Stephen King

One of the most prolific and popular contemporary novelsits, Stephen King has a devoted following of readers. This critical work on King examines his most recent novels, “Dolores Claiborne”, “Insomnia” and “Rose Madder”, and analyses the many threads of his fiction in a way that is accessible to young adults and general readers. It is designed to help the reader understand the carefully organised narrative structure of his novels, the relation of his fiction to the horror and science fiction genres and to each other, character development, and stylistic and thematic concerns that recur and evolve throughout his work. Following a biographical chapter that links his life to the developments of his fiction, Russell offers an overview chapter on all his novels. Individual chapters examine nine representative novels – “Salem’s Lot”, “The Shining”, “The Stand”, “The Dark Half”, “The Dark Tower III – The Waste Lands”, and “Needful Things”. A complete bibliogrpahy of all Stephen King’s work, critical sources and a listing of reviews of the novels examined in depth complete the work.
Each chapter deals with one novel and includes sections on plot and narrative structure, character development and thematic concerns. While concentrating on the elements of each novel, Russell also draws comparisons to other novels in King’s canon, and points out their developmental relationship. She shows how King uses horror, science fiction, and suspense to explore human relationshyips, how he expands traditional approaches to genre by combining elements of the various genres in his fiction, and how he has continued to grow as an artist throughout his career. Each novel is also examined from an alternative critical approach, which offers the reader ad additional perspective from which to read it. As a critique dealing with King’s recent novels, and designed for young adults and general readers, this critical companion should be a useful purchase for schools and public libraries.

Author Biography

SHARON A. RUSSELL is Professor of Communication and Women’s Studies at Indiana State University, where she also teaches film and popular culture courses. She is a former head of the Detective and Mystery Fiction section of the Popular Culture Association and a member of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. She has published many articles on popular fiction and has contributed to several works on detective fiction. She is editor of The Dog Didn’t Do It: Animals in Mystery (forthcoming), and A Guide to African Cinema (forthcoming from Greenwood Press).