Okay, threadcromancy here is because yesterday Mrs. Dark and I finished Gerald's game. its odd, as I said earlier in this topic I was sent the book as a teenager, but decided not to read it both because I had not particularly enjoyed misery and the premise in Gerald's game sounded disturbingly similar, and because at that point I was still extremely genophobic, and the premise behind geralds game sort of automatically implied that matters would get pretty x rated, after all it is about a woman who winds up handcuffed to the bed with a dead husband after an attempted sex game goes severely wrong.
In general I like the book, albeit I had a couple of issues. While the book moved slowly, the plot and action were more than compelling enough to hold my interest for the most part, and I thought King did a far better job here with realistic characters in a bad situation.
Okay now on to the spoilery part of what I plan to say so only read on if you don't mind spoilers.
As in the long walk, King has a really amazing ability to describe progressive physical torture which is neither boring nor gratuitous, so all of the descriptions of Jessy's physical sensations, cramps, dehydration etc were spot on awesome (if that is the right word). I also loved the way the book used minimal restricted movement to up the tension, never before could I imagine being on tentahooks to see if someone could tip a shelf, or grab a jar of face cream.
My lady did not like the plot with the dog eating Gerald's corpse, and I can see why, though, aweful as it was I do credit King for even making his corpse eating stray dog partly sympathetic .
Speaking of sympathetic, this one contrasted oddly with Rose Madder. Jessy is not as likable as rose, she often comes across as a rather unpleasant, quite privileged woman, even though Rose endures more abuse. What is odd however, is that where Norman was at rock bottom a plane monster, Gerald (and indeed Jessy's father), were far more realistically unpleasant characters.
yet for all that, jessy in Gerald's game is far more free with mysandric statements, saying men are cursed with penises, heck, even at the end when Jessy runs into a supposedly nice man, he's still condescending and partly dismissive of her, plus being part of a law firm who want to sweep Gerald's unpleasantness under a rug.
Its odd, on the one hand I can completely understand why jessy has the attitude she does, heck given what her father did even before Gerald, and the premeditation involved, and his effort to convince her to cover it up its entirely believable. On the other, there is no denying that were this book written by a woman not by a man, my lady and I would probably assume that the attitudes were the author's not the character's. Indeed, this is another way in which Gerald's game contrasts with Rose Madder, since though Norman is pretty much as bad as it gets, Rose Madder features some extremely nice men (rose runs into one just after leaving her husband), and despite norman's awefulness, Rose doesn't extend this to believing all men are arseholes.
Apparently King had been criticised for not being able to write realistic female characters by his publishers, so maybe this was something of an adverse reaction, or maybe King just assumed this was how all abuse survivors behaved, I don't know.
Either way this was just another fact that made Jessy a sympathetic, but not necessarily always likable character.
Yet, oddly for that, King was so frighteningly correct with ptsd and sexual abuse it was actively scary, flashbacks, songs, occasional breakdowns, even the importance of writing things down to get things out of your head.
In terms of actual action The tension, the voices in Jessy's head, and the revelation of her past were all really well delivered, in particular, I loved the way King actually gave the revelation of Jessy's past abuse some realistic, practical significance to her current predicament with the broken glass.
So, all in all the book was actually really good, welll it was really good up to the point that felt like a natural ending.
I loved King's description of the apparition of the space cowboy, it was wonderfully disturbing, very king,and honestly I could imagine this guy hunching through midworld along with the slow mutants and the low men in yellow coatss.
The problem? King needed a long and convoluted explanation, an explanation which was very clunkily delivered, indeed the book felt a good two hours longer than it needed to be.
Really, i would've been quite happy if this apparition remained an unexplained bit of horror, and if the ending was just that Jessy started recovering, got in touch with her old friend Ruth, and was eventually going to be okay. Heck, Jessy had a couple of visions of Dolores Clayborn,and since I haven't read that novel, they didn't mean much to me, however it didn't matter since I just took them as a general part of Jessy's extreme situation resting on the edge of sanity, and I'd have been quite happy to take her night visitor the same way.
So, King has to explain this thing, and the big reveal is:
A necrophyliac, homosexual psychopath with a medical condition that makes him look weird, who just happened to be in the area an dropped in on jessy to say hello, since fortunately as his tastes ran to men and corpses, the handcuffed naked lady was okay with him, well up until the point he decided to kill her anyway.
Really King! there is so much wrong with this I don't know where to start. Maybe its the "he looks weird so he's eeeeeeeevil!" Maybe its the "oh look evil gay guy who likes corpses"
Hell, maybe its just the shear implausibility of this.
Really, for a writer adept at mystery, who said himself in it that it was what you didn't know that scared you most, this clunky, boarderline offensive explanation was pretty rock bottom, quite aside from the fact that it made the book way too long, indeed for the hole last three hours of the 14 hour novel, I was pretty much just wanting things to wrap up, as for me, the climax had already happened during Jessy's extremely gorey escape with the handcuffs and her collapse in the car, and at that point I just wanted to leave her on a hopeful note.
Indeed, I think King spends more time dredging up an explanation for this weird night visitor than we actually saw him in the earlier part of the novel .
So all in all, some really good scenes, particularly some absolutely nurve wracking handcuff moments, and some surprisingly realistic characters, but a bit too much on the rather offbeat preaching and a long explanation for a rather superfluous psycho. Indeed, its books like this that really do give credence to the theory that King suffers Diarrhea of the word processor .
Certainly in general Gerald's game was pretty good, and far from King's worst, though perhaps not one of his absolute best either.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)