Book Review: "Salem's Lot" by Stephen King

For those of you who remember the movie, the miniseries or the subculture that spun off from this I would like to say that if you have done all of this but not read the book then you will definitely enjoy it so go and do so. If you have and you’re like me who got the ever-living daylights scared out of them by the novel more than the series or the film then you have come to the right place. Stephen King’s “Salem’s Lot” is a book that grows with age. I read it for the very first time when I was just about turning twelve and now, I’m re-reading it thinking - how is this still making me feel uncomfortable almost a decade and a half later? There are many scenes in this book that are not wholeheartedly ‘scary’ but there are many scenes where I think I felt far more uncomfortable than if I just read a straight up horror and gore novel. I remember as a pre-teen that I read a couple of those uncomfortable scenes and just started to cry. Not cry out loud, but tears would run down my face and my muscles would tense up and really, only a few authors can do that to me. One of them is Stephen King.

The Marston Place is a horrid house with a horrid history. A man killed his wife and then hanged himself. The town has not quite been the same since. It remained empty until author Ben Myers sees that it has a light on in the window that looks like an ominous glow. Ben has returned to the town to write a book on the Marston House and though he won’t admit it, he has been drawn back to that place through haunted dreams from a half-remembered childhood when he was once dared to go inside. What he saw was more than horrific. Children are disappearing and children are dying, things are changing and there is a strange man who is opening shop nearby. Throughout this horror and tragedy, there are many things that do not yet add up, but soon will. They will add up in the dead of night, crawling up your skin and shocking the bones right out of your body.

A truly upsetting and very disturbing book, “Salem’s Lot” is among Stephen King’s finest novels for creating the feeling of absolute unnerving dread and impending doom. Even as many years later as it is, I cannot shake that feeling of the very first time I read it - it followed me for a long time. Resurrecting this book from my memory has just made it continue to do so.

For example: there is a scene in which a child dies and his funeral is done but then, when the undertaker is going to put the soil over the coffin he keeps shouting ‘stop looking at me’ to the coffin. It is as if the child inside is staring up at him but he knows the child’s eyes are closed. When he opens the coffin, compelled to know: the child’s eyes are wide open. It is a scene that upset me for a long time because of the atmosphere just being ‘wrong’. You know, how it just doesn’t feel right? It made me really uncomfortable for a long while.

All in all, I kind of wish I didn’t re-read this book because of the bad memories I had from before. I don’t know what compelled me to do it again and dig them all back up. It is something that Stephen King has over his readers - a curse, a spell - something almost unreal that keeps us revisiting even the most disturbing pieces of his brilliant writing.