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Summary
Summary
"Among King's best."-- San Francisco Chronicle
When housekeeper Dolores Claiborne is questioned in the death of her wealthy employer, a long-hidden secret from her past is revealed---as is the strength of her own will to survive...
Author Notes
Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947. After graduating with a Bachelor's degree in English from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, he became a teacher. His spare time was spent writing short stories and novels.
King's first novel would never have been published if not for his wife. She removed the first few chapters from the garbage after King had thrown them away in frustration. Three months later, he received a $2,500 advance from Doubleday Publishing for the book that went on to sell a modest 13,000 hardcover copies. That book, Carrie, was about a girl with telekinetic powers who is tormented by bullies at school. She uses her power, in turn, to torment and eventually destroy her mean-spirited classmates. When United Artists released the film version in 1976, it was a critical and commercial success. The paperback version of the book, released after the movie, went on to sell more than two-and-a-half million copies.
Many of King's other horror novels have been adapted into movies, including The Shining, Firestarter, Pet Semetary, Cujo, Misery, The Stand, and The Tommyknockers. Under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, King has written the books The Running Man, The Regulators, Thinner, The Long Walk, Roadwork, Rage, and It. He is number 2 on the Hollywood Reporter's '25 Most Powerful Authors' 2016 list.
King is one of the world's most successful writers, with more than 100 million copies of his works in print. Many of his books have been translated into foreign languages, and he writes new books at a rate of about one per year. In 2003, he received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 2012 his title, The Wind Through the Keyhole made The New York Times Best Seller List. King's title's Mr. Mercedes and Revival made The New York Times Best Seller List in 2014. He won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 2015 for Best Novel with Mr. Mercedes. King's title Finders Keepers made the New York Times bestseller list in 2015. Sleeping Beauties is his latest 2017 New York Times bestseller.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
King's portrait of a Maine housekeeper accused of her employer's murder--a nine-week PW bestseller--shows him to be a magnificent storyteller. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
As Jessie Burlingame lies handcuffed to her bed in Gerald's Game (p. 487), she recalls how, on the day 30 years ago that her dad molested her, she had a vision of a woman--a murderer?--at a well. King explains that vision here: Dolores Claiborne is the woman, and her story of how she killed her husband, and the consequences, proves a seductively suspenseful, if quieter, complement to Jessie's shriek-fest of a tale. The garotte-tight Gerald's Game is one of King's most stylish novels, and the Maine author flexes more stylistic muscle here, having feisty Dolores tell her tale in a nonstop monologue, rich in Down East dialect, that steadily gathers force. Dolores, 65, is speaking to Andy Bissette, sheriff of the island offshore Maine where she's lived her life, most of it as housekeeper for Vera Donovan, a wealthy ``bitch.'' We soon learn that Dolores has a confession to make--in her own sweet time (``I feel a draft in here, Andy. Might go away if you shutcha goddamn trap''). Amidst details--often crudely funny--of her power-plays with Vera, and of her early life, we learn how, years back, Dolores's rotten husband began molesting their teenaged daughter, then stole her college funds. Dolores's retribution--the killing--forms the story's centerpiece, and, taking place on the same day that Jessie's dad molested her, forges the psychic bond--neither elaborated on nor explained--between the two women. It's Dolores's final years with Vera, though, and the bitter manner of Vera's death, that have brought Dolores to the sheriff--and that ultimately transform this, like Gerald's Game, into a devastating tale of heroism in the face of life's suffering. Without the flash and twisted fun of Gerald's Game, this may not sell as well (despite a 1.5 million first printing); but Dolores is a brilliantly realized character, and her struggles will hook readers inexorably. (Book-of-the-Month Dual Selection for December)
Booklist Review
/*STARRED REVIEW*/ Like Gerald's Game , King's second novel this year is short by his standards, isn't concerned with supernatural horrors, and takes place mostly on one October day and, in flashback, on July 20, 1963, when a total eclipse of the sun laid a diagonal band of darkness across central Maine. A further resemblance is that it also features a female protagonist, but while King wrote Gerald's Game with third-person omniscience, he offers Delores Claiborne in that tough old Mainer's voice as she tells the sheriff of Little Tall Island about two deaths she's been involved with. One, just the other day, is that of her wealthy, invalided employer, Vera Donovan, whom it's suspected she fatally pushed downstairs. The other, which happened during that long-ago eclipse, is that of her drunken, good-for-nothing husband, Joe St. George. She didn't kill Vera, but she did kill Joe, and as she fills us in on the hows and whys of both deaths, King secures his place in the highest echelon of contemporary American novelists. For cantankerous, profane, scatological, and fiercely maternal Delores is as vital and vivid a character as any in American fiction. Moreover, the death of her husband is as virtuosic an essay in grand guignol as King has ever written. King is well out of the slump that so many of the contributors to the recent mid-career assessment, Reign of Fear , seemed to think he was in. In fact, he's never been better. (Reviewed Sept. 15, 1992)0670844527Ray Olson
Library Journal Review
King again eschews supernatural horror, as he did recently in Gerald's Game , to study the equally monstrous things people can inflict on one another. The story, sparer than much of King's work, is a monolog by the title character, who is suspected of murdering her loutish, insensitive husband and the difficult, rich, and senile woman for whom she has kept house for many years. As Dolores tells her story to the local authorities, the details of a life of drudgery and marital unhappiness emerge, along with the ironic truth behind the deaths. In theme, style, and setting a companion piece to Gerald's Game , this new work is a quietly terrifying tale of desperation, abuse, and revenge that showcases King's talent as a powerful storyteller. Certain to be a best seller, it should appeal to a wide audience. For all popular fiction collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/92.-- Eric W. Johnson, Teikyo Post Univ. Lib., Waterbury, Ct. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
