Chances are pretty good that when you think about Firestarter, what you see in your mind is a very young Drew Barrymore, hair blown back from her tiny face, setting, well, just about everything in her path on fire. That movie, along with E.T., helped propel her to early stardom and created one of the many iconic images of the 1980s. So iconic, in fact, that the Netflix series "Stranger Things" references it, not literally, but through the character of Eleven and the shadowy government agency with nefarious purposes known as Hawkins National Laboratory. As movies made from Stephen King books go, I don't remember Firestarter being too awful, nor do I remember it straying too far from the events of the book, though I will admit it's probably been 20 years since I've seen it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the basic plot, Firestarter revolves around Andy and Charlie McGee, a father and daughter who are on the run from a secret government agency called The Shop. When he was in college, Andy and his future wife Vicky participated in trials of an experimental hallucinogenic drug that left them with weak psychic and telekinetic powers. Those powers were magnified by a power of a lot in their young daughter, Charlie, who showed signs from a very early age of being able to move things with her mind, and, more frighteningly, set things on fire. This happened most often when she was angry or upset, giving new meaning to the phrase "terrible twos". Andy and Vicky did everything they could to keep her powers, and their own, a secret, but The Shop maintained covert surveillance on all of their past subjects, and when they saw what Charlie could do, they tried to capture her so they could study her with the ultimate goal of creating a super-weapon. Andy, obviously, wasn't really down with this plan, so he took his daughter and ran.

This is not the first time that King has explored the idea of telekinesis, nor the first time he has used a young person as his powerful hero (hello, Carrie!). Charlie is another in a string of children that King uses as protagonists. One of the recurring themes in his work seems to be that the more innocent you are, the more likely you are to have the imagination and bravery to confront evil. In this case, while Charlie is the one that can set things on fire with her mind, the evil is the government, another recurring theme in King's works, first appearing in The Stand. It is not always the main theme, but in many of King's books the least sympathetic characters have something to do with the power structure of the location of the story, whether they be a politician, clergy member, or wealthy citizen.

One of the things I liked about this story, both when I first read it and now, is the relationship between Charlie and her father. He is smart, a teacher (another recurring element in King stories), kind and gentle, and pretty evolved for a man who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite their dire situation, he tries to teach Charlie the difference between right and wrong, even as he sometimes has to tell her to do horrible things to help them evade The Shop. It felt more unusual when I first read it, but even now portraying the father as the primary caregiver of a small child feels is not that common. Unlike Jack Torrance, Andy McGee is able to be truly selfless, doing everything he can to ensure his daughter's safety despite what it means to his own.

The story does feel a bit unbalanced, with long periods of waiting in between action scenes, but oh what action scenes they are! The other characters in the novel; agents from The Shop, mostly; are written with just enough depth for you to understand their motivation, but without any real substance. They could be any shadowy government official from just about any book or movie that contains shadowy government officials. They are fairly shallow, that is, except for John Rainbird, the Native American Viet Nam vet turned assassin, who is tasked with getting Charlie to use her powers. His character is cunning and violent and sociopathic, but with an impressive, if scary, intellect. His main motivation for being an assassin isn't money or revenge or patriotism-his long string of murders are essentially his own twisted research into what you can see of a person's soul if you look in their eyes as they die. He is a truly chilling character, and one of the more subtly written King villains. He definitely adds a quality of menace to an already suspensful story.

My Year of King: Carrie, 1974

Finally! I started re-collecting King's books at the end of 2017 in preparation for my 2018 goal to re-read all of King's books, and there they sat, taunting me, until the new year. I am so excited to start this journey into the world of Stephen King. I've read his books regularly since I was a teenager, and I am really curious to see how my reaction to his stories has changed as I have moved from adolescence into middle age.

Because I am reading the books in the order they were published, Carrie was up first. This was also the first King book I ever read, so we've come full circle. Going into it, I wondered if I would still find it as engaging as I did when I was 13, or whether the intervening years would change my opinion. If I started reading King today, would I still love his books as much as I do?

I am relieved to report that I enjoyed Carrie as thoroughly in 2018 as I did in 1983. While I now recognize that it reads more like a young adult novel in a lot of ways than I did when I was an actual young adult, it still captured my interest as an adult reader, and kept me hooked even though I already knew how the story would come out.

The story, for those of you who have managed to avoid both the book and the two movies based on it in the last 40 years, is about a teenage girl named Carrie. Carrie lives with her religious fanatic mother, a woman who is so hateful and cruel it almost defies belief. Because her mother won't allow her to have friends, dress like the other girls, or go out to school events, Carrie is an outcast, ostracized and bullied everywhere she goes. After an especially heinous bullying incident in the girl's locker room (scene of many cruel incidents, both fictional and real), Carrie discovers that she has an amazing power-she can move objects with her mind. More drama ensues both at home and at school, culminating in the worst.prom.ever.

Carrie introduces us to a few stylistic characteristics that will become well-known to regular King readers (or Constant Readers, as he called us). Throughout the book, he lets you know that folks are going to die, and when. He creates characters that feel like real people, though they are less nuanced than his later characters. One of the things I love about King is how even his villains are often sympathetic, or at least conflicted about the evil they do. The good guys and bad guys in Carrie are pretty one-dimensional in that respect. The bad guys appear to have no redeeming qualities, and even when Carrie is literally destroying her entire town you still feel sorry for her. But there are glimpses into the types of characters he will write later, namely Sue and Tommy, the "it" couple who play such a large role in getting Carrie to that fateful prom.

Overall, re-reading Carrie has got me super stoked for book number two, 'Salem's Lot. I remember enjoying it, but that was before the Twilight phenomenon caused the literary world to be Carrie it will almost be like reading it for the first time all over again.
oversaturated with vampire stories. I remember very few specifics about the plot of this story, so unlike