Gerald's Game
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| Author | Stephen King |
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| Cover Artist | Rob Wood |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror |
| Publisher | Viking |
| Released | 1992 |
| Pages | 332 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-670-84650-3 |
Gerald's Game (1992) is a novel by Stephen King. It stands as one of the few properties in King's work that hasn't been adapted for television or film.
The story begins with Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald in the bedroom of their solitary cabin in western Maine, where they have gone for an off-beat romantic weekend. Gerald, who is a successful lawyer with an aggressive personality, has been able to re-invigorate the couple's sex life by fastening Jessie to the bed with handcuffs. Jessie has been into the game before, but suddenly she balks at the idea. As Gerald starts to crawl on top of Jessie pretending her protests are fake, she kicks him hard in the crotch which causes him to have a fatal heart attack. Jessie is alone in the cabin and unable to move or summon help. There is nothing to do but see if anyone shows up.
The only things that do show up is a hungry stray dog that starts feeding on Gerald's body and an unpleasant, deformed apparition that may or may not be real; Jessie begins to think of this bizarre visitor as "The Space Cowboy" (after a line from a Steve Miller song, "The Joker"). A combination of panic and thirst eventually causes Jessie to hallucinate. She hears voices in her head, each one ostensibly the voice of people in her life, primarily Ruth Neary and Nora Callighan, old friends from college that Jessie hasn't spoken to in decades, but these voices actually represent a different side of her personality which may actually help her extract a painful childhood memory she has kept suppressed all these years. She was sexually abused by her father when she was aged ten. She also begins to realize the state of her marriage to Gerald, which has produced an unhappy housewife in Jessie, who realizes that she has given up her life's choices to fulfill her husband's wishes of him bringing home the paycheck.
This internal dialogue is mixed with descriptions of Jessie's more and more desperate attempts to get out of the handcuffs. Finally she does escape after one of the voices in her head tells her that if she stays another night, The Space Cowboy will more than likely take a part of her to add to its trophy medical bag filled with jewelry and human bones. Jessie escapes by slicing her hand open all the way around on a broken glass and then using the blood and the medical procedure of "degloving" to escape. The story cuts to months later with Jessie recuperating from the incident and being looked after by a nurse. An ambitious law associate of her husband's, assists her in covering up the real incident, and assisting her in recuperation. At the end, we get to read the letter that Jessie writes to one of the persons whose voice she has heard in her head, detailing what happened after the incident and her recuperation process, which is slow but very meaningful. Among some of the passages in the letter, revolves around a serial necrophiliac and murderer making his way through Maine and why he might relate to the Space Cowboy. The novel even mentions what became of the stray dog that gnawed on Gerald. The dog is shot and killed. However, there is evidence that links the dog to its owner, who had abandoned it in Maine and drove back to Massachusetts, simply because he didn't want to pay for the dog's license.
The only true supernatural event in the story occurs as described during one of Jessie's flashbacks, when, during a particularly stressful incident at the time of childhood, she has a waking dream. In King's subsequent novel Dolores Claiborne, it is revealed that the vision was actually a telepathic contact between the main characters of the two novels.
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| Bibliography |
| Novels: Carrie (1974) • ’Salem's Lot (1975) • Rage (as Richard Bachman) (1977) • The Shining (1977) • Night Shift (stories) (1978) • The Stand (1978) • The Dead Zone (1979) • The Long Walk (as Richard Bachman) (1979) • Firestarter (1980) • Cujo (1981) • Roadwork (as Richard Bachman) (1981) • The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (1982) • Different Seasons (novellas) (1982) • The Running Man (as Richard Bachman) (1982) • Christine (1983) • Pet Sematary (1983) • Cycle of the Werewolf (1983) • The Talisman (written with Peter Straub) (1984) • Thinner (as Richard Bachman) (1984) • Skeleton Crew (stories) (1985) • The Bachman Books (novel collection) (1985) • It (1986) • The Eyes of the Dragon (1987) • Misery (1987) • The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987) • The Tommyknockers (1988) • Dark Visions (cowritten with George R. R. Martin and Dan Simmons) (1988) • The Dark Half (1989) • Dolan's Cadillac (1989) • My Pretty Pony (1989) • The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition (1990) • Four Past Midnight (stories) (1990) • Needful Things (1990) • The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (1991) • Gerald's Game (1992) • Dolores Claiborne (1993) • Nightmares & Dreamscapes (stories) (1993) • Insomnia (1994) • Rose Madder (1995) • Umney's Last Case (1995) • The Green Mile (1996) • Desperation (1996) • The Regulators (as Richard Bachman) (1996) • Six Stories (stories) (1997) • The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (1997) • Bag of Bones (1998) • The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999) • The New Lieutenant's Rap (1999) • Hearts in Atlantis (1999) • Dreamcatcher (2001) • Black House (sequel to The Talisman; written with Peter Straub) (2001) • From a Buick 8 (2002) • Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales (stories) (2002) • The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (revised edition) (2003) • The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (2003) • The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (2004) • The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2004) • The Colorado Kid (2005) Cell (2006) • Lisey's Story (2006) |
| Non-fiction: • Danse Macabre (1981) • Nightmares in the Sky (1988) • On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000) • Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season (cowritten with Stewart O'Nan) (2005) |
| Original ebooks: Riding the Bullet (2000) • The Plant: Book 1-Zenith Rising (2000) |
| Audio Recordings |
| Audiobooks: L.T.'s Theory of Pets • Blood and Smoke (2000) • Stationary Bike (2006) |
