‘Salems Lot Book Review
Stephen King’s Second Novel begins to show the muscles Mr. King would later develop as a writer. However, there are still a few indications of Salem’s Lot being at the beginning of his writing career. The novel itself is enjoyable and if you are looking for a light, ominous read, I’d suggest it to anyone who has some time to kill. Above all it is digestible, quick paced, and occasionally scary.
The story is about a young writer named Ben Mears who returns to Jerusalem’s Lot to write a book about a house that haunted him in his childhood known as The Marsten House. He meets and falls in love with a woman named Susan Norton. A bald man named Straker has recently purchased the Marsten House and opened a business of fine furnishings. All of a sudden a boy named Danny Glick disappears, and relatively rapidly, the entire town goes to hell. Then it turns out that Straker’s is a vampire and his business partner Barlow, is Staker’s master. Ben, Susan, a high school English Teacher named Matt, a young boy named Mark, a doctor named Jimmy, and Father Callagan devise a plot to kill Barlow – with many of them dying in the process.
It’s a chilling story. There are a few passages that you read that are upsetting.
With Stephen King, who has probably written close to a million pages in his lifetime and career, you are liable to get some good, but also some not so good. I would say that there are many parts in the book that are four stars, there are fewer parts that are three stars, and there is a very small portion (I counted three pages) that is five star writing.
Not to use a horror pun, but what I mostly feel with Salem’s Lot is that it is a skeleton of a story. It has all the characters, many of the important aspects that build a story, but it takes a while to get to the meat. I did look forward to reading it to see how the story would unfold. It was rarely boring, however there were some stupid portions. But It was written almost fifty years ago and was his second book, so I still give him the benefit of the doubt.
However, there is one flaw that stands out in this book, and that is the pacing. When I picked up this book and saw that it was close to 700 pages, I expected there to be a long drawn out plot about the downfall of a small town. This book covers, at most two weeks of action, the majority of it taking place over about four days. It just picks up speed too quickly and then shit hits the fan. Hell, I’ll go along for the ride, but it didn’t feel planned. It felt as though it was unfolding as it was written, which is a dangerous game to play with fiction, but one that those familiar with Stephen King’s work know this about his writing.
I’ll mention that some of the characters are flat – archetypal people. The pastor. The teacher. The boy. The doctor. The Girl. The Protagonist. And there are a few too many to keep track of. But overall, most of them do what they are there for. I liked the love story between Ben and Susan even though it wasn’t Wuthering Heights. He scratches the surface of these characters, and in Hemingway’s fashion, that leaves the reader to fill in the gaps.
The one advantage of Salem’s Lot is that it maintains its verisimilitude throughout the book. Even though this is a story that deals with vampires, it has a sense of believability that can be difficult to pull off. I’d recommend it to a reader who needs something not too difficult, but wants to accomplish a longer story. I also look forward for what is to come with his next novel The Shining.
I’d give Salem’s lot 80/100. A low B.
Ben Bonkoske 