Fearless Writer ... Reviews

Author: Stephen King

For such a quiet, close-knit community, a lot of unpleasant things happened in Castle Rock, Maine. Its residents always seemed to take these events in their stride, however, as if they were an inevitable toll that had to be paid for enjoying small-town life. But 1991 was an especially bad year for these backwater Mainers. That was the year that would rock the Rock.

These bad days were heralded by the arrival of a new store in town. With its flashy green awnings and unusual name, Needful Things startled the townsfolk out of their usual aloof attitude towards anything new. Once inside, they were immediately charmed by the proprietor, the smiling Leland Gaunt. Even if they were strangely repulsed by his touch.

Mr Gaunt’s range of wares was quite remarkable. No matter what his customers desired, no matter how obscure the object, Mr Gaunt had it in stock. And it was always affordable, never beyond the customer’s means. Young Brian Rusk picked up a rare Sandy Koufax baseball card. Nettie Cobb acquired some beautiful carnival glass. And as word of Needful Things got around, it seemed half the town paid a visit to Castle Rock’s newest entrepreneurial venture. And they all got what they wanted for a bargain – a minor cash outlay, plus a small favour performed for Mr Gaunt. This favour was usually a small prank, played on another member of the Rock. Quite harmless, really.

But possession quickly turned to possessiveness. Mr Gaunt’s customers were paranoid that someone was after their treasures and went to great lengths to keep them safe. Rather crazy lengths, you might say.

Sheriff Alan Pangborn sensed something amiss almost from the day Gaunt set up shop. But between concerns for his girlfriend Polly Chalmers and the persistent guilt and grief over his wife and child who were killed in a car accident, the lawman didn’t quite get around to paying Mr Gaunt a visit.

And before he could, Mr Gaunt’s ‘favours’ began to turn Castle Rock’s residents against one another. It was an isolated incident at first, a mentally ill girl and a notoriously bitchy woman hacking each other up in broad daylight. But then more and more personal vendettas of greed and hate gathered, building momentum like a rockslide (or rather a Rock-slide). Yet these displays of violence, perpetrated by people wired into an animalistic fury by Mr Gaunt’s long, nimble fingers, were only a distraction. The sideshow to keep the police distracted while the real fireworks show was being hatched by Ace Merrill and town selectman Danforth ‘Buster’ Keaton.

Needful Things was Stephen King’s final farewell to his famous town of Castle Rock and arguably the last good novel he would write until 1997, when The Green Mile was published in a series of chapbooks. King obviously cared for these characters and it shows in their depth and believability. This was essential, as the reader also needs to care for them if the exploitation of their frailties – which powers the book both in action and themes – is to work. And it does.

There is more than a touch of dark satire in Needful Things as well, not least King’s distaste for the hypocrisy of organised religion (the conflict between the Catholics and Baptists of Castle Rock is a thinly-veiled lampooning of all theological disputes). The usual human failings are writ large, with various characters succumbing to pride, greed, envy and all the emotions that can open the door to evil.

Needful Things is a complex network of events that in another writer’s hands might have become convoluted, but thanks to King’s clear storytelling, the reader is never unsure about who is doing what to whom and why. Its messages are clear without being broadcast by megaphone and thematically this was surely King’s most mature novel.

But as a long time King reader, I felt (both when I first read it about 10 years ago and again recently) that Needful Things was beginning to exhibit some of the impurities that would spoil subsequent novels completely.

King himself has referred to Needful Things as a “long novel” and it is that. It’s almost as though the author moved up into some invisible, unspoken status-bracket and editors grew fearful of whittling down his prose with anything but the finest grain sandpaper. Over-explanation is rife in Needful Things, with King often telling us things that we have already gleaned from a character’s actions or other plot developments.

Needful Things was also the first in a string of King novels with poor denouements. I won’t ruin it for those who have not read the book, but the final scene adds an element of silliness that knocks down the carefully constructed world of plausible fantasy built up in the preceding 600-odd pages. Rose Madder was the low point in this regard – its sudden sharp turn into the supernatural was both jarring and frightfully close to self-parody, almost as if King were afraid to write something that was not to type.

Nevertheless, one emerges from Needful Things with a feeling of satisfaction. It is a book that, in King’s unnecessarily self-deprecating words (although he was describing another tome), provides good weight. It’s not creepy in the sense that The Shining or Salem’s Lot was creepy, but it does generate a prevailing sense of unease. The reader is left gape-mouthed at the atrocities within its pages … and a little ashamed at how readily members of the human race will sell each other out for commercial or personal gain. In this regard, Needful Things has only increased in relevance since it was first published.

The Fearless Writer