Stephen King: Dolores Claiborne (1993, New English Library)
Paperback, 307 pages
English language
Published Sept. 5, 1993 by New English Library.
Dolores Claiborne has a story to tell.
But not quite what the police had expected.
Dolores Claiborne has a confession to make ...
She will take her time. Won't be hurried. Will do it her way, sparing neither details nor feelings. Hers or anyone else's.
This is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Truth that takes you to the edge of darkness.
Dolores Claiborne has a story to tell and you'd better pay attention — or else. --back cover
The way ths story is written it works really well as an audiobook. It was a really nice story but the beginning felt quite long and a bit boring. It has a very long build up for the story but the last two hours of the audiobook felt very rewarding because of that.
I liked the story, the witty language, and the sad parts too. It takes imagination to tell a whole story in first person. And Stephen King is the man with the imagination!
This probably was a candidate for the short story collections, I am glad it stands alone. I like that it was a quick book to read, after reading 3 books with over 1000 pages in the last two months.
I can count on Stephen King to provide a new way to tell the great story.
If you audiobook, get this in audiobook form. It adds a ton to the telling, I feel.
Somehow I missed this in my Stephen King binges. I quite liked it, though. It's a bit weird in the telling . It's done as a police interview. The audiobook adds appropriate sounds in response to things Dolores asks for during the interview, which is cute without interfering in what's going on.
The character work is great, but there's not a lot of supernatural if that is your King thing. It's normally mine, but this was a good read despite.
The "mystery" is less whether murder happened (she admits from the first that it did), but how and why and how many, and watching things unspool as she talks is compelling.
With the audiobook, the narration is perfect. I started it and felt like I was listening to a woman in a small …
If you audiobook, get this in audiobook form. It adds a ton to the telling, I feel.
Somehow I missed this in my Stephen King binges. I quite liked it, though. It's a bit weird in the telling . It's done as a police interview. The audiobook adds appropriate sounds in response to things Dolores asks for during the interview, which is cute without interfering in what's going on.
The character work is great, but there's not a lot of supernatural if that is your King thing. It's normally mine, but this was a good read despite.
The "mystery" is less whether murder happened (she admits from the first that it did), but how and why and how many, and watching things unspool as she talks is compelling.
With the audiobook, the narration is perfect. I started it and felt like I was listening to a woman in a small town telling me a story. I finished the whole thing in a day, which should probably tell you either how good it was or a lot about my reading habits. Maybe both?
King does not get in his own way in this--I don't get the feeling of this being "written" so much as "transcribed" (or, in the audiobook version, like I am actively listening to a taped confession)
The only answer to "is this super dark or funny" is "yes," oddly enough. It's balanced well that the dark moments are sprinkled with funny stuff, but it does go some places a lot of people may not want to go, and for good reason. And I'm not just talking about murder. It's handled very well, I think, but keep an eye out for domestic abuse AND sexual abuse of a minor if that's not something you want to delve into.
As with all King stuff, there is at least the barest hint of the supernatural AND connections to his other books. They're not required reading (I didn't read the big one, but I recognized it was A Reference), but, as with all of King's writing, it is one big universe and the deeper you've delved the more you get out of things.
I'm glad I finally got around to it and it's inspiring me to pick up some more of the King books I've overlooked.
Though one of his least horror or sci-fi themed novels of his that I've read, this is a pretty fantastic story.
A character you truly grow to care about. Slow and plodding in the traditional King way of some of his earlier stuff, but because of the way the book is written, it works. No chapters, no breaks, just one continuous, novel sized stream of consciousness from a woman stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Du Stephen King classique, lu quand j'étais adolescent. Ce n'est plus forcément le genre de romans que je lis désormais, mais j'ai eu ma période Stephan King quand j'étais plus jeune.
I once mentioned to a friend that to my mind Stephen King had gotten worse and worse over the years. She replied that she didn't know much by him, but at least Dolores Claiborne was quite a good read. I told her, not having read this particular book, that maybe that was the case if you didn't know much King, but if you had read as many of his books as I had, it would almost certainly be the same stuff all over again.
A little later, she gave it to me as a present. Well, she was right. This is a more mature book than most of the recent ones by King, though there is at least one scene where he just has to insert a “thriller” scene where a straight-forward telling would have been much better. Then again, you can't have everything, right?
чотири роки тому писав таке про випадково прочитаного кінга: «колись я взявся читати одну чудову повість стівена кінга, «протистояння» (або «останній рубіж»). точніше, чудовою є лише перша половина — майстерно змальований апокаліпсис цивілізації, я зачитався... але кінг не був би кінгом, якби не зіпсував усе своєю фірмовою містичною складовою, котра одразу поламала струнку, красиву логіку сюжету, атмосферу літературного «фолаута» — і перетворила історію на банальний трилер. після цього я не беруся читати кінга». але коли кінг відмовляється від своєї містичної складової, або принаймні користається з неї дуже ощадливо, — результат перевершує очікування! таким є роман «22/11/1963», такою є «долорес клейборн». вагався між 4 та 5, але книжка, безумовно, варта читання. навіть якщо ви вже бачили колись екранізацію.
