- The Good: Suspenseful small-town vampire horror
- The Bad: Slow and meandering with heavily male cast
- The Literary: Strong Dracula parallels
The old decaying Marsten House of Ben Mears’ childhood still haunts him, so he returns to his hometown with the intention of renting the Marsten House, and writing his book in its crumbling living room, facing his childhood horrors head-on. However, when he returns to Jerusalem’s Lot, the long empty house has a new owner, and a small boy has gone missing, a rare occurance in a sleepy small town.
So instead, he rents a room with a window facing the house, and, while strolling around town, meets a young woman named Susan Norton, and they start dating. Because it’s a small town, Ben meets Susan’s parents on their second date. Ben impresses Susan’s father because he likes sports and beer, but Susan’s mother, along with most of the town’s residents, distrust an educated outsider, particularly an artistic one. Though Ben is falling in love, his gaze often returns to the Marsten House, sensing an impending evil.
Stephen King’s second novel is a horror masterpiece. It was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 1976, but more than that, I can see the roots of modern horror here. But by contemporary standards, this book is too slow, too character driven, too witty, and too meandering in it’s exploration of small town life. Maybe that’s why I enjoy this story so much. First, it feels place specific. The town has a collective memory, built by the same families generation after generation, fueled by gossip and superstition.
I haven’t even gotten to the horror yet. Salem’s Lot is an homage to Dracula, both in choice of monster and in literary form. The vampires are quite terrifying in a classic way (no sparkles here), and I love that the symptoms of a vampire bite mimic the symptoms of rabies, including a flu with a dose of anemia added in. The touch of reality seems to augment the supernatural horror. When the dead boy Danny Glick taps on the second-story window of his friend Mark Petrie asking to be invited in, I have to put the book down for a while.
Yes, this is a story about vampires, but the vampires are also a personification of the evil that festers in the Marsten House and the town, both falling into decay over the years. The vampires only hasten Salem’s Lot impending death. Yes, the first two acts are slow, with entire chapters dedicated to the town and its inhabitants, but it all builds in a suspenseful creeping horror that is almost gothic. The final act is a full of action and blood and holy water, but there are real stakes here that underlie the excitement, not only because King isn’t afraid to kill off main characters, but because this story encapsulates real loss, whether that be loss of faith or loss of life.
King doesn’t have quite enough female characters. And the good-guy male characters are quite obviously stand-ins for the author himself, but I can easily overlook this, as it’s so common in the works of beginning writers.
Highly recommended for fans of supernatural monster horror!
