DESPERATION by Stephen King

Desperation by Steven King is a book of brutality. It takes place in a Nevada on “the loneliest highway in America” highway 50. A psychopathic cop pulls people over on this highway including newlyweds a family of four and a world-renowned writer. This lunatic poses as a normal cop in order to get the people trust and is able to get all of them to come with him weather by force or trickery. He takes these helpless people to a town called Desperation were he murders an 8 year old girl and the husband of the newlyweds. The rest of the novel is about the people who are locked in prison to find ways to escape, but discovery’s about the cops degree of being an actual human make the escape much more difficult.

I would not recommend this book to certain classmates that are easily disturbed for the following: Steven King is a very descriptive writer and in Desperation he describes things that are beyond most peoples idea of pure evil and absolute brutality. Desperation in an exhausting read due to King’s use of alienation in it making the reader snap back into reality every few pages due to the images and ideas that are projected by King. Yet if you are a fan of horror books this would be a book I would recommend it due to it’s descriptive details and the way King tells the background information on his characters so well that it makes later statements in the book much easier to understand.

Desperation is already a movie but if it was to be remade I would chose new actors to play certain roles. To play Entragen (the cop) I would chose Arnold Schwarzenegger based on the physical similarities of the two.

To play the high roller writer (John Marienville) I would to jack Nicolson. These to people have similar views on life and are both very much apart of the Hollywood scene that it would be an easy role for Jack to adapt to.

To play Ralph Carver I would chose Tom Hanks because of the high level of emotion and intensity he brings to the screen with his control over his tone, facial expressions, and gestures he would be perfect to play the high strung father.

To play Ralph Carvers with Ellie I would chose Jodie Foster. Jodie Foster in Flight plan showed she can be a protective loving mother who finds he self in total desperation to help her loved ones making her fit perfectly into the part of Ellie.

“At the last minute, Billy Rancourt understood and tried to run. He broke to his right, toward a ramshackle house squatting tiredly behind a picket fence, but it was too little and too late. He yelled there was a crump as the cruiser struck him hard enough to make the frame shudder. Blood spattered the picket fence, there was a double thud from beneath the car as the wheels ran over the fallen man.” It is paragraphs like these where King takes rich descriptive language and molds it into a horrifying, disturbing paragraph.

Over all Desperation was a read worthwhile, the book is full of unexpected twists that will keep you turning the pages. What I like most about the book is King isolates the characters so well and puts them through so much horror that you can’t help but feeling for them, it is then when you remove your eyes from the pages and quickly snap back into reality.