23. Carrie

By Stephen King (322 pp)(ebook)

I bought the 50 year (gulp!) anniversary edition of Carrie. I originally read it around 1976 when the movie came out. I know because I vividly remember my paperback with the blood soaked Sissy Spacek on the cover and the movie photos inside. The book holds up. It's about a young woman raised in a super religious household who is bullied and turns out, has telekenisis which comes out in a massive wave of destruction when the joke goes too far. The book is partly the story with different POVs and partly from memoir and the investigation into what happened. The way the story events are sequenced is really clever and tension building. Stephen King is the master at writing vivid and disturbing scenes and this book delivers.