Flipping Through Pages #2 - Pet Semetary (A Book Review)

Let’s talk about death shall we?

My personal experiences haven’t been that sore, for the people who have actually passed during my time on earth have been of natural causes – a death born of old age where your head can rationalize it as something that must happen. And that’s how it was when I saw my grandmother being carried away some years ago. She lived a long happy life and my memories with her had faded so the heart’s ability to destroy what your mind creates wasn’t there.

Why is this relevant here? Because it is a fear we all have. Death is an end, and while for some it may come at the end of a long life – the most frightening thing about it is that it can come at any time. Doesn’t matter if you’re 7, 17 or 70. And that’s what king addresses in this novel.

(SPOILERS FOLLOW)

The plot is actually quite simple when you come to it – new family arrives at a place, find a place that resurrects the dead, members of the family die one by one, are resurrected, and kills said family one by one ensuring a vicious cycle.

No, the plot isn’t the frightening thing. It’s about the themes and motivations of the characters – especially of the central protagonist Louis Creed and how it impacts his family of four (wife Rachel and two children).

Creed’s spiral is horrifying to see as we see a man who once taught his daughter to understand death is a natural thing be driven mad and at the end, has lost everything to his obsession with trying to unbind that natural thing itself. It's shows that prudence and hope can be at odds in a serious battle with terrible results. There’s no true evil here in a very direct sense as there is in many of King’s novels – the entire story is littered with ‘accidents’ and ‘comeuppances’.

Let’s start at the beginning. Louis Creed is a doctor who arrived at Ludlow with his family and strikes up a friendship with a local and his wife. Family and Death are the two major themes of this book, and it’s so easy to see where the conflict arises between these two.

Louis grew up without a father while his wife’s parents were always animus towards him. So in Jud, he found the perfect companion. And in a way, that’s how the entire chain of troubles began – though such an innocent thing as friendship. And that leads to greater and greater misfortune for the Creed family.

Norma, Jud’s wife, almost dies of a heart attack during Halloween and in return, Jud reveals that the pet cemetary hides a darker truth just beyond it – there lies an old indian burial ground which for years has been used by the people of Ludlow to bring pets back to life. And in one case, even a fallen son. But while some of them have been relatively peaceful resurrections though not without fault (the returned act lifeless and seem to have a cruel streak to them as the Creed family cat displays by mauling mice and crows), there have been cases where the returned went berserk and had to put down.

But true evil, in a sense, rears its head only when Jud retells the case of Bill Baterman the fallen soldier who was brought back from the dead by his father, only for the townspeople to learn that it might not have been Bill who came back. That is actually cruelly revealed in the final act, when Louis’s two year old son Gage comes back and murders both Jud and Rachel, his mother before being put down by a father who’s driven insane enough to bury Rachel in the hope ‘she comes back better’. And from the sinister open ending, King seems to hint that better isn’t what happens for Louis.

Coming to the good vs evil battle that litters most books by this author, we see glimpses of it throughout but never a direct conflict. A man dies early on during Louis’s first day at work and his spirit comes back to warn the doctor never to go beyond the Pet Cemetary (and returns again during the final act with sadly similar effect) while Ellie, Louis’s daughter, has visions that predict actions and sadly it becomes a reason for Rachel’s death when she returns home. This after Louis has sent her and Ellie to his in laws while resurrecting Gage – with horrifying results for all those concerned. There is a hint that Ellie possesses the shining (dealt with in another King book) and an early reference to Cujo, a more realistic but still horrifying take of a pet goes feral by King, are nice nods to a connected universe and will be a pleasure for long time King readers.

But for the characters of this novel, ‘pleasure’ is a luxury they can’t afford. The atmosphere feels claustrophobic, especially when King describes the Indian grounds where a Wendigo is supposed to be on prowl. And it’s especially nice to see Louis’s inner rational voice being killed off slowly and slowly as he descends into insanity. All the characters are given good arcs (Jud, Rachel, Ellie) as they deal with death in different but engaging ways though sadly the final act does descend into full blown slasher territory.

King leaves you with a very bleak ending and anyone who’s been touched with the death of a close one will be mortified by the conclusion. But there’s an understanding that must happen. Sometimes death may not be better, but it has to be acceptable. That’s natural law, and going against it means severe consequences worse than death can arise.

So, I give this 8.5 out of 10.

+Strong character arc for the main protagonist

+Beautifully claustrophobic environment

+Themes rendered brilliantly

-The final act is a little too fast paced and disrupts the build up