get a job doing something else. Selling insurance or Lyft or something.
Anyway, I’m not giving this story four stars because of the vampires.
I’m giving this book four stars because he managed to take something I’m not really crazy about, namely vampires, and built a pretty fantastic story.
He best parts of Salem’s Lot have very little to do with vampires anyway.
After writing Carrie, King added a lot more pages to his next book, and he really takes his time with this one.
There are whole chapters called The Lot, and they are about the town and the people in it, and those are some of the best chapters in the book.
King creates this amazing world set into a small town with characters who inhabit it and have meaning and importance. Even the minor characters get their moments to shine and breathe a little bit.
King spends pages just talking about the Lot and how it came to be, how it’s changed, what kind of people live there and why...
... and vampires.
The terror builds slowly. You know what’s happening. You know where the story is going. But in the end it goes there and then way, way past what you think, and...
... oh man.
I think in every King review I write I say this. I say something along the lines of King being a better writer than a horror writer. He’s at his best when he isn’t trying to scare you.
I always say that, and I still agree with myself.
However...
In this book he excels at both. He takes the time to build up the horror and suspense in the first half, and the second half really pays off.
Even with vampires.
Hopefully, you’ve read this before. If not, read it in October. Or now. Or whenever. Don’t read it even. You should read it, but not reading it is your choice. It’s not the right choice, but it’s yours. You get to make it.
However, and this is my last “however” and the last thing I’m going to write...
However... oops...
If you don’t read this, and you read a book about werewolves, and I can make an exception for Book 5 of the Dark Tower series. It has wolves in the title, so it’s fine. That’s the only exception.
If you do that, we can’t be friends. I’m sorry. We can be friends. It’s fine. We shouldn’t be, but let’s be friends anyway. Choices are great, aren’t they?
Good night guys.
November 7, 2021
Don't know why this is marked as unread, I've read it four times.
It's one of the best horror novels of all time.
It's one of the best horror novels of all time.
May 18, 2020
Closer to a 3.5
I had a lot of fun reading this book, and I vlogged my experience reading it: https://youtu.be/MmRbre1wn8o
I had a lot of fun reading this book, and I vlogged my experience reading it: https://youtu.be/MmRbre1wn8o
November 9, 2016
I don’t read a lot of horror, so it’s taken me a bit longer than most to recognize the genius of Stephen King. Belated as it might be, I am finally making my way through his surprisingly versatile oeuvre. At this point, I think I’ve skimmed off much of the cream, having read several of his undisputed classics (The Stand, It, Pet Sematery, etc). Now I’m ready to bore down into the second level. Salem’s Lot is definitely a step down from King’s best, most enduring novels. That being said, horror done by King can really only be compared to horror done by King.
King is so ubiquitous (he’s written over 50 books) and so much a part of popular culture that it’s become hard to read one of his books without knowing everything about it before the first sentence. Take The Shining, for instance. You might not have tried the novel, but you’ve probably run across Kubrick’s classic film (which King hates), The Simpsons’ spot-on parody (“No beer and no T.V. make Homer go something, something”), or had the ending spoiled as the punch-line to a joke on Friends (Joey does not do well with spoilers).
Salem’s Lot has not had that same widespread cultural impact. It’s been adapted twice for television, as a movie and a miniseries. Despite this, I didn’t know anything about it when I started. This ignorance made for a better reading experience, so I’ll try to tread lightly, just in case you’re as late as I am to the Stephen King show.
Salem’s Lot is set in the small Maine town of Jerusalem’s Lot. A writer named Ben Mears, who grew up there, comes into town to write a novel and exorcise his demons. He starts canoodling with a young artist named Susan, and befriends an aging schoolteacher named Matt. Strange things start happening, emanating from the haunted Marsten House that overlooks the community. Those strange things, you will not be surprised, take a turn for the violent.
I think that’s about all I can safely say, plot-wise. I could probably stop writing right now, review complete. But then what excuse would I have for ignoring my family, specifically the child knocking on my office door right now?
Published in 1975, Salem’s Lot was King’s second novel, after Carrie. You can see early on many of the hallmarks he would work into his later efforts. There is the struggling writer as the lead character. There are children, both in danger and as heroes. There is care and detail taken into constructing Jerusalem’s Lot, which is given both geography and history. As he did later with Derry and Chester’s Mill, King gives you such a comprehensive rendering of Jerusalem’s Lot that you feel you can navigate its streets in your mind.
Salem’s Lot is written in the aggressively third-person omniscient style that he utilizes so well. King leaps from person to person, from consciousness to consciousness, giving you a story from an eclectic collection of viewpoints. Ben might be the moral and plot-necessitated hub, but there are many spokes. Among the dozens of characters, King gives us a small-town constable struggling with his courage; a young mother who abuses her newborn child; a couple engaging in a discrete affair; and a Catholic priest whose struggle is more with the bottle than his faith. Are all these characters necessary to the storyline? No, absolutely not. Many, if not most, could have been shorn. The 653 pages in my trade-paperback edition could easily have been halved, without losing any of the essence. But the excess is what sets King apart. It is what makes him great.
This is not, however, a great Stephen King novel. He is still experimenting with the themes that he’d nail later on. He does not have the complete and utter grasp of his material yet. There are lurches and sudden, jarring stops in the pacing.
Here, more than in his other novels, I strongly felt the outside literary influences guiding King’s hand. (It’s impossible not to, since King name-checks many of them within the story). Salem’s Lot feels like an amalgam of Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Richard Matheson. Elements from those authors’ works are thrown into a pot and set to boil. King then adds his own secret sauce, that sauce being blood, and lots of it. It’s entertaining, but not seamless. There were times I was more interested in literary comparisons of early verses later King than I was in the tale unfolding on the pages before me.
The characterizations are just not there. King has the ability – think Jack Torrance, in The Shining – to create characters of incredible depth and complexity. Characters that are unforgettable. That’s not present in Salem’s Lot. More importantly, the connections between the characters is lacking. Ben saunters into town and quickly falls in love with a woman and becomes BFFs with a guy. This happens overnight, with no real explanation except expediency. As the plot reaches its endgame, and people find themselves in mortal danger, King desperately needs us to believe in the bonds – love, affection, loyalty – between his characters. But it’s just not there. I didn't believe in Ben’s humanity beyond his role as a pawn in King’s chess match. Thus, I didn't feel any stakes when Ben, and the people around him, found themselves struggling with their very lives.
Perhaps it’s not necessary to think so deeply about Salem’s Lot. It’s just a genre throwaway, right? A guilty pleasure worth a cheap thrill? Something to be read at the turning of the season, when leaves change and fall, when the air sharpens like knives, when the long dark of winter begins whistling in the wind?
I don’t think so.
King is an American treasure. He is a master. He has a gift for baking complex and knotty themes into deceptively simple spook stories. His unmatched skill has probably made it easier for us to take him for granted. The guy churns out 800-page blockbusters by the gross, books that’ll be read by millions for years to come. Yet he’ll never get the same fawning attention that some Iowa Writers Workshop alum receives for delivering a slim, affected deconstruction of suburban ennui, or the laurels heaped upon some Harvard-grad twenty-something for capturing the acute travails of being young, sardonic, and overeducated in New York City.
In that spirit, I can say that Salem’s Lot is not King at his best. It is, however, better and more effective than most books you’ll read. And I don’t mean just horror novels. I mean novels in general.
King is so ubiquitous (he’s written over 50 books) and so much a part of popular culture that it’s become hard to read one of his books without knowing everything about it before the first sentence. Take The Shining, for instance. You might not have tried the novel, but you’ve probably run across Kubrick’s classic film (which King hates), The Simpsons’ spot-on parody (“No beer and no T.V. make Homer go something, something”), or had the ending spoiled as the punch-line to a joke on Friends (Joey does not do well with spoilers).
Salem’s Lot has not had that same widespread cultural impact. It’s been adapted twice for television, as a movie and a miniseries. Despite this, I didn’t know anything about it when I started. This ignorance made for a better reading experience, so I’ll try to tread lightly, just in case you’re as late as I am to the Stephen King show.
Salem’s Lot is set in the small Maine town of Jerusalem’s Lot. A writer named Ben Mears, who grew up there, comes into town to write a novel and exorcise his demons. He starts canoodling with a young artist named Susan, and befriends an aging schoolteacher named Matt. Strange things start happening, emanating from the haunted Marsten House that overlooks the community. Those strange things, you will not be surprised, take a turn for the violent.
I think that’s about all I can safely say, plot-wise. I could probably stop writing right now, review complete. But then what excuse would I have for ignoring my family, specifically the child knocking on my office door right now?
Published in 1975, Salem’s Lot was King’s second novel, after Carrie. You can see early on many of the hallmarks he would work into his later efforts. There is the struggling writer as the lead character. There are children, both in danger and as heroes. There is care and detail taken into constructing Jerusalem’s Lot, which is given both geography and history. As he did later with Derry and Chester’s Mill, King gives you such a comprehensive rendering of Jerusalem’s Lot that you feel you can navigate its streets in your mind.
Salem’s Lot is written in the aggressively third-person omniscient style that he utilizes so well. King leaps from person to person, from consciousness to consciousness, giving you a story from an eclectic collection of viewpoints. Ben might be the moral and plot-necessitated hub, but there are many spokes. Among the dozens of characters, King gives us a small-town constable struggling with his courage; a young mother who abuses her newborn child; a couple engaging in a discrete affair; and a Catholic priest whose struggle is more with the bottle than his faith. Are all these characters necessary to the storyline? No, absolutely not. Many, if not most, could have been shorn. The 653 pages in my trade-paperback edition could easily have been halved, without losing any of the essence. But the excess is what sets King apart. It is what makes him great.
This is not, however, a great Stephen King novel. He is still experimenting with the themes that he’d nail later on. He does not have the complete and utter grasp of his material yet. There are lurches and sudden, jarring stops in the pacing.
Here, more than in his other novels, I strongly felt the outside literary influences guiding King’s hand. (It’s impossible not to, since King name-checks many of them within the story). Salem’s Lot feels like an amalgam of Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Richard Matheson. Elements from those authors’ works are thrown into a pot and set to boil. King then adds his own secret sauce, that sauce being blood, and lots of it. It’s entertaining, but not seamless. There were times I was more interested in literary comparisons of early verses later King than I was in the tale unfolding on the pages before me.
The characterizations are just not there. King has the ability – think Jack Torrance, in The Shining – to create characters of incredible depth and complexity. Characters that are unforgettable. That’s not present in Salem’s Lot. More importantly, the connections between the characters is lacking. Ben saunters into town and quickly falls in love with a woman and becomes BFFs with a guy. This happens overnight, with no real explanation except expediency. As the plot reaches its endgame, and people find themselves in mortal danger, King desperately needs us to believe in the bonds – love, affection, loyalty – between his characters. But it’s just not there. I didn't believe in Ben’s humanity beyond his role as a pawn in King’s chess match. Thus, I didn't feel any stakes when Ben, and the people around him, found themselves struggling with their very lives.
Perhaps it’s not necessary to think so deeply about Salem’s Lot. It’s just a genre throwaway, right? A guilty pleasure worth a cheap thrill? Something to be read at the turning of the season, when leaves change and fall, when the air sharpens like knives, when the long dark of winter begins whistling in the wind?
I don’t think so.
King is an American treasure. He is a master. He has a gift for baking complex and knotty themes into deceptively simple spook stories. His unmatched skill has probably made it easier for us to take him for granted. The guy churns out 800-page blockbusters by the gross, books that’ll be read by millions for years to come. Yet he’ll never get the same fawning attention that some Iowa Writers Workshop alum receives for delivering a slim, affected deconstruction of suburban ennui, or the laurels heaped upon some Harvard-grad twenty-something for capturing the acute travails of being young, sardonic, and overeducated in New York City.
In that spirit, I can say that Salem’s Lot is not King at his best. It is, however, better and more effective than most books you’ll read. And I don’t mean just horror novels. I mean novels in general.
November 2, 2021
When I first picked up this book at a used book store, I was surprised at how many pages it was. But then it was a Stephen King book, after all. As I began to read, many of those pages went by and the story seemed to be moving at a crawl. I was thinking this will be a three-star read at best. Just a redo of the classic "Dracula".
Then I began to fall under its spell. The pace picked up and the writing was amazing. Then I was in a trance seeing nothing but a five-star book ahead. Count Stephen had made me a believer.
A modern day Dracula story.
Then I began to fall under its spell. The pace picked up and the writing was amazing. Then I was in a trance seeing nothing but a five-star book ahead. Count Stephen had made me a believer.
A modern day Dracula story.
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