Customer Reviews

Pet Sematary

5 star:		(204)
4 star:		(49)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

This was my second King book ever, and has been tied for my favourite (along with Cujo) ever since. I do suggest reading Cujo before Pet Sematary as there is a small reference in Pet Sematary to Cujo.. Must, must, must read this book!

Dr. Louis Creed moves from Chicago to rural Maine with his wife, Rachel and children, Ellie (5) and Gage (1). The fresh start in Maine appears to be the change Creed yearns for. A bad relationship with his father-in-law, the redoubtable Irwin Goldman and soured on city living, Maine appears to be the answer to his questions.

Set in 1983-1984, Creed appears to be the picture of the 1980s YUPPIE (Young Urban Professional). Established in his career with the ability to relocate also point up to this very positive, professional image.

Each character is drawn with realistic words; each character becomes vivid and believable, again evidence of a master storyteller. My favorite part in this book was Creed's "last happy day, 3/24/84," the day he spent flying kites with Gage, then just 2.

Once settled in Maine, life and death appear to shift and the line dividing the two becomes blurry and indistinct, thanks to King's superb storytelling. A graveyard for pets dating back to the early 20th Century is near the Creed home and a very chilling secret lurks there.

Death appears to lurk in every corner of the small town. First, the Creed cat is killed by a truck on the truck infested roadway near their home. Gage is killed in May of 1984 after he darts away from Creed and into the path of an oncoming truck. Rachel describes the agonizing death of her older sister Zelda in 1965 when Zelda was 10 and Rachel 8. Rachel's fear of death causes her to lash out at Creed when he gently explains the death of the cat to Ellie; she refuses to attend a neighbor's funeral and barely gets through Gage's.

Creed uncovers the mystery of the Pet Sematary (so spelled by local children who have buried their pets there) and uses what he has learned to make the dividing line between life and death questionable and indistinct.

This is one of King's best stories!

If you let your imagination run rampant while reading this book, you will scare yourself! It's a great book to read, especially if you have pets...lol

Stephen King at his best!
Pet Sematary was recommended to me by my daugther and I agree entirely with her recommendation.
For amateurs of horror, you cannot find any better than this book.
It will take your breath away and shake you inside out.

Pet Sematary is probably my second favorite book from Stephen King. The story is good from the beginning until the end of the book. Read the book before listening the movie (the book is more interesting because there is more details than in the movie). If you like the books of Stephen King you must read this one.

Different people have different ideas about what is "funny" - same with "scary". If snakes or spiders or great-white sharks scare the peedoodle out of you, then your reaction to a story about them might be different than it might be for, say The Crocodile Hunter.

Stephen King is prolific beyond belief. He is sometimes redundant. In Pet Sematary he wrote a story so compelling that I literally could not put it down, yet at the same time so horrifying that I practically screamed at myself NOT TO TURN THE NEXT PAGE!!!!

King knows a thing or two about humans and human relationships, and in Pet Sematary he creates a realistic family that you care about.... then he does absolutely TERRIFYING things to them. Without giving anything away - I have to say that one of the reasons that this book affected me so deeply is that I had recently become a Dad back when this book first was released, and this book hones in on a new parent's worst nightmares, then just gets worse and worse and worse.

If you like being scared by a book, and you can't think of anything worse than seeing your child killed - this book might hit you like it hit me. I repeat: This is the scariest novel I have ever read.

As an aside: The "scariest book ever" was turned into a fairly cheesy movie. I give the book a solid 5 stars, but wouldn't rate the film any higher than 2 or 3. Another aside: My personal choice for "scariest movie" is "The Exorcist", while I found the novel of "The Exorcist" fairly bland and not paced well enough to scare me.

(...)P>Others have commented on the fact that this novel borrows much from The Monkey's Paw. The idea of the Mic Mac burial ground is interesting, particularly the shadowy presence of the Wendigo, but growing up in New England as he did, it's difficult to determine just how much of the concept of Pet Cemetary was inspired, and how much was simply King putting a new coat of paint on an old short story with the obligatory childhood horrors, family mundanities, and heavy-handed foreshadowing thrown in for good measure.

There were some interesting moments and ideas in this book, but few of them were realized, and what little was of interest was buried in 100 to 200 unnecessary pages of foreshadowing (someone's gonna get run over, we GET it!) and the obligatory King tales of childhood suffering. Top it off with a disappointing and (IMO) downright irritating ending (hmmmm, dead cat and kid are evil, let's repeat this mistake shall we?) and this is an annoying snoozer.

Far too much build-up for no payoff.

If you look at the critical acclaim pages of nearly any Stephen King book, you will find that a vast number of sources probably proclaimed the work "Sheer Genius!" "Gripping and Terrifying" and, more often than not, "One of the Scariest Books I'd Ever Read". Ordinarily, I think it fair to say these claims are exaggerations--but not in the case of Pet Sematary.

I've read a good deal of Stephen King's novels (more than half of them), and this one is by far my favorite. It has parts that you wouldn't want to read home alone late at night, but it is far more interesting than just monsters jumping out of shadows...

What made this book so terrifying for me was that it was about human nature, and human reaction to death. The main character in the novel, Louis Creed, unleashes horrors into the world trying to ressurect his dead loved ones...and after the horrors are dealt with, he does it again. Pet Sematary is a deeply emotional book that explores just how far we would be willing to go to cheat death.

If you read just one Stephen King novel, make it this one.

The Creed family is moving into a new house, near the highway. It's a nice place, a nice area--in the country, outside of town, with only the highway to disturb the peaceful life.

Well, that an the pet cemetary located in the woods.

The Creeds are about to discover how frail death really is...and how sometimes its best if your loved ones STAY dead...

Stephen King has written several definitive novels; he is, after all, one of the most talented (and financially successful) writers of all time. "Pet Semetary" (and I just now noticed the misspelling; woe is me) is a classic horror novel of life and death...well, more of the latter, really...

Stephen King, bestselling author of all time (just ask the Guiness Book of World Records), has brought forth another creepy novel. If I could sum up what King is trying to tell his audience, I could do it in few words.

Don't intervene with fate.

Louis Creed's interventions with fate basically screw him over in a major way (more on that later). He's a doctor, so you're thinking, "Great salary." He's got a gorgeous wife and two children, a young girl and a baby boy. And he's decided that Bangor, Maine, definitely beats the city of Chicago, so he and his family move on out into a more rural and placid type environment. The Bangor local is also no problem when it comes to work - he shall take a job working at the medical university (FYI: King now resides in Bangor with his wife, Tabitha, and his children).

When the Creeds first move to Maine, all seems well. Louis meets Jud Crandall, an elderly 80-something gentleman with a heart of gold. Their relationship quickly evolves and the two men become very close. Jud helps Louis grieve when his baby son is hit and killed by a truck on the road by their house.

Enter the "pet sematary" from which the novel's title is derived. A group of children were not educated in the fundamentals of spelling, hence the errors. They buried roadkill and various dead pets over what was once supposedly an Indian burial ground.

Grieving to the brink of insanity, Louis is willing to try and bring his baby boy back to life using the pet "sematary." After all, it worked for the family cat, who ended up roadkill prior to the death of Louis' son. Despite the fact that one of his dead patients keeps appearing to him, telling him not to go through it, Louis is overcome with grief and refuses to listen to him.

A chain of deaths basically occurs. We watch as a doctor, due to loss, gets pushed over the edge and actually does end up losing every bit of sanity he once had. He keeps saying that his dead loved ones won't come back evil - that they cannot come back evil. Bad experiences just don't teach him. He's prone to making the same mistakes again and again all because his sanity is slipping away like sand through his fingers.

See where fate intervention comes in? One death seemed to have lead to the next. If Louis had let his son rest in peace rather than trying to bring him back to life, he would stayed out of a helluva lot of trouble.

King has skillfully woven a horrific masterpiece in which he pulls you from your own normal world and takes you into the world of Lou Creed. No matter how meager a character role, all people are brought to life through excellent characterizational skills as well as dialogue authentically filled with voice and insight. This book is spooky, simply put. By the time you hit the back cover, you will feel like you know Lou Creed.

Highly recommended for psychologists and those who particularly enjoy the world of horror literature.