Carrie by Stephen King

Ah, the high school years. Those lazy, hazy, crazy days when people struggled to fit in, to be cool, to mock the outcasts as a way of bonding. They were always there, those freaks and geeks, loners and losers... maybe you were one, maybe you picked on one.

Carrie, when read in the post-Columbine era, gives the reader an eerie situation. When the book was written, King did an amazing job of making a protagonist you would simultaneously fear and, in some small part of your brain, root for. Now, with high school violence and shootings a monthly occurrence on the news, Carrie's violent revenge against her classmates seems less shocking. More prescient are the elements of the story that still ring true today: the outcast being pushed too far, ignored too long, until nothing can bring them back from the edge. The overly strict religious upbringing (in a single parent household), coupled with the consistent mocking from her peers leads to a child that rebels in a way that scars the very soul of a town. In the case of Carrie, for those familiar with the story who haven't read the book or seen the movie, the destruction is as epic in scale as the emotions and pathos that drive Carrie's soul.

Carrie is the beginning of King's career, clumsy in places, but overly irresistible, the birth of a literary master.