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Pet sematary / Stephen King.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1983.Edition: 1st edDescription: 373 p. ; 24 cmISBN:
  • 0385182449 :
DDC classification:
  • 813/.54 19
LOC classification:
  • PS3561.I483 P4 1983
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
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Item type Current library Collection Shelving location Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Phillipsburg Free Public Library Adult Fiction Adult Fiction FICTION Available 674891000862080
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

""Sometimes dead is better...."" When the Creeds move into a beautiful old house in rural Maine, it all seems too good to be true: physician father, beautiful wife, charming little daughter, adorable infant son -- and now an idyllic home. As a family, they've got it all...right down to the friendly cat. But the nearby woods hide a blood-chilling truth -- more terrifying than death itself...and hideously more powerful.

c.1

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Introduction
  • Part 1 The Pet Sematary
  • Part 2 The Micmac Burying Ground
  • Part 3 Oz the Gweat and Tewwible

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Pet Sematary 1 Louis Creed, who had lost his father at three and who had never known a grandfather, never expected to find a father as he entered his middle age, but that was exactly what happened . . . although he called this man a friend, as a grown man must do when he finds the man who should have been his father relatively late in life. He met this man on the evening he and his wife and his two children moved into the big white frame house in Ludlow. Winston Churchill moved in with them. Church was his daughter Eileen's cat. The search committee at the university had moved slowly, the hunt for a house within commuting distance of the university had been hair-raising, and by the time they neared the place where he believed the house to be--all the landmarks are right . . . like the astrological signs the night before Caesar was assassinated, Louis thought morbidly--they were all tired and tense and on edge. Gage was cutting teeth and fussed almost ceaselessly. He would not sleep, no matter how much Rachel sang to him. She offered him the breast even though it was off his schedule. Gage knew his dining schedule as well as she--better, maybe--and he promptly bit her with his new teeth. Rachel, still not entirely sure about this move to Maine from Chicago, where she had lived her whole life, burst into tears. Eileen promptly joined her. In the back of the station wagon, Church continued to pace restlessly as he had done for the last three days it had taken them to drive here from Chicago. His yowling from the cat kennel had been bad, but his restless pacing after they finally gave up and set him free in the car had been almost as unnerving. Louis himself felt a little like crying. A wild but not unattractive idea suddenly came to him: He would suggest that they go back to Bangor for something to eat while they waited for the moving van, and when his three hostages to fortune got out, he would floor the accelerator and drive away without so much as a look back, foot to the mat, the wagon's huge four-barrel carburetor gobbling expensive gasoline. He would drive south, all the way to Orlando, Florida, where he would get a job at Disney World as a medic, under a new name. But before he hit the turnpike--big old 95 southbound--he would stop by the side of the road and put the fucking cat out too. Then they rounded a final curve, and there was the house that only he had seen up until now. He had flown out and looked at each of the seven possibles they had picked from photos once the position at the University of Maine was solidly his, and this was the one he had chosen: a big old New England colonial (but newly sided and insulated; the heating costs, while horrible enough, were not out of line in terms of consumption), three big rooms downstairs, four more up, a long shed that might be converted to more rooms later on--all of it surrounded by a luxuriant sprawl of lawn, lushly green even in this August heat. Beyond the house was a large field for the children to play in, and beyond the field were woods that went on damn near forever. The property abutted state lands, the realtor had explained, and there would be no development in the foreseeable future. The remains of the Micmac Indian tribe had laid claim to nearly eight thousand acres in Ludlow and in the towns east of Ludlow, and the complicated litigation, involving the federal government as well as that of the state, might stretch into the next century. Rachel stopped crying abruptly. She sat up. "Is that--" "That's it," Louis said. He felt apprehensive--no, he felt scared. In fact he felt terrified. He had mortgaged twelve years of their lives for this; it wouldn't be paid off until Eileen was seventeen. He swallowed. "What do you think?" "I think it's beautiful," Rachel said, and that was a huge weight off his chest--and off his mind. She wasn't kidding, he saw; it was in the way she was looking at it as they turned in the asphalted driveway that curved around to the shed in back, her eyes sweeping the blank windows, her mind already ticking away at such matters as curtains and oilcloth for the cupboards, and God knew what else. "Daddy?" Ellie said from the back seat. She had stopped crying as well. Even Gage had stopped fussing. Louis savored the silence. "What, love?" Her eyes, brown under the darkish blond hair in the rearview mirror, also surveyed the house, the lawn, the roof of another house off to the left in the distance, and the big field stretching up to the woods. "Is this home?" "It's going to be, honey," he said. "Hooray!" she shouted, almost taking his ear off. And Louis, who could sometimes become very irritated with Ellie, decided he didn't care if he ever clapped an eye on Disney World in Orlando. He parked in front of the shed and turned off the wagon's motor. The engine ticked. In the silence, which seemed very big after Chicago and the bustle of State Street and the Loop, a bird sang sweetly in the late afternoon. "Home," Rachel said softly, still looking at the house. "Home," Gage said complacently on her lap. Louis and Rachel stared at each other. In the rearview mirror, Eileen's eyes widened. "Did you--" "Did he--" "Was that--" They all spoke together, then all laughed together. Gage took no notice; he only continued to suck his thumb. He had been saying "Ma" for almost a month now and had taken a stab or two at something that might have been "Daaa" or only wishful thinking on Louis's part. But this, either by accident or imitation, had been a real word. Home. Louis plucked Gage from his wife's lap and hugged him. That was how they came to Ludlow. Excerpted from Pet Sematary by Stephen King All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

The first unabridged audio edition of the novel King considers his most frightening should be more than enough to lure the author's fans, and the fact that it's read by Hall, who played the eponymous serial killer on Showtime's Dexter (adapted from Jeff Lindsay's novels), will only add to the appeal. Hall effectively employs a full emotional range, starting with joyous. That's the dominant mood of Dr. Louis Creed as he and his family-wife Rachel, kids Ellie and Gage, and Ellie's cat, Church-arrive at their new home in Ludlow, Maine. Hall's narration quickly loses some of its cheeriness when young Ellie falls from a swing and bangs her knee and toddler Gage is stung by a bee. And, when their new neighbor, elderly Jud Crandall, leads them to a pet cemetery (with its misspelled sign) in the shadowy woods behind their home, the atmosphere grows distinctly chilly. The chill only increases when Church is killed by a car and Jud informs Louis-in an avuncular, Down East accent courtesy of Hall-that some animals placed in the Micmac Indian burial ground just beyond the cemetery have been resurrected. Louis and Jud bury Church there, and the cat does come back, but it's different, malodorous, and sullen. Eventually there are more burials and reanimations, resulting in ever-increasing grotesqueries, with the narration rising to a hackles-raising height of terror. The combination of King at his bloodiest and Hall at his most terrifying make this irresistible. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Book Review

This novel began as a reworking of W.W. Jacobs' horror classic ""The Monkey's Paw""--a short story about the dreadful outcome when a father wishes for his dead son's resurrection. And King's 400-page version reads, in fact, like a monstrously padded short story, moving so slowly that every plot-turn becomes lumberingly predictable. Still, readers with a taste for the morbid and ghoulish will find unlimited dark, mortality-obsessed atmosphere here--as Dr. Louis Creed arrives in Maine with wife Rachel and their two little kids Ellie and Gage, moving into a semi-rural house not far from the ""Pet Sematary"": a spot in the woods where local kids have been burying their pets for decades. Louis, 35, finds a great new friend/father-figure in elderly neighbor Jud Crandall; he begins work as director of the local university health-services. But Louis is oppressed by thoughts of death--especially after a dying student whispers something about the pet cemetery, then reappears in a dream (but is it a dream??) to lead Louis into those woods during the middle of the night. What is the secret of the Pet Sematary? Well, eventually old Jud gives Louis a lecture/tour of the Pet Sematary's ""annex""--an old Micmac burying ground where pets have been buried. . .and then reappeared alive! So, when little Ellie's beloved cat Church is run over (while Ellie's visiting grandfolks), Louis and Jud bury it in the annex--resulting in a faintly nasty resurrection: Church reappears, now with a foul smell and a creepy demeanor. But: what would happen if a human corpse were buried there? That's the question when Louis' little son Gage is promptly killed in an accident. Will grieving father Louis dig up his son's body from the normal graveyard and replant it in the Pet Sematary? What about the stories of a previous similar attempt--when dead Timmy Baterman was ""transformed into some sort of all-knowing daemon?"" Will Gage return to the living--but as ""a thing of evil?"" He will indeed, spouting obscenities and committing murder. . .before Louis must eliminate this child-demon he has unleashed. Filled out with overdone family melodrama (the feud between Louis and his father-in-law) and repetitious inner monologues: a broody horror tale that's strong on dark, depressing chills, weak on suspense or surprise--and not likely to please the fans of King's zestier, livelier terror-thons. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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