Carrie
1974
- occult & supernatural fiction
- horror fiction
- psychological thrillers
- fiction
- horror
- american horror tales
- thriller
- epistolary novel
- telekinesis
- menarche
The story
The story of misfit high-school girl, Carrie White, who gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers. Repressed by a domineering, ultra-religious mother and tormented by her peers at school, her efforts to fit in lead to a dramatic confrontation during the senior prom. ([source](https://stephenking.com/library/novel/carrie.html)) --- Also contained in: - [The Shining / 'Salem's Lot / Night Shift / Carrie](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19558521W) --- See also: - [Selected from Carrie](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL11018609W/Selected_from_Carrie)
What it’s like
Carrie is written as a patchwork of testimonies, newspaper clippings, transcripts, and excerpts from books, so the prose shifts constantly: clipped and documentary in one passage, breathless and confessional in the next. The sensory world is small-town American and unglamorous, with cafeteria trays, cramped kitchens, a dim and airless house that smells of closed-up piety, and the sticky, fluorescent-lit gym where the prom turns ugly. Dread builds through accumulation rather than set pieces, with the reader already knowing something terrible is coming, which gives every ordinary scene a held-breath tension. The vibe is bleak, unsettling, and sorrowful, a slow-burn dread that tips into brutal, sudden violence in its final section, with graphic bloodshed, cruelty from teenagers, and fierce religious abuse along the way, though little that is sexual beyond adolescent awkwardness. It suits a late-night read with the lights on, or a cold afternoon when you want something that lingers. The emotional register is tragic and empathetic: a lonely, abused girl's gradual awakening and the cruelty around her shape the arc, and readers drawn to dark, character-driven horror and the anatomy of social cruelty will find it compelling.
More books like Carrie
Closest in mood, pacing and theme. Tell us why you loved Carrieand we’ll explain which ones fit you.
