Carrie
Stephen King, 1974
Horror Mystery, thriller & crimeFantasyContemporary fiction
A high-school outcast with a terrifying gift and a fanatically religious mother faces the ordinary cruelty of her town.
Feels like dread and longing. About society and identity.
A page from the book
What childhood cruelty grows into when it learns to justify itself.
People don’t get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don’t stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it. Stephen King.King wrote Carrie while teaching high school English in Maine and threw the first draft in the trash; his wife, Tabitha, retrieved it and urged him to finish.
Books that feel like this
More by Stephen King
It
Stephen King, 1986
A Maine town, a childhood summer, and the shape-shifting thing that hunts its children — a horror novel about memory as much as monsters.
The Stand
Stephen King, 1978
A flu escapes a lab and empties America; survivors choose between a saintly old woman and a smiling dark man. King's big, bleak, compulsive plague epic.
Pet Sematary
Stephen King, 1983
A doctor moves his family to a Maine town where the local pet cemetery sits beside something older, and grief becomes a door that should stay shut.
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Questions readers ask
- What is Carrie like?
- Feels like dread and longing. About society and identity.
- What should I read after Carrie?
- If you liked Carrie, try Scarlet Angel (S.T. Abby), Unravel Me (Tahereh Mafi) and Clockwork Angel (Cassandra Clare).
A taste of the feed
There is a horror in the person who seems already perfect at hiding.
Romantics always believe in revenge, because romantics love harder, suffer loss more painfully, and hold onto a grudge that has shattered their hearts. Their hearts are of the greatest importance, above all else—body, soul, or mind.
Scarlet Angel · S.T. Abby
What it means when a shattered face doesn't bleed.
It connected with a sickening sound. Miranda reeled back—and then straightened. Tessa shrieked and dropped the globe, staring—the whole left side of Miranda’s face was crushed in, like a paper mask that had been smashed flat on one side. Her cheekbone was flattened, her lip mashed against her teeth. But there was no blood, no blood at all.
Clockwork Angel · Cassandra Clare
Why the devil survives even when God does not.
People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don’t know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.
Interview with the Vampire · Anne Rice
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