Carrie by Stephen King

This was Stephen King’s first published novel, which was only written because his wife convinced him to. I have always been curious about Stephen King as he is a well known author but I had never read any of his books as I assumed that they wouldn’t be to my taste. However I read the blurb to Carrie I was intrigued. Well it wasn’t so much the blurb, more the small line at the top which reads: “Carrie White has a gift – the gift of telekinesis”. Now, as a psychology student, the idea of the super natural and aspects such as telepathy and telekinesis (two totally different things by the way) have always interested me, so I couldn’t really not read this could I?

As mentioned before, Carrie is about a teenage girl, called Carrie, who has the power of telekinesis (the ability to move objects with the power of the mind). The story starts with Carrie finishing a sports lesson and showering shyly with the other girls. It is quickly established that Carrie is a misfit of the school and doesn’t have many friends. During this after gym showering scene, Carrie starts her first period which at the age of sixteen is almost extraordinarily late, what’s even more extraordinary is that Carrie had no notion of what a period was or why she was bleeding, convincing herself that she was “bleeding to death”. The other girls start shouting at her, calling her names and throwing sanitary towels and tampons at her. She is later rescued by a teacher and is sent home for the rest of the day.

We then are introduced to Carrie’s mother Margaret White, who is a religious nut that seems to be out-casted by the rest of society and has held her daughter prisoner to her own extremist views. Upon learning that her daughter has had her first period she is a bit more than displeased, beats Carrie to the floor and forces her to pray to rid her of her sin. As the story goes on we see how cruel Margaret is and what a poor standard of life Carrie seems to have.

Until fellow classmate Sue Snell intervenes through her guilt of taking part in the bullying of Carrie in the shower. Sue is dating Tommy Ross, a stereotypical high school jock during the period of the novel. Sue expresses her guilt to Tommy who attempts to sympathise. After much thought, Sue persuades Tommy to ask Carrie to the high school prom instead of her.

The novel is what is called and epistolary (a story comprised of newspaper clippings, book extracts and the like) which is one of my favourite writing methods. The various excerpts add a lot to the story as they build up tension and suspense encouraging the reader to become curious as to what happens. The extracts start off by talking about Carrie’s life in a case study manner, talking about what research has been done and questions they still have left to answer. They gradually hint towards some catastrophic disaster that occurred which results in them unable to get answers from Carrie and suggests that many characters have died.

Carrie’s knowledge of her power comes rather slowly to begin with, then once she realises it, she starts training herself by making small objects hover in the air. She sees this as her form of rebellion against her mother’s ways, something which most teenagers may have gone through at some point.  

We sympathise with Carrie a lot, we can understand why she is the way she is due to her mother’s strict rulings and feel almost no sympathy for Margaret when Carrie turns against her in rage. However despite Carrie’s harsh and sheltered upbringing we can tell that she still loves her mother and feels apologetic for turning on her. This aspect of the novel reminds me of another novel which I read during my A Levels called Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson which, again, focuses on a young girl bought up by an extremely religous mother.

During the climax and aftermath of the terrible events which happen to the town, Carrie is blamed for the incidents, when in fact the readers know that the initiation of the events aren’t really her fault, more just coincidence which she takes advantage in a rage from being bullied and made fun of all of her school career.  In this rage Carrie uses her powers to create destruction and disaster in the town, resulting in many deaths.

The ending of the novel, shows a series of court cases with the authorities attempting to get to the bottom of what had caused the devastation of the town, with no real result. Extracts from various books and investigations throughout the novel reveal that Carrie’s power may be the results of a gene in her, stemming from a long line of recessive and carrier genes in Carrie’s ancestry. The addition of this and the other extracts in the novel, add a sense of realism to the story making the scenes in the climax of the story even more hard hitting.

From the 1976 movie adaption

Needless to say, Carrie is an excellent novel and I would recommend it to anyone. It’s so immersive I read the entire thing (242 pages) in one night, without many breaks. It really is a classic of modern literature and almost a necessity for everyone to read. There has been a movie adaption of the novel which also has high acclaim but I am yet to watch but I look forward to doing so. If you do get a chance to read Carrie go for it, it won’t take you very long to get through as it’s so compelling with Stephen King's fabulous writing narrative. I look forward to reading many more of his books in the future.

Welcome to the Working Week by Paul Vlitos

This book was heavily recommended to me by my boyfriend. He said he’d read it multiple times and really enjoyed it. So, I had a read of the first couple of pages and was instantly drawn in.

Welcome to the Working Week, focuses on recently single Martin Sargent (not to be confused with Martin Sergent).We follow Martin through a short period of his life, meeting various family members and close friends. The story starts off with Martin looking for a new housemate as his girlfriend, Sally, has recently moved out. He works in an office somewhere in London (no one’s really sure what he actually does) where we see his feelings towards co-worker Laura. On several occasions, Martin goes on nights out with his friends and appears to make quite an idiot out of himself whilst under the influence.

There isn’t really much else to be said about the overall plot of the book, a majority of it is spend with him apologising to his friends for making an idiot of himself whilst trying to convince Sally to leave her new boyfriend, David and trying to win Laura over. When I put it like that it doesn’t sound like the most interesting book does it? What makes the book different and interesting is that the entirety of the book is composed of emails.

This makes the story very interesting as what Martin says or does outside of what he writes in his emails, we do not get to see. This gets particularly entertaining when Martin comes back from a night out and emails his (usually annoyed) friends apologising for the previous night or sometimes asking what actually happened over night. This is a feeling that many people will be able to identify with.

Through these emails we get to see a lot of the characters in the book and what they are like. There’s Martin’s friend Barney, also known as DJ Idiot, who DJs (poorly) at local bars, forcing his friends to come along. He’s often described as an idiot, made fun of amongst the others and may be a bit slow but he comes across as a guy with good intentions and is always a good friend to Martin. Ella, another of Martin’s friends, constantly pokes fun at Martin in a banterous way despite coming across as hard faced and slightly tom-boyish. There are many other major and minor characters who are also well developed and thought out.

Vlitos, in my opinion, did an amazing job and encapsulating how people communicate and socialise and when major disastrous events occur, the issues are handled sensitively and realistically. As I have mentioned previously, the characters are all well created and likeable even though you recognise their faults. Vlitos also had an amazing way of making you sympathise and be on Martin’s side of things even when he was in the wrong or being unreasonable.

I would highly recommend giving this a read, it doesn’t seem particularly well known and I believe it should be. The email correspondence  formula Vlitos uses makes the book very easy , quick and enjoyable to read, it’s nothing revolutionary in the world of literature but it’s quick and fun, I found myself audibly laughing whilst reading it for a lot of the time so I would definitely give it a go.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

This book is one of the classics and like most of the classics I’ve read it took me a long time to read. Maybe it’s because of the heavy influence on setting and character description that it takes me a while to get my head round it. I started reading The Picture of Dorian Gray in around January as I remember it was on the recommended reading list for my English Literature A-Level. Unfortunately, at the time I never really found the time to read anything that wasn’t completely necessary.

Written in 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray tell the story of a beautiful young man who is part of the well-off society of the time who is fully taken with the new idea of hedonism which is introduced to him by Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry speaks to Dorian telling him that he is beautiful and should live his life to suit him. Dorian’s friend and well known painter Basil Hallward finds great pleasure in painting portraits of Dorian and soon becomes infatuated.

One particular piece is painted, which is where the book begins, which is seen as absolutely astounding by all three men. The portrait captures Dorian’s beauty magnificently and Dorian wishes for the portrait to grow old instead of him. Little did he know that his wish had come true.

Due to the influence of Lord Henry, Dorian begins to live his life to please himself with his own beauty being the centre of his life. He meets lowly young actress, Sybil Vane becomes besotted and proposes to her. Dorian, so taken with Sybil’s talent, invites Lord Henry and Basil to accompany him to one of her shows. However Sybil had fallen so deeply in love with her ‘Prince Charming’ her talent had faded which angered Dorian as her beauty, which was her acting had gone and no longer had interest in her. He returns home and notices the portrait had changed and realises that the sins he commits are reflected onto the portrait rather than him.

Over the next years Dorian experiments with many vices and committing many sins, with his portrait becoming uglier over time. Eventually Dorian’s conscience catches up with him and he begins to realise the damage he’s done by looking at the terrifying portrait. He decides that a confession is what is needed to repent. However this isn’t enough so he takes a knife and stabs the portrait, killing himself.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fascinating piece of literature; it concentrates so much on how beauty and aesthetics are important in life. It is often mentions throughout the book how beautiful Dorian is, or how certain objects or scenes are beautiful. There is also constant talk of ‘falling in love’. I specifically remember Dorian saying ‘I haven’t fallen in love in at least a week’. The concept of love then (or at least to the higher members of society) is very different to the ones we hold today. I often translated characters ‘falling in love’ as just them being fascinated or admiring someone or something rather than the affection and feelings we associate love with today.

The novel also highlights the difficulties of leading a dual life. Dorian lives his life being a socialite attending various well-to-do people’s houses for dinners and luncheons as well as attending events; on the other hand his life is full of hedonism, vanity and criminality which are shown through the degradation and his detest for the portrait.

It is very apparent that Dorian is heavily influenced by Lord Henry’s hedonistic ideals, this is picked up upon by Basil, who is distraught at the thought of Dorian’s dark descent into vanity. Dorian had served as a muse to Basil’s work and deems his portrait of him as his best work and is mortified when Dorian shows him what the portrait has become. Basil confesses his attraction and fascination with Gray, who then almost mercilessly murders him, adding more deformity to the portrait.

The character of Basil is by far my favourite as he doesn’t seem to be influenced by vanity and hedonism as much as Dorian and Lord Henry have. However, Dorian, unable to take responsibility for his terrible actions blames Basil and his portrait for what he has become and even blames the knife he used to kill Basil as responsible for the murder.

Basil also represents the homosexual undercurrent of the book. As previously mentioned, Basil is infatuated with Gray and revels in his beauty. The Picture of Dorian Gray was used against Wilde in court for him being a homosexual which at that time was definitely an offence which he spent time imprisoned for.

The original publication in Lippincott's Magazine

Even though The Picture of Dorian Gray took me a very long time to read, I truly enjoyed it. Reading the slow dark decent of Dorian is upsetting and something I feel is still apparent today, many people are easily influenced into behaviours which are immoral sometimes never escape from them. This leads me to question if Dorian ever really repented for his sins and if we feel a sense of catharsis in his death. Personally I think not, Dorian was simply driven insane by the ugliness of his portrait and couldn’t bear to see himself in that way but due to the hedonistic state of mind he was in I highly doubt that he felt truly apologetic for the crimes he had committed.

50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James

I chose to read this book before I knew what a massive ‘hit’ it had become. I ordered this book just over a month ago as I had never read an erotic fiction book before and was curious as to what they were like. I also didn’t know that this book was based on an online Twilight fan fiction, if I had known this I probably wouldn’t have bought it as I do not rate the Twilight ‘saga’ in any way (even though the poor acting in the films amuses me). However, I decided to ignore this and went in to read 50 Shades of Grey with an open mind.

Warning: May contain SPOILERS!

The premise of 50 Shades of Grey is rather simple, Anastasia Steele, an English graduate, meets dashing high-up business man Christian Grey. They become infatuated with each other; however Grey tells her that she doesn’t want to get caught up in his world and to leave him, despite turning up at her place of work and taking her out for coffee. It is revealed that Grey is heavily into BDSM and has his own ‘playroom’ full of implements of that nature including whips, riding crops, floggers, chains and the like. Steele is of course shocked by this but her infatuation for Grey makes her stay. It is revealed that Steele is a virgin; this is shocking to Grey and seems quite taken aback that Steele still has her cherry intact. Then he does something which he states is out of character and has something called ‘vanilla sex’ with her, which to us normal people is just plain, ordinary, enjoyable sex. There is a heavy focus in the sex scenes on ‘foil packets’, which James uses to refer to condoms (can’t really argue with the promotion of safe sex). Things go on like this for a while, with the interruptions of arguments which end in intercourse wherever they happen to be at the time. I say they go on like this for a while; they go on like this for the remainder of the book until she leaves him at the end.

There isn’t much else to say about the overall plot really, they just have sex in different places, the kitchen, the bathroom, her bedroom, his bedroom, the ‘playroom’, various hotel bathrooms etc and to be honest it gets boring very quickly, in fact it was never really interesting to begin with. I feel this is something to do with James’ poor standard of writing. I find that she is very repetitive in her writing style. Common occurrences are, Steele saying “holy crap”, ‘foil packets’, the constant lip biting leading to sex and the sex scenes are very similar to each other, even the ones in the ‘playroom’ which you’d expect to be exciting and new but no, the worst it really gets (or the scene I found the least boring) is with Steele tied up and blindfolded on a bed with Grey doing various things to her.

The most irritating things about the way the sex scenes are written is that the ‘action’ is often interrupted by Steele’s sub conscious and inner goddess. James decides to personify these concepts and fails miserably. They appear on pretty much every page, with the inner goddess doing crazy acrobatics whenever things are about to get a bit kinky and the sub conscious seems to be the sensible side of Steele’s thoughts. Both are irritating and interrupt the mood when things have the opportunity to get a bit steamy.   I also feel that James only put them in the book as a device to show some sort of internal struggle Steele was having with herself, that also failed.

The BDSM aspect of the so called plot seems to only feature this contract that Grey gets all his submissives to sign. The contract includes items such as “15.22 The Submissive shall not look directly into the eyes of the Dominant except when specifically instructed to do so. The Submissive shall keep her yes cast down and maintain a quiet and respectful bearing in the presence of the Dominant.” As well as sticking to a strict food list, which is apparently a massive deal breaker for Steele even though we never get to understand why as we never get to see a copy of this food list and she never explains why it’s such a big deal to her. There is also seems to be some big debate in Steele’s mind if she should sign the contract or not even though we all no she will and it the contract even has a the get out clause having a trial period and she can ask to leave the contract at any point, so I didn’t see it as too much of a problem.

Despite all this, I found myself sitting for hours at a time reading 50 Shades of Grey I am unsure as to why though, it’s poorly written to the point of hilarity, you can’t relate to Steele in anyway shape or form, you relate more to Grey and find him a much more sensible person compared to Steele’s immature and argumentative attitude. I say that but I feel the whole idea of the book is for its readers to fall in love with Grey, I didn’t, I just felt pity for having to put up with Steele’s childishness and also slight annoyance at him for staying with her whilst she was being a moany bitch and the constant comparisons to Tess of the D’Ubervilles and other literature which have pretty much nothing to do with her situation (suppose it was James’ way of making Steele seem intelligent or something).

I’d say give it a read and see what you think, even if you don’t like it you can learn to laugh at it, my boyfriend and I spent a long time laughing at how poor it was (not sure that was James’ intention for the readers). I still enjoyed it as it was easy to read and kind of a guilty pleasure read, which by no means suggests that it’s a good book. I think that it may have done a bit better with me if it was a parody of erotic fiction, making it overly silly and comedic rather than trying and failing to make it serious. I am curious about 50 Shades Darker and 50 Shades Freed but not so much that I’d go and buy them after hearing roughly what happens in them. There are also rumours of the series being made into a film possibly starring Robert Pattinson . . . don’t think I’ll be going to see that somehow.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

 I had always been curious about this series of books as they seemed to be a massive hit a few years ago when they were first released. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first of Larsson’s millennium trilogy. There have been several film adaptations of the book, the latest being released last year starring Daniel Craig (another reason for my curiosity of the trilogy to increase) with the first film being produced by a Swedish film company (Yellow Brid) as Larsson himself is Swedish and the English versions of the books have been translated from Swedish.  

The book focuses on a journalist called Mikael Blomkvist who is a part owner of the Millennium magazine alongside his lover Erika Berger. We start off with the revelation that Blomkvist has just lost a libel case against billionaire monopolist Hana-Erik Wennerstrom and is therefore sentenced to three months imprisonment, his career as a journalist in tatters.

We then are taken to surveillance company Milton Security which is run by Dragan Armansky. We gain an insight into his thoughts and affections for a rather strange employee by the name of Lisbeth Salander, who, it is overly, stated that she is different, sticks out from the rest of the employees and would’ve been sacked from any other company. She is however incredibly skilled at her job, researching into other people’s lives as a personal investigator. Armansky is approached by Dirch Frode,  a lawyer acting on behalf of his client, he wants a thorough investigation into Mikael Blomkvist.

Moving back to Blomkvist we see more of the aftermath of the court case and realise how he will never be trusted as a journalist again. He is then approached by Frode to accompany him to meet with his client. His client, Henrik Vanger is an elderly man who wants Blomkvist to investigate the murder of his great niece Harriet who went missing 36 years previously. Blomkvist is offered a substantial sum of money as well as evidence to ruin Wennerstrom, he, to the upset of Berger, accepts the job and moves to the island with Vanger to investigate the case.

I will leave it there for describing the plot as I do not want to spoil the highly gripping story that follows and believe me you don’t want the rest spoiled for you.

Also, just as a quick warning, the book does contain scenes of rather brutal rape and torture so if that would make you feel uncomfortable I would recommend reading with caution, however these scenes are written very well in a sensitive manner. Interestingly Larsson was inspired to write this book through a personal feeling of regret as when he was 15 years old he witnessed a girl getting raped and regretting not helping her, which probably would explain why the rape scenes are written with sensitivity and affects the reader so.

One very important part of the book besides the main plot of Harriet case is the character development a Lisbeth Salander, as you may have been able to guess, Salander joins Blomkvist on his mission to find out what happened to Harriet. The pair at first the pair don’t get on too well as Salander is very cautious and sceptical but she is driven through the pure curiosity of the case to get an answer to the mystery of Harriet. Salander who is previously described by the Swedish government to have various mental health issues and is under the care of a guardian provided by the authorities , speaks little of her life and doesn’t let anybody into it. However the, to Salander, remarkable way in which Blomkvist introduces himself to her (he barges into her house with coffee and breakfast) takes her by surprise and from that point on her affections steadily grow for him.

This provides a commentary on the possible feminist/misogynistic reading of this book. The title itself can be translated to men who hate women, which obviously suggests misogyny and implies violence against women.  The book portrays some women as strong, Berger and Salander but then some women as weak, the women who were murdered. It also portrays men in a mixed way, for example Blomkvist wouldn’t have been able to solve the mystery without the help of Salander, on the other hand Salander is being oppressed by her guardian Nills Bjurman. However Salander breaks triumphantly breaks free from this oppression, showing the reader how strong she is personally and how strong women overall can be.

The majority of the book is well written and easy enough to follow with the inclusion of a  family tree for the Vanger family, which I had to constantly refer back to see how each character was related. This might’ve been a hassle to some people as there are so many members of the Vanger family alone it is hard to keep a track of who is related to who, I personally enjoyed it as it engrossed me further in the story and helped me to related to Blomkvist as he was trying to solve the mystery at the same rate the reader is.

As you may have been able to notice, I 

thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to read the sequels in the millennium trilogy The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and The Girl who Played with Fire. These two books also follow Blomkvist and Salander on other cases and I thoroughly look forward to reading them.  I have also watched the 2011 film version of the book after finishing it. I feel it was a rather accurate version of the story but doesn’t include some of the vital parts of the story and details of the characters which made me enjoy the book so much.