July 2011's SK Flavor of the Month - Dolores Claiborne

Happy holidays to those in Canada and the US. Three day weekend for me!

This month it's Gerald's Game's sister book: Dolores Claiborne. If I would have thought about it, we should have read Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne back-to-back.

I'm looking forward to reading this one. It will be new to me, but I've seen the movie a few times and it is excellent. I won't be starting it for a little bit. I'm still working through The Waste Lands (I'm hoping to finish it this long weekend) and I'm determined to read Pinocchio next.

I think I can clamber back aboard the wagon with this one. I read it once when it came out, but not since. Not much sticks with me about it either so it will almost be a fresh read.

This month it's Gerald's Game's sister book: Dolores Claiborne. If I would have thought about it, we should have read Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne back-to-back.

James, why is Dolores Claiborne the sister book to Gerald's Game?

Anyway, this year has been a really bad reading year for me. After my recovery from a knee-injury that has kept me out of the dojo for almost a year, I've been training karate 4-5 times a week for the last couple of months, so not much time left for reading there. However, maybe I should join Bookmarque and climb back aboard the wagon with this one...

in GG Jessie has a vision of Dolores by her well, but doesn't know who she is or what it means. and it's part of the eclipse cycle King had going at the time. The two plots hinge on events that took place during a solar eclipse visible in Maine. I forget what the third one is...if there is a third book.

Thanks for the explanation, Bookmarque. But you can read the books in whatever order, right?...

yes, no prob.

So I'm 100 pages in. Text flying by like water. So readable. I forgot that the book is one long narrative from Dolores herself. Yes, there are others with her, but she only refers to them, they never speak directly. I just flipped through the rest of the book - no chapter breaks. Distinctive.

Another link to GG is the underlying cause for a major event being the abuse of a daughter by her father. The incidents are not the same, but they are similar enough. I'm at the point where D has just found out about it and is explaining to Andy and Frank. Eventually we'll haul back around to Vera, but for now I'm glad to be rid of her.

Finished it in basically one day. Review is here - http://www.librarything.com/work/2480/reviews/4850195

I loved the scene with McAuliffe. he was so frustrated that I could practically feel the tension. When the local cop gave the game away I was surprised he didn't shoot the guy.

#8 - Very nice review. A bit spoilery, but hey, I've seen the movie.

I am in the middle of Pinocchio and oughta have it finished soon. Looking forward to Dolores Claiborne.

I just started tonight (and ought to be reading it right now).

Dolores just talked about hanging the sheets (with six pins, not four!) in the winter.

I'm with Bookmarque in #7. I can tell that I am going to zip through this one. Even if I didn't give a hang about the story, I LOVE the first person narration and I enjoy that it is written in dialect.

#3 - Sorry I didn't reply.

I'd read on the Wikipedia page that the two books were supposed to be published as a single collection called 'In the Path of the Eclipse', but then it was split in two.

Like Desperation and The Regulators you can read the books in any order or even just read one not the other and get the whole story. They just reference each other, have similar themes as #4 mentioned the eclipse in '63 is a big part of both.

Bookmarque, I just want to say that as I am reading I keep thinking back on your review. You were so right on with your comments on King and women. I just don't understand people that think Stephen King can't write women. He has celebrated them over his entire career.

I am enjoying this book so much more now than when I read it in my twenties. I thought that I would be turned off by the first person narration but I love it. I can see Delores in the police station being interviewed by men that she remembers as children. I'm about half way through and I can't wait to get finished. Darn that job of mine!

I'm just about to start the book. I've seen the movie so I'm excited to read the book at last!

I'm about 50 pages in and loving the first person narrative. I bet it's been 10 years or more since I read the book. I am surprised by the difference between it and the movie. Of course it's been 4-5 years since I saw the film. Great story though. Dolores Claiborne is a fantastic character too.

I finished it today. Amazing! I will definitely be reading Gerald's Game because the eclipse vision really intrigued me.

My only wish is that at the end she didn't {verb} the {noun} to the {plural noun}! (trying not to spoil it!)
But it was nice of her.

#15 - Yeah, I agree with you there. Slightly unbelievable, but very nice.

Also, I loved the movie. One of the better adaptations of King's work. I know Dolores is described in a completely different way in the book, but I couldn't get Kathy Bates as Dolores out of my head.

#14 - The differences surprised me too. I think I'm going to watch the movie again this weekend.

I do think Dolores is a great character and loved the first person narration. I don't normally listen to audio books, but I might look out for this one. It was performed by Frances Sternhagen and I bet she does a bang-up job of it.

I was thinking it could make an amazing one woman play, if done right (which is funny, because I felt the same way about Gerald's Game. There's lots more than the eclipse or a few psychic flashes connecting the two).

Oh, and I thought I caught king up in an error when the BMW became a Corvette. I actually flipped back through the book looking for that part. Then I read a few more pages and thought "Oh man, you got me!"

I did in a short story from Nightmares & Dreamscapes (yeah, I'm reading ahead) - he used the word crepuscular to describe a shed. Um...not so much Steve.

Perhaps it was a shed only used at twilight. :)

Finished this one awhile ago but just wanted to add how much I enjoyed it and the first-person narration. I also liked the straight-through, no chapter breaks style. It was probably one of the fastest I've read for that reason.

Saw it in the library and wizzed through it. Loved it while I read it but I know it won't stick.Desperation is now waiting by my bed. I need a dose of King every now and then. Is there something wrong with me? I don't follow when he wrote each book so my choices are utterly random but I do enjoy reading what the rest of you write.

Have gaps in my SK collection, but reading them in order. Next up was Gerald's Game, which I was dreading because I hated it the first time, so moved on to Dolores Claiborne.

Love, love, love the book. The first person narration, the lack of chapters, the brevity and the voice of Dolores made you feel as if she was telling you, the reader, the story. You were there in the interview room with her. Slight twists and turns in the telling, plus the different revelations, made you wonder about her reliability as a narrator along the way, and made your sympathies shift around, which is very true to real life.

SK writes well about good people with hard lives and tough choices, which is more to the point than whether he can 'do women'.

Caught the link to Gerald's Game, so I'm going to read that next (with an open mind). Nicely done and stood up on it's own as a metaphor for the girls suffering sexual abuse by a father at any given moment in time - during the eclipse Dolores sees another girl being abused and kills her husband for abusing her daughter, with the suggestion a mother can protect her own daughter but not all daughters. Added another to layer to the themes of sisterhood the hardships that are common to women.

There's a solar eclipse on August 21, 2017 so I'm going to reread Dolores Claiborne. I never got to Gerald's Game so that will be next.