Gerald's Game By Stephen King

 Gerald's Game

By Stephen King

 If this had been a short story, it would have worked better for me.

Gerald's Game is about a woman named Jessie who is at a remote cabin on the off-season with her husband Gerald who can only get it up now if he shackles Jessie to the headboard with handcuffs. Jessie is fed up with these sex games and when she tells Gerald she doesn't want to do it anymore and to uncuff her, and he refuses, Jessie kicks him and gives him a heart attack. This, of course, leaves her shackled to the bed with no means of freeing herself with her husband dead on the floor.

While she's stuck and trying to devise a way to free herself, Jessie is confronted by the voices in her head (people from her past, people she has imagined) with an incident that happened with her father during an eclipse when she was little. Recalling these memories she has been repressing makes her think about her father, Gerald, and herself in different ways. She was always a meek person, but she knows she doesn't want to be that person anymore. And now that Gerald is dead, she is free. If, that is, she can get out of the handcuffs.

Jessie also has to contend with a stray dog that gets into the house and eats her husband, as well as a serial killer who finds his way into the cabin and becomes Jessie's ultimate reason for doing anything and everything to escape her bonds.

The serial killer element is the thing that didn't work in this story. It was a pointless addition that should have been left out. And the story is way too long for the content. If it was a short story or novella and just focused on Jessie getting out of her terrifying predicament it would have been stronger. The inner demon wrestling was good, but repetitive and drawn out, in my opinion. And though King's "voice" works in a lot of instances, it didn't work for Jessie. It was too "masculine" and too rote at this point. Apparently everyone in Maine has this voice. Also, King's love affair with the name "Sally" (in this case, Jessie's mother) needs to stop. There aren't that many Sally's in Maine, are there?

It's just a 3 star book for me because the internal stuff was good and the premise is scary.

Some mention from other books: Sheriff Pangborn was mentioned as having left the force. His replacement is mentioned, as well as the big fore in Castle Rock, which occurred in Needful Things. There is also a foreshadowing to the next book, Dolores Claiborne, with Jessie "seeing" a woman running away form her husband who falls down a well during an eclipse. Love that book!