Needful Things by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Re-read 11/17/20:

Just sitting back to re-read Needful Things and I was struck by how odd this novel is now, when all Needful Things seem to take the character of toilet paper and gyms.

I just had to think of Gaunt sitting us down to sign up for a 6-month membership, a pass to a bar, or a pack of Costco bum rolls. It's a bargain, you know! Never more than you can afford!!!

Yes. Indeed. And the pranks are all political.


It's still a classic King novel! :) We're not any wiser, that's for sure.


Original Review:

With this tome of Stephen King small town horror, I'm constantly amazed that I had missed picking this up and geeking out over it when it first came out.

I'm certain that I would have. It has all the things I'd been learning to geek out about with his general horror universe, including Cthulhu references, homages to his previous works including events and characters, all of them strung up as if on a map of homicide victims on a perp board, and of course, Castle Rock, itself.

Castle Rock Entertainment, indeed. This is the grand blowout of the town, with evil creeping in and changing all of its residents from a patina of middle-class respectability and Rockwellian charm into roving bands of gleeful murderers with very dark hearts.

And can we really blame it entirely upon Antique Madness? Roadshow Antiques? That equally weird craze of the early '90s, turned EVIL? Or was it just Mr. Gaunt, aka (Flagg, maybe?) stirring up loads of crap? Nah, it's just the greed and pride of humanity, stoked in just the right way, and that's what Stephen King is really known for.

His supernatural aspects are generally underplayed and always in direct support of deep characterizations, of twisting flawed people into even more atrocious examples of humanity, with usually only a few semi-heroic survivors at the end that *sometimes* manage to make it through the fire.

This novel is a shining example of all this, taking all the best simmering-pot boil-over of 'Salem's Lot, the twisted madness of Tommyknockers, and throwing in an epic battle of two older ladies eviscerating each other in broad daylight on the street. :)

Truly a charming novel. :)

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