Pet Sematary - Stephen King

Death is a Mystery, Burial is a secret.

It’s a line on the first page of this book. With a line like that, its difficult not to get lured to the book. Plus the title was pretty intriguing. And with “Sematary” spelled weirdly, I was attracted to the darkness that the book seemed to exude. So I picked it up.

So there are pets here, and there’s a cat, as indicated by the cover picture, and since there is a “sematary”, even with its wrong spelling, in the title, there are dead pets here. And death implies horror. And Stephen King tries to weave a tale around that.

Louis Creed, has just moved to a new house and finds an affable, if old, neighbour, who has plenty of stories to tell about the country and its secrets. One of the secrets is the pet sematary, where the children, in the past, would bury their pets when they would die. And that is where the horror all begins. The past, the history repeats itself, and changes Louis Creed’s life beyond his, or even mine, wildest imagination.

Well, I think there the book merits something. The book tries to tackle the theme as realistically as possible. It is not reduced to a bunch of heroes fighting zombies on a rampage. That would have been a really pathetic. And I actually thought that there is a pretty good chance that, that’s what it would become. But it didn’t. Thankfully!

One big negative is that the book rambles quite a bit. And the author has a hard time building up the horror. In fact the book could have been half its length if Stephen King would have wanted to write it. But he chooses to include the elements from Louis’ professional life in a quest to give it an extra dose of horror. And even though that portion, is actually quite vivid and scary, the way it is related to the actual plot is just lame.

Ending is good. You don’t feel cheated when you finish the climax. Stephen King stays true to the story and concludes it the only way it could have concluded.
The book would have been an excellent short story… one of those which wrap up in 100 pages and there are 5 of them in a book. There is not enough content to warrant a 400 page novel. Not that it is boring (Hell, I don’t get bored by any book), but you do end the book with the feeling of having read so much, but read still so little!