Carrie

Carrie White is a shy, awkward sixteen-year-old living in Chamberlain, Maine, with her fanatically religious mother Margaret, who preaches sin and punishment at every turn. At school, Carrie is relentlessly bullied by her classmates, and after a traumatic incident in the shower when she gets her first period, she discovers she possesses telekinetic powers that grow stronger with her emotions. A popular girl named Sue Snell, feeling remorse for her role in the bullying, asks her boyfriend Tommy Ross to take Carrie to the senior prom. Meanwhile, the wealthy and vindictive Chris Hargensen plots a cruel prank involving pig's blood to humiliate Carrie at the dance. When the prank is executed and Carrie is drenched in blood on stage after being crowned Prom Queen, she unleashes a devastating wave of telekinetic destruction that leaves her school and town in ruins. The novel concludes with a government investigation called the White Commission and a letter suggesting that telekinetic abilities may appear in another child.

Published on April 5, 1974, by Doubleday, Carrie is Stephen King's debut novel and was written while he worked as a high school English teacher on evenings and weekends. The first-edition hardcover print run was 30,000 copies, and it sold modestly at first, between 13,000 and 17,000 copies. A paperback edition released by New American Library in April 1975 became a bestseller, reaching one million copies in its first year and four million total sales after the 1976 film adaptation. The novel is 199 pages in hardcover and 272 pages in mass market paperback. King based Carrie's character on two girls he knew in school: one impoverished and mocked for wearing the same clothes daily, and another raised in a devoutly fundamentalist household. The novel explores themes of adolescence, bullying, revenge, religious fanaticism, isolation, power, and the consequences of unchecked cruelty, and was released during the height of second-wave feminism in the 1970s.

Carrie received generally positive reviews and is credited with launching King's career and reviving mainstream interest in horror fiction in the late 20th century. The novel was a New York Times bestseller in 1976, debuting on the list in December and remaining for 14 weeks, peaking at number 3. It has been adapted into three films, one sequel, a television film, an upcoming miniseries, and two major stage musical productions. The first film adaptation, directed by Brian De Palma and starring Sissy Spacek as Carrie and Piper Laurie as Margaret, was released on November 3, 1976, and grossed over $33.8 million against a $1.8 million budget, receiving two Academy Award nominations. The musical adaptation premiered on Broadway in 1988 but closed after only five regular performances, becoming legendary as one of the most expensive flops in Broadway history. A revised Off-Broadway revival in 2012 earned better reviews and became the official licensed edition. [edit]