How did you feel while reading this book

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GNTLGNT

The idiot is IN
Jun 15, 2007
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358,754
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Cambridge, Ohio
I echo many of my fellow Kingites. It's heavy with grief and although the reader searches for a nugget of hope, there is none to be found. The scene when Louis is taking Gage to the burial ground still makes my neck hairs prickle.
....spot on!.....I well understood by the time I read this novel-that Steve was never going to give us a happy ending or even an ending wrapped up in a neat bow with all questions answered-but this damn thing gave NO fuc*s!!!!!....not a single glimmer of redemption or happiness,,,,shoulda been packed with a bottle of Wellbutrin.....
 

Hill lover35

Well-Known Member
Jan 8, 2017
3,717
20,019
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Alberta canada
I echo many of my fellow Kingites. It's heavy with grief and although the reader searches for a nugget of hope, there is none to be found. The scene when Louis is taking Gage to the burial ground still makes my neck hairs prickle.

i think i am right at that point. Last night i left of where ellie and rachel go back with her parents, and louis is about to dig up gage. i
 

Gerald

Well-Known Member
Sep 8, 2011
2,201
7,168
The Netherlands
I never felt sad when reading it or depressed. In the end it's just a fantasy. But it shows you that people are willing to try anything when they're desperate. What I feel most with a book like this (and SK in general) is curiosity, I think, how will things turn out?

People compare this a lot with Revival. But I feel they're quite different. Revival in the end reminded me more of the movie Flatliners: the climax of Revival was more about what happens after death, what is the afterlife like, not bringing someone completely back like in Pet Sematary. Jacobs wanted to bring Mary Fay back long enough to ask her where she was now, not permanently.
While overall I liked Revival a lot (the idea of meeting someone repeatedly at different stages in life, and how the interest and research in electricity constantly evolved), the image of the afterlife I felt was quite cheesy, it felt like something out of a B-movie (ant-like creatures that enslaved people).
 

Joseph Burdette

Well-Known Member
Jul 26, 2018
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West Virginia
Revival was great Lovecraftain fiction. Pet Sematary is to, but on the darker edge. You never see what happens in the afterlife with Pet Sematary, or even see how the people and animals come back. It's left to your imagination and that is more powerful than anything written. Revival was a largely hopeful book, even at its worse you could keep thinking 'hey, this can still turn out okay' but in Pet Sematary you never have a moment when you feel the story will have a happy ending.
 

chris2-4

"Pennywise Lives!"
Jan 17, 2011
490
683
Hanover, Maryland
I actually saw the movie, think it was '89, before reading the book. I started reading his books when the uncut version of The Stand came out. Close to that time. I remember it being a really creepy story which left me feeling like I read a modern classic. Pretty much like all his early books. Not so much the new ones. Definitely not a happy ending.
 

Gerald

Well-Known Member
Sep 8, 2011
2,201
7,168
The Netherlands
Revival was great Lovecraftain fiction. Pet Sematary is to, but on the darker edge. You never see what happens in the afterlife with Pet Sematary, or even see how the people and animals come back. It's left to your imagination and that is more powerful than anything written. Revival was a largely hopeful book, even at its worse you could keep thinking 'hey, this can still turn out okay' but in Pet Sematary you never have a moment when you feel the story will have a happy ending.

It's true that it's more effective when it's left in your imagination: the only thing that disappointed me about Revival was the image of naked people being transported in large rows by ant-like creatures - especially since you find nothing out about them. Why would these creatures look like ants? I suppose they look like ants because they only worked for higher gods and ants are always very busy creatures - but that's just an interpretation, the book says nothing about it.

What is fun is that a lot of writers who expanded on the Cthulhu mythos created their own forbidden books and grimoires. And then Lovecraft added these back into his own work.
In Revival it is said that the Necronomicon is fiction, yet De Vermis Mysteriis is real. When in actuality De Vermis Mysteriis is fictional too, invented by Robert Bloch (who is mentioned among some others writers at the start of the book).
Revival's climax also reminded me a lot of the Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, where someone is hypnotized at the point of dying. Yet Poe is not mentioned at the start of the book.

I agree Revival is more hopeful, as people are actually cured, and some don't suffer side-effects (it's hopeful in the way that The Green Mile is). Also I like how Jacobs used Astrid as leverage to get Jamie to work for him.