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Needful Things: The Last Castle Rock Story by Stephen King
Condition: Used
Price: $2.50
Description:
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
With the "Last Castle Rock Story" King bids a magnificent farewell to
the fictional Maine town where much of his previous work has been set.
Of grand proportion, the novel ranks with King's best, in both plot and
characterization. A new store, Needful Things, opens in town, and its
proprietor, Leland Gaunt, offers seemingly unbeatable (read: Faustian)
bargains to Castle Rock's troubled citizens. Among them are Polly
Chalmers, lonely seamstress whose arthritis is only one of the physical
and psychic pains she must bear; Brian Rusk, the 11-year-old boy whose
mother is not precisely attentive; and Alan Pangborn, the new sheriff
whose wife and son have recently died. These are only three of the
half-dozen or so brilliantly drawn people met in the novel's one-month
time span. As the dreams of each strikingly memorable character, major
and minor, inexorably turn to nightmare, individuals and soon the
community are overwhelmed, while the precise nature of Gaunt's evil
thrillingly stays just out of focus. King, like Leland Gaunt, knows just
what his customers want. 1.5 million first printing; BOMC main
selection. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of
this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
The old horrormaster in top form, this time with a demonic dealer in
magic and spells selling his wares to the folks of Castle Rock, scene
of several King novels including The Dead Zone, Cujo--and how many
others? King locates his hokey Our Town in Maine, but as ever it's
really Consumerville, USA, with everyone's life festooned with brand
names. The cast is huge and largely grotesque, since King--wearing a
tremendous cat's-smile--means to close the book on Castle Rock and blow
it off the map in one of his best climaxes since Salem's Lot. Editing
here is supreme. King braids perhaps a dozen storylines--with hardly a
drop of blood spilled for the first 250 or so pages--into ever briefer
takes that climax in a hurtling, storm-ripped holocaust whose symphonic
energies fill the novel's last third. Perhaps only five characters
stand out: Leland Gaunt, a gentlemanly stranger who opens the Needful
Things curiosity shop; his first customer, Brian Rusk, 11, who sells
his soul for a rare Sandy Koufax baseball card; practical Polly
Chalmers, who runs the You Sew `n' Sew shop, welcomes Gaunt with a
devil's-food cake, and buys an amulet to relieve her arthritis; her
lover, Sheriff Alan Pangborn, who buys nothing but is haunted by the
driving deaths of his wife and son; and Ace Merrill, coke dealer in a
bind, who becomes Gaunt's handydevil and gets to drive Gaunt's Tucker, a
car that's faster than radar and uses no gas. As he has for hundreds
of years, Gaunt sells citizens whatever pricks and satisfies their
inmost desires. But the price dehumanizes them, and soon all the
townsfolk vent their barest aggressions on each other with cleaver,
knife, and gun: Gaunt even opens a sideline of automatic weapons. By
novel's end, the whole town is on a hysterical, psychotic mass rampage
that floods morgue and hospital with the delimbed and obliterated. Then
comes the big bang. Mmmmmmmmmmmm! Leland King's glee, or Steven
Gaunt's, or rather--well, the author's--as he rubs his palms over his
let's-blow-'em-away superclimax is wonderfully catching.
(Book-of-the-Month Main Selection for Fall) -- Copyright ©1991,
Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of
this title.
Product Details
- Mass Market Paperback: 731 pages
- Publisher: Signet Book (July 8, 1992)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0451172817
- ISBN-13: 978-0451172815
- Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
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Refund will be given as Money back.
Refund policy details:
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