Pet Sematary

By Stephen King

Late last night, I finally finished reading Pet Sematary by Stephen King, and I think there's quite a lot that can be said about this novel.

First and foremost is that this novel, arguably, has little-- if not no-- excess to it. From a craft point of view, you can see that King was extremely focused where almost every scene and detail serves to crescendo the plot like clever dominoes. Whether that be the product of careful editing (since the original manuscript sat in his desk for 3 years because it scared him; it was, after all, written as a "what-if" from a close call almost losing one of his sons) or the iron hand of a dedicated writer, I think it's both beautifully written and cleverly executed.

King's efforts really outdid themselves, not only exploring the idea of death being a secret we each carry within us and "make our own" but also touching on the idea of how desperate grief will make us when it's someone we love dearly. He dares to ask us: If you had a chance to bring that one person back from the dead, would you do it? Would it be worth it to defy the natural order of the world? And then he shows us just what that kind of desperation does to us-- the way that, when we give into it, it takes and takes and takes from us until we're no longer recognizable as human beings.

We call the act of reanimating remains "playing God," but King shows us that tampering with the natural order of the world is neither sacred nor holy. That bringing someone back doesn't make us God but, instead, in King's words, makes us "Oz the Gweat and Tewwible" because something changes within us when we lose someone and, whether we like it or not, we can never go back once that change happens. And messing with the natural order of life only strips away our humanity.
My only real criticisms would be (besides that he broke the cardinal rule of never transmitting backstory through dialogue, 20 pages from the Epilogue) the ending. Besides being abrupt, I would argue that it read like it was written for the Hollywood screen rather than a King novel-- tacky and just a tiny bit unclever.

Maybe even predictable.

That being said, I don't think it could have ended any other way without seriously undermining the point he was trying to make. And given the handling of the climax, there were limited options to do with the ending. So I would say that it's fair to say that King wrote himself into a corner...but he at least made that corner look as damn good as he could.

And it worked.
While I wouldn't list this one higher than Cujo, I think it's still a damn brilliant read. I would highly recommend Pet Sematary for any writer studying ideas of novel structure, general craft, and for just about anyone who loves high quality, moralistic fiction.