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Pet Sematary Hardcover – December 4, 2018
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When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job and moves his family to the idyllic rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Despite Ludlow’s tranquility, an undercurrent of danger exists here. Those trucks on the road outside the Creed’s beautiful old home travel by just a little too quickly, for one thing…as is evidenced by the makeshift graveyard in the nearby woods where generations of children have buried their beloved pets. Then there are the warnings to Louis both real and from the depths of his nightmares that he should not venture beyond the borders of this little graveyard where another burial ground lures with seductive promises and ungodly temptations. A blood-chilling truth is hidden there—one more terrifying than death itself, and hideously more powerful. As Louis is about to discover for himself sometimes, dead is better…
- Print length416 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherScribner
- Publication dateDecember 4, 2018
- Dimensions6.13 x 1.4 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-101982112395
- ISBN-13978-1982112394
- Lexile measure890L
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What's it about?
A doctor moves his family to a small town, where he discovers a cursed burial ground that brings the dead back to life.Popular highlight
Cats were the gangsters of the animal world, living outside the law and often dying there.1,184 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
There was a big old St. Bernard went rabid downstate a couple of years ago and killed four people.1,008 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
“The soil of a man’s heart is stonier, Louis,” the dying man whispered. “A man grows what he can... and tends it.”578 Kindle readers highlighted this
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Wild, powerful, disturbing." —Washington Post Book World
"A stunner....King gets you to believe the unbelievable." —Detroit News
"Unrelenting, convincing...awesome power...his best yet!" —Pittsburgh Press
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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.
Product details
- Publisher : Scribner; Reissue edition (December 4, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 416 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1982112395
- ISBN-13 : 978-1982112394
- Lexile measure : 890L
- Item Weight : 1.47 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.13 x 1.4 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #31,219 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #299 in Occult Fiction
- #408 in Small Town & Rural Fiction (Books)
- #3,968 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His first crime thriller featuring Bill Hodges, MR MERCEDES, won the Edgar Award for best novel and was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award. Both MR MERCEDES and END OF WATCH received the Goodreads Choice Award for the Best Mystery and Thriller of 2014 and 2016 respectively.
King co-wrote the bestselling novel Sleeping Beauties with his son Owen King, and many of King's books have been turned into celebrated films and television series including The Shawshank Redemption, Gerald's Game and It.
King was the recipient of America's prestigious 2014 National Medal of Arts and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for distinguished contribution to American Letters. In 2007 he also won the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He lives with his wife Tabitha King in Maine.
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Very well done and sad.
As others have written before me, this book is dark. King leads you into the mind of Dr. Louis Creed who is the main character in the book. Dr. Creed moves his family from Chicago to Ludlow, Maine where he will work at the University. Dr. Creed is a young doctor with a young family. His daughter Ellie has a cat named Churchill (Church for short) and there is his young son Gage. His wife Rachel is the love of his life. The family adjusts to life in Ludlow but sadly Church is killed on the busy highway that the Creed's life next to. Louis' older neighbor, Jud, wants to help Louis after Louis saved his wife's Norma from dying. He takes Dr. Creed and his dead cat to the "Pet Sematary" (well actually past it) to an old Native American burial ground. They bury the cat and the next day, the cat comes back to the Creed home but remains a bit odd the rest of the book.
In the end, the tragic results of Jud taking Louis beyond the pet cemetery works havoc on their lives. Many have written the end but I will not. I will leave that for you.
Overall, this book makes you think about death and life. It makes you wrestle with resurrection. For the disciple of Christ, we know that Christ has won the victory over death (1 Corinthians 15:54-57). Our hope is in Him (1 Thessalonians 4:13). In the end, Christ Himself will cast death into eternal destruction (Revelation 20:14). However, the child of God through faith in Christ (Ephesians 2:8-9) will receive eternal life with their Lord (Romans 6:23; Revelation 21:7). While King shows Dr. Creed struggling with death and coming to terms with death (which he never does), the disciple of Christ can rest knowing that death has lost its power (John 5:24-25).
UPDATE June 2020 (a little overdue) I had re-bought this item a few months later, and got the correct cover art, the one Amazon depicts in their stock photo. However, it's got glue and bits of paper hanging off of it, just a real mess. I saw a copy of the movie tie in addition from the following year available at the big'ol' W A L M..... and it looked to be more robustly printed, but I have mixed feelings about the 2019 movie, although I haven't seen it because it just looks like it unnecessarily adds a bunch of layers that really add nothing to the story, but like I said -- I haven't seen it (yet...(?))....
The "Gallery book 2002" info that the product URL cites is in reference to a popart "comic book style" cover-art that didn't do any favors regarding capturing the appeal of the book visually. The movie this book's author wrote was a by the numbers dry as paint stupid MOFO adaptation. So what's left? That stupid hardcover dust jacket that Doubleday haphazardly slapped onto the initial pressings of the book and the subsequent mass market paperback edition? A respectful hardcover re-issue, put together as part of a set of some of his books sometime in the early 1990s, is almost impossible to find. There was a so-so trade paperback released in England a few years ago with a really stupid tagline.
This book deserves a good cover. It's one of those books that's really really really really really GOOD. It's not something God himself would want to read. It's probably not something you yourself would want to make a religion based upon or apply to your life philosophy. Stephen King wrote this book and disowns it because it isn't "truthful" enough. Who cares? Stephen King ain't anyone to talk authoratiatively about the truth. His lesbian daughter preaches the gospel for a living. Apparently having one's head up their butt runs in the family. This book strikes at the heart of man. The heart of man is deceitful above all things --- and exceedingly wicked. We don't need Stephen King to deliver us from that. Some people don't even want to be delivered from that. Sometimes you can't escape it. This book isn't THE TRUTH. But it does speak to the true hearts of real people for better or worse. And it does so in a manner far more effective than most of his horror novels ever did. CARRIE was not the POS that he initially thought it to be when he set out to write it before giving up on it, but it wasn't half as nerverattling as this. 'SALEM'S LOT, THE SHINING and CUJO et al were well and good, but this is the granddaddy of them all. I'm not buying it until I can get it with a decent cover. I tried ordering it after Amazon.com updated the stock photo and they sent me the old one with the popart cover. I guess they still had some of them leftover. This cover-art is the same as the mass market paperback edition issued in February 2017, but I'm not going to pay $9+ so I can "proudly own" this book in some pulp novel format. It'd be one thing if I just didn't have room for it, but unlike my CD collection that is easier to use because its' not vinyl, a trade paperback is every bit as useful as a mass market paperback. The pages are no more flimsy or cumbersome than a mass market and it just freakin' looks better. And a hardcover reissue that doesn't cost $50++ doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon. IT (1986) -- also one of S.K.'s superior works -- did finally get a hardcover reissue, but not only was the cover rather pathetic, but it had that stupid promo quip "NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE" Since the makers of this past summer's re-make of the movie IT are apparently planning to also remake PET SEMATARY (about dang time!), we might get an equally lame hardcover edition of this book finally -- or maybe it'll be a quality hardcover pressing, i.e.: the mistakes of the past are not repeated (it could happen).
Perhaps someone who doesn't feel the need to 'I would tell you, but you're not worthy...." will point me to a place on the www where I can find a copy that I can afford(?)
Top reviews from other countries
Quizá para mí lo más destacable de este libro es que al leerlo tendió un puente hacia un mundo nuevo.
Sin ánimo de hacer spoiler en el propio libro hay un lugar "mágico" que sirve de puente entre dos mundos*.
La pregunta es: nos atreveremos a cruzarlo?
This to me was not only the scariest, but also the most sickeningly disturbing story I have ever read.
I'm a huge fan of King. I didn't know what to expect from this one. I am familiar with a variety of his work from Christine to IT. Weather it be a possessed car or a scary clown, I knew one thing... Stephen King can make an interesting story out of anything and pull you in with his unique storytelling style that makes you want to come back for more. Despite the disturbing content in this book, man I loved it. I enjoyed reading this book.
So what's this book about? In short, without spoiling it, here it is:
A family move in to their new home where they find a path leading to a "Pet Sematary" in the woods where children from the past buried their pets. And then the haunting begins...
Sounds simple, doesn't it? Harmless. Innocent. No, it isn't. What happens in this story is dark, terrifying, chilling and mad. It also made me sad. Some forces of nature are not be messed with.
What made this book even more interesting is that the book takes its time to build the world around the family as we get to know them. We see how they interact with each other and watch how their relationships grow. It feels slow at first, but you will see why later on. The story really kicks off at Part 2 and that's where the emotional rollercoaster begins. You will feel tense in several places in this book as you progress. It's an addicitive read. Reading at night, not only did I feel a chill down my spine, it kept me up all night. Stephen King hypnotises you with his story telling to the point where you want more. I couldn't put it down.
This story is not for the fainthearted. This may indeed be the best story Stephen King has ever told.
It's haunting. It's disturbing. This is King's darkest tale.