“The town cares for devil’s work no more than it cares for God’s or man’s. It knew darkness. And darkness was enough,” (King 327).
After some time on the run a terrified man and boy resolve that they must return to the small town of ‘Salem’s Lot they escaped from and face the evil that has made a home there.
While I knew of ‘Salem’s Lot’s existence it was never high on my list of Stephen King’s books and I feel stupid for that now. Granted, I didn’t know as much about it as I did King’s other famous works. I knew the title, I had read the prequel and sequel stories found in his short story collection Night Shift which is how I learned that it’s about vampires and my interest was piqued. Maybe that’s a spoiler, but you could also arguing that after being in publication for nearly fifty years that that plot point was going to come out at some point.
But ‘Salem’s Lot isn’t a vampire novel for the whole book. It’s a slow burn of a story about a town, it’s people, and the evil that comes to it. We meet our protagonist Ben Mears, a widowed author who returns to ‘Salem’s Lot to write a new novel and come to understand his own personal demons, Susan Norton, a young woman who wants more of life, Mark Petrie, a young boy much wiser than he appears, and a handful of others that make up our story. One of my favourite characters though was Father Callahan, I loved reading about his faith and was sad there wasn’t more of him in the book but am happy to learn he appears in some of Stephen King’s later works. The town itself is it’s own character, and it’s those chapters in the book that I most enjoyed. I loved getting a glimpse into the different homes of the people in town and trying to understand ‘salem’s lot as it’s own entity.
The characters aren’t as fleshed out as they could be, but this was King’s second novel. What I found interesting is how certain themes in ‘Salem’s Lot appear in his later works, like young supernatural children, grieving parents, alcoholism. It was interesting to see from a writing perspective to see how certain threads appear in one work and take a life in a completely different one.
I really enjoyed how King showed vampirism. While reading some (bad) reviews for the new ‘Salem’s Lot move that released earlier this month, a Reddit user remarked that what made the vampirism in the book so good is how it spreads like gossip through the small town and I thought that was an excellent description for it. I also loved some of the more classical aspects of vampires and the framing of the novel as a whole, how reader’s know something bad has happened and slowly come to learn what that bad was.
I’m sure most people know (because I never shut up about it) that Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass is one of my favourite shows so I was surprised to see how much inspiration the show took from this book in the best of ways. I think ‘Salem’s Lot is one of my favourite of King’s novels and I’m so happy I finally read it!
Publication: October 17 1975
Publisher: Anchor
Pages: 653 pages (Paperback)
Source: Owned
Genre: Fiction, Horror
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
Thousands of miles away from the small township of ‘Salem’s Lot, two terrified people, a man and a boy, still share the secrets of those clapboard houses and tree-lined streets. They must return to ‘Salem’s Lot for a final confrontation with the unspeakable evil that lives on in the town.
Sarah O'Connor 