Review:
Sixteen-year-old Carrie White gets her first period while in the girls' showers at her high school. Her classmates, particularly Christine Hargensen, are cruel about it, making fun of her and pelting her with tampons. Carrie, whose ultra-religious mother never told her about menstruation, thinks she's dying. The whole thing is understandably traumatic for her, and unfortunately it only gets worse.
King alternates between sections from various characters' viewpoints as the events are occurring and sections from works discussing the "Carrie White" incident after the fact. Readers are aware, well in advance, that Carrie has telekinetic powers that are awakened and significantly boosted after her first period, that things will go badly for her, and that she'll end up killing a lot of people.
This was my first time reading Carrie - I'd never even seen one of the movie adaptations before. I hadn't realized it was such a short book. Even so, I have to admit I spent a good chunk of the story wondering when King would finally get to the "incident." Considering how many people were around afterward to talk about it all, I expected Carrie's explosion, when it happened, to be more limited to the high school. I was unprepared for the amount of destruction King crammed into the ending.
What stuck with me the most, though, was how deeply sad it was. Not just Carrie and everything that happened to her, but all the other scars left behind as well.
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