Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary is probably one of Stephen King's best known works. It has been adapted for film twice, as recently as 2019, and I have encountered references to this book in other more contemporary examples of horror fiction. It is a significantly influential story about grief, humanity's age old conflict against death, and perhaps also humanity's place in a dark and mysterious world. The book stands on the shoulders of antecedents such as The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs. The audiobook was read by Michael C. Hall (Dexter) who did a fantastic job. Despite the hype surrounding this classic and the enduring popularity of the novel, overall I was disappointed in Pet Sematary. I had seen the 2019 movie prior to reading, and I don't know if that experience spoiled reading the book for me, but I just found the pacing of the novel incredibly slow and the length far too long. One of the people in the HOWL Society book club commented that they thought King over foreshadowed, and I agree. Between that and knowing more or less what was going to happen I got so bored waiting for the actual action and scary bits to occur. There were certainly some frightening sections and moments of excellence in storytelling throughout, but sadly I would describe such sections as islands of engagement in a sea of tedium. I also had some questions about the plot and world building, and thought some of the supernatural elements were underdeveloped. To make matters worse, this book was written in the 1980s and features characters imbued with casual racism, sexism, and ableism which were (probably) prevalent at the time. This makes the book a somewhat uncomfortable read for a contemporary reader in addition to being boring. While Pet Sematary has some interesting insights to offer, I simply didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped I would. As the book says, sometimes dead is better. I might add that sometimes unread is better too. I think my idea of this book was better than the actual reading experience proved to be. Maybe someday I'll give this book another chance, and maybe I'll like it better. I hope so. But for now ⭐️⭐️