"Gerald's Game"

“Gerald’s Game”

Written by Stephen King

Review written by Stephen King

            Hi everyone. This is pretty spoiler-filled, so I am marking it as so on Goodreads. It’s hard to talk about this book without spoilers. (Also, spoilers are very personal and circumstantial, so one sentence could be insignificant to one reader, and one could ruin the whole book.) I read “Gerald’s Game” over a two-day period, but I think I probably spent about 5 – 6 hours in total reading this. I wanted to go into the book with an open mind, so I didn’t re-read the blurb on the book jacket. I had bought the book about a year ago, so I didn’t remember much of the plot. I was relatively excited to read this, because I am a pretty big fan of Stephen King. Some of his older books don’t always agree with me, but I thought I’d give it a chance.

            “Gerald’s Game” begins with Gerald handcuffing his wife, Jessie, to a bedpost for sex purposes, but she doesn’t really want to play this way anymore. When he starts to make her uncomfortable, she refuses his advances, kicks him in his genitals, and he suffers a heart attack. Seeing her dead husband on the floor, Jessie realizes she will not be able to open the handcuffs, so this begins her journey of escape.

            Jessie suffers thirst, panic, and a dog who decides to feast on Gerald. Jessie recounts the day of an eclipse, where her father had molested her. She also hallucinates and hears voices of her old therapist, a “good wife” version of herself, and the child she was when her father abused her. I am certainly not a fan of these hallucinations and voices in her head. Half the time, I forgot who everyone is. It’s not interesting, and I found myself skimming these parts.

            This is an uncomfortable novel, and it felt like a journey just to read along with Jessie. I strongly do not recommend this to those who can be triggered or offended by sexual abuse and sexual violence. In addition, it’s a very strange and “trippy” novel. Most of this is in Jessie’s head, and we also have her “visitor” who we are not sure if he is real or a hallucination. I’m not going to say much about the “visitor”, but Jesus Christ, King, couldn’t you have thought of anything cleverer than that? It was very unoriginal and very obvious.

            I liked this novel, but I cannot give it a full four stars. There are moments of uncomfortable and cringe-inducing dialogue:

“That’s a lousy, underhanded, unfair thing to say”.

“The mosquito bumps on her chest or her hipless body”.

            I have to mention that I do like the way that young Jessie is portrayed in flashbacks. I have always said in novels and in films, young characters have dialogue that makes them sound much younger than they are, or they sound about 20 years older. Jessie is very accurately portrayed as an adolescent. Her demeanor and her dialogue fit well.

            I don’t particularly enjoy the sexual violence, but I don’t think anyone is supposed to. I also have a few other notes to point out. I usually flag the pages with little post-it notes to remind me when writing my review. There are a few poorly done references to “Dolores Claiborne.” I thought “DC” was a great book, but I’m not a fan of when King includes references of one book in another. It’s cheap storytelling to reuse characters and plots when convenient in new books.

            I do like the actual mindset of Jessie, who would not pray normally, but she does to try to save herself in this situation. She’s a very intelligent person and can think of ways to escape. However, a few actions she takes are a little on the deux ex machina (of course she can do this, because of this random new plot element that just randomly emerged!)

            Lastly, this book felt as long as Jessie’s escape. I wasn’t rooting for her because I was sympathetic, I was just kind of bored in the end?