1992: Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

The Author:

Stephen King (1947-    ) was born in Portland, Maine.   His father abandoned the family when King was two, leaving his mother to raise King and his older brother.  King attended the University of Maine, earning a B.A. in English in 1970.  King and Tabitha Spruce had their first child in 1970, and married in 1971.  Their second child, Joseph Hillstrom King, was born in 1972.  (He, like his mother and father, is a writer.  He writes under the name Joe Hill.)  King taught high school and supplemented his wages by selling short stories to magazines. 

In 1973, he published his first novel, Carrie.  The first of his novels to make the annual top ten bestsellers list was The Dead Zone (1979).  Between 1980 and 2012, King appeared on the annual top ten list 34 times, in one case having three books on the same year's list. He has since written multiple non-fiction works, as well as serving as a columnist for entertainment weekly.  At current count, King has published twelve short story collections, two comic series, six books of non-fiction, fifty-six novels, seven novellas, ten screenplays, and a musical libretto.

The Book:

1st Edition Cover

Length: 372 pages
Subject/Genre: Personal revenge/Gothic suspense

Dolores Claiborne is about the eponymous woman, an sixty-five year old maid on Little Tall Island, a small, working class area of the coast of Maine.  The novel begins with her turning herself in to the local sheriff, denying responsibility for the recent death of her long-time employer, Vera Donovan, but finally admitting to murdering her own husband decades prior.  Thus Dolores begins to tell her story, a story of abuse, helplessness, and retaliation, starting in the middle and slowly circling in toward the deaths.

Dolores Claiborne is very unusual for a King novel.  The most immediate difference to his usual style is the narration:  The entire book is one monological confession (in dialect) with a small epilogue tacked on.  Further, there is almost no supernatural element to the story.  The only supernatural element, brief glimpses of a little girl in a far away town, are completely irrelevant to the novel, both in terms of plot and symbolism.  As explained in the brief preface, this little girl is Jessie Burlingame, the main character of Gerald's Game, released the same year as Dolores Claiborne.  Basically, these scenes are saying "If you want to find out what the deal was with this girl, buy Gerald's Game, now available wherever books are sold!"  

That said, Dolores Claiborne is a very strong novel.  It's less horror than it is gothic, in the sense that Flannery O'Connor or Shirely Jackson's works are gothic.  It does have a number of King tropes, the small town Maine setting, the attempt to make everyday objects terrifying, but it doesn't suffer from them as much as some of his other works.  The novel paints a vivid picture of a desperate woman, and sucks you into life on that that small island in Maine.

Dolores Claiborne is possibly the least well-known of the King novels on the list. This despite the fact that it had a film adaptation in 1995 starring Kathy Bates as Dolores, Jennifer Jason Leigh as her daughter Selena, and smaller parts played by John C. Reilly, Christopher Plummer, and playwright Eric Bogosian.

Strangely enough, Dolores Claiborne was adapted into an opera and premiered in San Francisco last year.  It looks kind of bizarre:

The trailer for the movie on the other hand, looks pretty fantastic.   

If you're not a fan of King, looking to get into his work, or if you enjoy the gothic or suspenseful, I'd really recommend Dolores Claiborne.  Most of the negative reviews I've seen have boiled down to not liking the monologue structure or finding it not exciting enough (though, as a suspense novel, tension is everything).  It's definitely worth checking out.

Bestsellers of 1992:

1. Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

2. The Pelican Brief by John Grisham

3. Gerald's Game by Stephen King

4. Mixed Blessings by Danielle Steel

5. Jewels by Danielle Steel

6. The Stars Shine Down by Sidney Sheldon

7. The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice

8. Mexico by James Michener

9. Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan

10. All Around the Town by Mary Higgins Clark

Also Published in 1992:

Children of Men by P. D. James

Jazz by Toni Morrison

The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald

Sources:

"Dolores Claiborne." IMDB. Amazon

King, Stephen. Dolores Claiborne. 1992. New York: Signet, 1993. Print.

1946: The King's General by Daphne du Maurier

The Author:

            Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989) was born in London, the daughter of an influential actor’s manager, Sir Gerald du Maurier and granddaughter of George du Maurier, a hugely successful author known best for his novel Trilby and the character Svengali.  

            Daphne du Maurier published her first novel in 1931 and went on to publish dozens of novels, short story collections, and biographies.   In 1932 she married Major Frederick Browning (Mr. and Mrs. Browning became Sir and Lady Browning in 1946).  Her marriage was problematic: Browning, a veteran of World War One, suffered psychologically from the experience, and there were affairs.   Browning passed away in 1965.  In 1969 du Maurier was given the title of Dame Commander of the British Empire.  

            Du Maurier was extremely successful, appearing on the Publishers’ Weekly’s list of the top ten bestselling books of the year twelve times, between 1938 and 1969.  Her most famous book, Rebecca (1938) was adapted into the classic Hitchcock film of the same name.  The film adaptation of her short story, The Birds (1952), is still famous as well.

            There is a lot of debate about du Maurier’s sexual orientation and her views thereof.  I don’t feel confident enough in my knowledge of du Maurier to make a definitive statement one way or the other.  There is significant evidence that she was bisexual, but as to her feelings or actions on the matter, may your own research help you draw a conclusion.   

The Book:

First edition cover

            The King’s General takes place during the English Civil War and is told as a reminiscence of the middle-aged Honor Harris.  Those who follow my blog may recognize that this is the second novel in a row to be set in this time period.  But whereas the previous year’s Forever Amber was a romance, The King’s General fits more into the realm of gothic mystery. 

            The narrator, Honor Harris, is the daughter of minor nobility in Cornwall.  Through her brother’s marriage, the family is tied to the illustrious Grenviles.  Honor (quite rightly) sees her new sister-in-law Gartred as manipulative and dangerous.  A few years later, after her brother’s death, Honor is reintroduced to the Grenviles and falls in love with Gartred’s brother Richard, who is thought of as a great soldier, but a cad (e.g. Forever Amber’s Bruce Carlton or Gone with the Wind’s Rhett Butler).  Very early in the novel, they are engaged to be married and the story seems to be leading to a typical romance.  Then, as Honor, Gartred, and Richard are on a hunt, Honor’s horse falls and Honor is crippled for life. 

            While Honor and Richard’s paths cross and there is love between them, this is not at all like Scarlett & Rhett or Amber & Bruce.  Although I can’t help but feel that Amber & Bruce are at least partially responsible for the commercial success of The King’s General.  Based on what people expected from du Maurier based on movies like 1940’s Rebecca, as well as a historical novel that takes place in the decade preceding the previous year’s runaway bestseller, and add to that du Maurier’s name recognition, The King’s General was poised to take the number one spot.  It is the only book of du Maurier’s to do so, despite being one of her marginal works and being one of the only three (so far) books on my list to not have had a film adaptation (the other two: Mr. Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells and Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith).  

            As a gothic mystery and as historical fiction, The King’s General is good.  The prose is what you would expect from a gothic mystery (which isn’t personally to my liking, but there’s no accounting for taste).  If either of the above-mentioned genres interest you, The King’s General is certainly worth a read.

Also published in 1946:  
Nikos Kazantzakis - Zorba the Greek
Robert Penn Warren - All the King's Men
Eugene O'Neill - The Iceman Cometh

Sources:
Auerbach, Nina. Daphne du Maurier, Haunted Heiress. Philadelphia, PA: University of
            Pennsylvania Press. 2000. Print.  

du Maurier, Daphne. The King's General. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co. 1946. Print.