`Gerald’s Game’ a smorgasbord of King themes

GERALD’S GAME, by Stephen King, Viking, 303 pages, $23.50.

In his tightly crafted new novel, “Gerald’s Game,” Stephen King delivers a strange and disturbing mix of elements.

On Page One we find Jessie Mahout Burlingame being handcuffed by her husband to the headboard of the bed in their remote lakeside cottage. Having long since tired of this particular effort to spice up their fading love life, Jessie has the first in the long series of revelations that make up the core of this story. She doesn’t like Gerald’s game and, when it is clear that he intends to proceed with or without her consent, discovers that on some levels she doesn’t much like Gerald, either. When he persists in pretending not to take her pleas for release seriously she lashes out, surprising herself and him by giving him a well-deserved good swift kick. Unfortunately, Gerald’s metabolism is a bit overstrained at the moment; he suffers a fatal heart attack and topples off the bed.

Having rather overstated her point, Jessie finds herself still handcuffed to a sturdy headboard in an isolated cottage in the middle of the woods. The summer season is over, the neighbors are gone. In short, she’s trapped. To make matters worse, a feral dog appears and, in classic Stephen King style, begins to gnaw on Gerald’s remains. Later on things begin to get really strange.

“Gerald’s Game” is a veritable smorgasbord of classic King themes and devices, not the least of which is his command of character development.

Jessie Burlingame is one of his best female creations to date. Chained to a bed for most of the book, she discovers that, hungry dogs and specters in the corner aside, the worst foe she must face is herself. Forced by the extremity of her situation to strive or die, besieged by fragmented, often symbolic memories and disassociated “voices” in her mind, Jessie goes through some serious self-therapy. Bizarre and often extreme as this story sometimes becomes, King does an admirable job of capturing the plight of a modern woman spiritually divided against herself. It is Jessie’s own lifelong acceptance of the expectations of others which has resulted in her being chained, figuratively and otherwise, to her husband’s bed. Her struggle to escape is also her struggle to become whole.

This may not sound like the stuff of a mere horror novel and it isn’t. King has shown in such stories as “The Body” that he knows how to make his people interesting without all the gaudy trappings. However, he does choose to make “Gerald’s Game” into a tale of horror by adding a spectral black figure referred to in the story as a “cosmic wild card.” It’s an apt description, as the presence of this mysterious monster is the least explained element of the entire book. He’s a classic King creation, perverse in the extreme and completely loathsome. Unfortunately, he just doesn’t seem to fit. While admittedly providing the necessary spice for horror, this character has rather a flat, pasted-in feel, not because he is done badly, but because Jessie is done so well.

Jessie and her plight are so real, so believable, this specter pales by comparison. Her battle against hunger, thirst and despair, not to mention what she does to overcome them, make for pretty exciting reading all by themselves. Not since “The Mist” has King worked so hard at the “closed environment, use-what’s-at-hand” theme. Reading this book, it’s not difficult to imagine the author actually lying on a bed experimenting with the possibilities of a loose shelf and its contents. King’s ability to turn the normal upside down, make it sound plausible and write it well is, after all, what keeps his books on the stands.

One minor detail which jarred this reader was the fact that the “voice” which embodies Jessie’s inner strength, the voice that saves her, is personified as that of a lesbian friend from her college days. This observation is certainly not meant as any denigration of lesbians nor is the veracity of the character weakened in any way. However, in a society where any woman who is “strong,” who thinks and acts independently is likely to be labeled as such, isn’t it time we put this tired myth to rest? Gay readers may be similarly disturbed by some of the negative elements King employs to create the dark nemesis of the book. While these details may seem minor in the greater context of the story, they are food for thought.

All that aside, in a world and certainly a genre where female role models are few and far between, King is to be applauded for his creation of Jessie Mahout Burlingame, a battered survivor on her way to becoming spiritually whole.

Lynn Flewelling is a free-lance writer who resides in Bangor.