Dolores Claiborne - Softcover

King, Stephen

3.92

153,898 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501143808 ISBN 13: 9781501143809

Publisher: Pocket Books, 2016

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Master storyteller Stephen King presents the classic #1 New York Times bestseller about a housekeeper with a long-hidden secret from her past...one that tests her own will to survive.

When Vera Donovan, one of the wealthiest and most ill-natured residents of Maine's Little Tall Island, dies suddenly in her home, suspicion is immediately cast on her housekeeper and caretaker, Dolores Claiborne. Dolores herself is no stranger to such mistrust, thanks to the local chatter and mysterious circumstances surrounding her abusive husband's death twenty-nine years earlier. But if this is truly to be the day of Dolores Claiborne's reckoning, she has a few things of her own that she'd like to get off her chest...and begins to confess a spirited, intimate, and harrowing tale of the darkest secrets hidden within her hardscrabble existence, revealing above all one woman's unwavering determination to weather the storm of her life with grace and protect the one she loves, no matter what the cost....

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Review:

More of a mystery than a horror novel, Dolores Claiborne contains only the briefest glances at the supernatural. The novel presents Stephen King as a writer experimenting with style and narrative, time and perspective. Fans looking for a skin-crawling, page-turning fright or an undead bloodbath will be disappointed, but a patient reader willing to savour King's leisurely study of character and island life will find many rewards. And all of this is not to say that the book is without suspense.

The story unfolds in one continuous chapter, told in the first person by the cranky, 65-year-old housekeeper, Dolores, who is explaining to police officers and a stenographer how and why she killed her husband, Joe, 30 years ago. At the same time, in her rambling monologue, she insists that she did not kill her longtime employer, Vera Donovan--notwithstanding what the residents of Little Tall Island may be whispering. Joe was a drinker, and, as Dolores gradually argues, he deserved to die for the horrifying crimes he committed against his family. But Vera, despite her cantankerous disposition as a lady governing her decaying estate with her precise rules about even the most mundane household chore ("Six pins! Remember to use six pins! Don't you let the wind blow my good sheets down to the corner of the yard!"), was a good woman--or at least not an evil one. She was the woman who hired the young Dolores and kept her on even after Dolores got pregnant again. Dolores cleaned and cared for her even as the old matron faded into senility.

Dolores Claiborne is a rich novel that recalls the regionalist writing of the turn of the century. It is a fine place for a sceptical newcomer--put off by King's reputation for outright terror--to start. And for fans, it is a book that offers new insights into an author who's an old favourite. --Patrick O'Kelley

Review:

'A compelling masterpiece' (Sunday Telegraph)

'King deploys his talents to formidable effect . . . the tension is unrelenting and the narrator/heroine with her vivid colloquialisms and her sharp, homespun wit, is a tour du force of authorial ventriloquy. This is a work not just of imagination but of genuine pathos.' (Daily Telegraph)

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