tjr's reviews
340 reviews

This became on of my favourites of King soon after I read it. It's been years since I've read it, just after its initial publication, and still the stories resonate in my mind. The four novellas within are lasting, enduring stories.

The highlight of this collection is "The Long Walk."

Not one of King's stronger works, although it does have its merit in the larger Stephen King Universe.

Pretty good selection of articles tailored to the Horror genre. There is a lot of information packed into this little gem, quite useful, for someone interested in writing a horror piece. If writing horror is your thing, pick this up. You should not be disappointed.

I listened to this novel in audio book format. It didn't translate well; it was too complex, and too vague, to enable one to follow the story lines from chapter to chapter. Also, the narrative is quite layered, and wordy, so I found myself losing track of the action as I pondered what it was I just heard.
To get a better sense of this novel, I guess I should probably read it. But now that I know how it all plays out in the end, I have no desire to re-read this novel.
In the end, it wasn't the most spectacular audio novel that I've ever listened to.

I read it twice if that's any indication.

One of the biggest books of the 20th Century--heck, they even named a year after it. I don't think totalitarian regimes totally dig it though.

I do believe that the characterization did leave a lot to be desired. However, I think Mr. Smith was perhaps trying to illustrate something more with his vague characterization (like what is up with Western student culture, etc.) and that was the point.

For a while I thought this novel was pretty humdrum, not necessarily mediocre but somewhat lackluster. However, I then reached a part pretty near the end, just before all hell broke loose, and I became instantly absorbed—I no longer thought the novel was humdrum, in other words. There is something in the woods that is described, and this particular description is so reminiscent of the big monster at the end of The Mist that I just had to make note of it. For example, Louis, the protagonist, is walking in the forest past the pet cemetery, when suddenly mist rolls into the picture. Then, after seeing some strange sights within the mist, Louis hears something eerily similar to that huge monster at the end of the film, The Mist:

Louis came to a total halt, listening to that sound…that inexorable, approaching sound. [...:] The mist stained to a dull slate-gray for a moment, but this diffuse, ill-defined watermark was better than sixty feet high. It was no shade, no insubstantial ghost; he could feel the displaced air of its passage, could hear the mammoth thud of its feet coming down, the suck of mud as it moved on. (King 363-64)

I was drawn into the novel at this point because this passage illustrates that Pet Sematary is part of something much larger, the Dark Tower Universe. The passage made me go back and reread some other passages, other scenes within this novel, and sure enough, the evidence is there all along. The Pet Cemetery is a gateway, an entry point into another dimension, like the car in From a Buick 8, and so many other settings in King’s work. When I realised this, I really started having fun reading Pet Sematary.

All in all, for me, Pet Sematary was a really fun and enjoyable read. The novel contains all the characteristics of an early King novel (the vulgarisms, the sometimes crass writing), but it succeeded in catching my interest and bringing me along for the ride.

As I think of this novel some more, I’ll of course post more on it here. That’s what makes the blogging format so enjoyable for me.

Works Cited

King, Stephen. Pet Sematary. New York: New American Library, 1983.