Review - 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King

Vampires. When did they stop being scary? Maybe it was when they started to glitter. Or maybe it was when I reached puberty. Or maybe (and I strongly suspect I’m on the money with this one) it was with the advent of the Internet and its slow paring away of my childhood innocence with horrible images of girls eating their own shit from cups… *ahem*

I remember reading Dracula before my mind had been trounced by a thousand hours of online human debasement, and I remember being genuinely spooked the fuck out. But now, 15 years later, I worry that fiction has lost its ability to mess with me on a deeply visceral level. I wonder if the desensitising atrocities inflicted on my poor little amygdala haven't severely limited my capacity for primal dread and disgust. I think I might be broken.

Whatever the case (and in spite of the pants-shitting reviews sprouting in profusion over at Amazon), ‘Salem’s Lot was not the book to make me change my mind ... or my underwear.

Sure, it’s well written and mildly disturbing in parts, but it never pulled me far enough in that I thought about sleeping with the lights on. And that’s what I want from my 300-page books on brooding, timeless evil. I want something truly bowel-liquefying that makes me reconsider, even if just for a moment, my paradigm of cocky materialism – and if the author can do it without invoking the spirit realm, all the better. William Malone’s screenplay Supernova succeeds magnificently at this.

I just realized that I’ve mentioned poo in three paragraphs of this review (make that four, now). But despite the close proximity of my mind to the sewer, ‘Salem’s Lot’s more gratuitous imagery didn't really work for me. Yes, there were veritable rivers blood, but there was nothing horrifying about it. It was just sort of there, spraying all over the plot, clogging up the spaces between the lines where more atmospheric horror elements might have been worked in. That’s not to say it’s not a dark and creepy book, just that 35 years after its first edition the imagery in its pages is becoming threadbare and ineffective.

I admit it’s a little unfair to hope for brilliantly stomach-churning imagery from King in this novel. He is, after all, focusing on evil in general. Vampires are just his vehicle. And then there is the fact that he wrote the book very early on in his career (it was his second published novel), plus the fact that he wasn’t writing specifically to please me.

All in all ‘Salem’s Lot is a satisfying page-turner. There is an exquisite tension in finding yourself simultaneously caring for King’s characters and wanting to see just how badly the town is going to get done over by its blood-sucking guests. One serious plot hole aside (Mr. Main Vampire isn’t allowed in town until his human assistant makes a human sacrifice, but somehow the brother of the boy chosen to be the offering is already turning into a vampire before the sacrificial ceremony is performed) it’s a decent read that neatly examines the power of evil deeds to outlive their perpetrators and stain the lives of future generations. Just don’t expect any stains in your panties.