With the publication of Carrie in 1974, King began his prolific and enduring presence on the American fiction scene. Two years later, with Sissy Spacek in the title role, director Brian de Palma brought the novel to indelible life onscreen. Both versions are now considered modern horror classics. Carrie White is an awkward and unpopular high school teenager, bullied and beleaguered from all sides, who uses her burgeoning telekinetic powers to wreak vengeance on all who have teased or injured her. In her reading, Spacek reinhabits and reprises her film role as Carrie and impeccably voices all other characters as well. Not to be missed.--Kristen L. Smith, Loras Coll. Lib., Dubuque, IA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

Ridiculed from the first grade through senior high school, Carrie White exacts a dreadful revenge on her school and her town when she unleashes telekinetic powers the night of her senior prom. [BKL Jl 1 74]

Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers as they did in The Lottery although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution. All beginning when Carrie White, a girl with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact) menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the highschool locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success -- not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her ""wild talent,"" FLEXes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town. King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum -- it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once are peanut butter now scrawl ""Carrie White eats shit."" But as they still say around here -- ""Sit a spell and collect yourself. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.