Book Review: Needful Things by Stephen King

Nothing. beats. King’s. small. town. stories. And that’s a fact!

“You’ve been here before.”
A criminally underrated King novel (outside of bookstagram anyway), Needful Things is a firecracker. My paperback is 900+ pages and at no point did my attention or interest wane. This book is pretty much sheer chaos from beginning to end and I was LIVING for it!!

The premise is simple. There’s a new store in Castle Rock, and no matter what your heart’s deepest desire is, it’s in stock. And the price is exactly what you can afford. You just gotta play a little prank for Leland Gaunt to get your hands on it...

King’s ability to create a fictional town with an entire cast of real, distinguishable characters will never cease to amaze me. The way that Gaunt plays the town members off each other, demonstrating how dangerous materialism can be, is such a genius idea, and you can really feel that King is having an absolute blast writing this one! And I had a blast reading it. I was downright CACKLING at some parts - the battle between Cora Rusk and Myra Evans over Elvis artefacts was a highlight for me, as well as a character literally shitting on a photograph of someone’s mother!! I told you this one is CHAOS!

In terms of characters, I love Sheriff Alan Pangborn and you really gotta feel for his heartbreaking backstory. You can see why he and Polly Chalmers are drawn to each other, they have both been through a lot of pain and find some solace in each other. Although one of their sex scenes was just... uncomfortable for me to read. I don’t know why, but I just imagine 70 year old King writing this and it makes me feel icky - even though this was written back in the early 90s.

ANYWHO, absolutely loved this reread. Might have to reshuffle my top 10 King yet again... 5 stars.

Johann
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