'Salem's Lot

  The first Stephen King novel I ever read was Misery. I read it the summer before my Freshman year of high school as a summer reading project and I became obsessed. During my teen years I read basically every King novel I could get my hands on and ‘Salem’s Lot quickly emerged as my favorite. That’s why, when picking my first novel to cover on the blog, ‘Salem’s Lot was an easy choice. 

‘Salem’s Lot was published in 1975 and was King’s second published novel (Carrie was the first). ‘Salem’s Lot received positive critical reception and King himself has described it on more than one occasion as his favorite of his own work.

‘Salem’s Lot takes place in the fictional town of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine. When author Ben Mears comes to town (after briefly living there during his childhood) to work on his new novel. However, Ben isn’t the only new arrival in town as the ancient (and possibly haunted) Marsten House has two mysterious new inhabitants who have sinister plans for the town.

Here’s the thing about Stephen King, I don’t think he’s a particularly great writer. His prose is often clunky and his dialogue is attempting to sound “folksy” but is more cringey. What King is, however, is an incredible storyteller. I don’t think this is an unfair (or uncommon) criticism, in fact I think it’s one that King would agree with.

A King novel almost always succeeds or fails based on the strength of his characters, and ‘Salem’s Lot has plenty of characters to go around. While not as sprawling as The Stand, the setting of the titular town allows for an ensemble of colorful characters. While most of the supporting characters are archetypes who exist to fill out the body count, they give the novel a lot of color and that steadily increasing body count helps illustrate the slow death of the town itself.

Our main cast are all engaging. In addition to Ben we get local artist (and love interest) Susan Norton, high school teacher Matt Burke, doctor Jimmy Cody, alcoholic priest Father Callahan, and twelve-year-old Mark Petrie. While the relationships between Ben and Susan and Ben and Matt get a lot of early importance, it’s ultimately the relationship between Ben and Mark that becomes the heart of the novel as Ben assumes a surrogate father role to Mark after the death of his parents.

The horror of ‘Salem’s Lot is a creeping horror. It’s not until the town is nearly overrun with the undead that anyone, even those who know what’s going on, have a full scope of the terror. By the time the protagonists and the reader have a clear sense of the true danger, it’s far too late to do anything about it.

It’s a great novel. Some people may find the long passages dedicated to detailing the day-to-day activities of the townspeople to be uninteresting or filler, I find that it’s an integral part of establishing the stakes and, ultimately, the tragedy of the novel. 

Rating: 4 tiny Maine towns out of 5

Other Observations:

• Does the Dog Die? A dog is killed and his corpse displayed on the gate in the cemetery.

• Harrison’s Favorite Scare: The death of Jimmy Cody is quite brutal.

• The story of Jerusalem’s Lot is expanded on in the short stories Jerusalem’s Lot (a prequel) and One For the Road (a sequel). Both are featured in the anthology Night Shift.

• The story of Father Callahan is likewise expanded on in the Dark Tower series (specifically Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower). 

• This novel has been adapted into a two-episode miniseries in 1979 (which received a sequel in 1987), a television film in 2004, and as part of the plot of the series Castle Rock (very loosely). A new adaptation from James Wan and Gary Dauberman is currently in the works (though I’d really love to see what Mike Flanagan could do with the material).

Next Week: It’s the fifth week in the month which means that I’m stepping away from horror and I’ll be covering the classic All About Eve.