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A writer comes back to the small town he grew up in to write a book and to work up a strange experience he had in his childhood. He meets a nice girl and the world seems peaceful. But then 'Jerusalem's Lot' receives two new residents, one of whom seems to be active only at night. The people in town get sick, die ... and come back suddenly.
Only Stephen King is able to do that: to write a story 25 years after the success of "It" with characters so similar that one seems to know them already... Once again they are friends from the small town of Derry, 5 in number, who did a heroic deed when they were young which changed them and linked them close together. But now, 20 years later, they don't meet with the intention to fight evil. They are surprised by it on one of their yearly hunting trips.. But they fight (with more or less success for each them individually) and with the constant help of Duddits, their old friend, who suffers from Down-Syndrom but who has some incredible abilities instead.
I was surprised by the storyline. After reading the cover text I thought the main part of the story would be about four guys fighting in their hunting lodge. But far from true. The storyline leaves this location rather soon and from then on as a reader you're on your own, just as the central character is. An ingenious, fast paced novel, a really good scare, even though its about aliens who threaten humanity. Of course the bad guys don't necessarily come from outer space. They can sit beside you right now or work in powerful military positions right this moment. That's the real horror we all can comprehend. The fight against the aliens seems like childs play in contrast to this.
"Stephen King's second novel, 'SALEM'S LOT', is the story of a mundane town under siege from the forces of darkness. Considered one of the most terrifying vampire novels ever written, it cunningly probes the shadows of the human heart - and the insular evils of small-town America."
'Salem's Lot' is one of the books I always wanted to read ... for years. But new publications always came in the way. Now it was time. No wonder the book has been a classic of the horror genre since it was published in 1975. The theme really is typical for a Stephen King novel: the terror which comes upon a small American town. This time it's a vampire who settles down in a strange house with a mysterious past in the outer limits of town. As a fan of the 'Vampire Chronicles' by Anne Rice it's difficult to grasp that the vampire is the personified evil in this case, but here he really is. For 631 pages one is captured by the story and one doesn't know how the two protagonists Ben Mears and Mark Petrie will get out of this. Of course all ends well and the bad guys get what they deserve. This revelation is no big news in a Stephen King novel. But it's close. And really thrilling.
[Dorothée Büttgen, April 00]
"To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine was just their home town: familiar, well-ordered for the most part. A good place to live.
It was the children who saw - and felt - what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes IT reached up, seizing, tearing, killing ...
The adults, knowing better, knew nothing.
Time passed and the children grew up, moved away. The horror of IT was deep-buried, wrapped in forgetfulness. Until they were called back, once more to confront IT as it stirred and coiled in the sullen depths of their memories, reaching up again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality."
This book is a real case of luck for every fan of horror-novels and shouldn't be absent from any library. Anyone who always wanted to read it but then thought that recent novels were much more exciting should delay it no more. It's the most gripping novel I've read in a long time. In the 14 years since it was written one has heard a lot about how good it is. And maybe one has seen the TV movie once or twice already and therefore thought the novel wasn't exciting anymore. But you couldn't be more wrong!
Of course the book is much more explicit than the movie because with its more than 1.100 pages one is busy reading for quite some time. But I couldn't put it down for just a second. The good thing is that the movie doesn't replace the book because the story in general is nothing new: the good (in form of the kids) battles the evil (IT) and the good win. But what happens in betweeen is so terrifying and surprising that it's lots of fun and it might be the end of one or two fingernails which have been bitten off.
The children of course are a bunch of friends one would have liked to have oneself. For everyone theres a figure to identify with. But how would you have reacted to the horror the friends are confronted with? Would you have made it? And would you have returned 30 years later to do it all over again? That leaves room for a lot of speculations and maybe in the end we are all glad that it's "only" a book. Or have we just forgotten what happened?
[Dorothée Büttgen, March 01]
"Once upon a time, in the haunted city of Derry, four boys stood together and did a brave thing. It was something that changed them in ways they could never begin to understand.
Twenty-five years after saving a Down's-syndrom kid from bullies, Beav, Henry, Pete and Jonesy - now men with separate lives and separate problems - reunite in the woods of Maine for their annual hunting trip. But when a stranger stumbles into their camp, disoriented and mumbling something about lights in the sky, chaos erupts. Soon, the four friends are plunged into a horrifying struggle with a creature from another world where their only chance of survival is locked in their shared past - and in the Dreamcatcher."
When you're willing to go with the story you're in for a hell of a ride. When you liked 'It' you just have to read 'Dreamcatcher'. And when you like to read in bed before sleeping you can prepare yourself for some evenings when the light will be left on a while longer!
[Dorothée Büttgen, February 02]
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