Jerusalem's Lot, the titular town in Stephen King's second novel, is
a neighbouring town to the location of his previous book Carrie.
Again, King chooses to set the narrative to the near future and the
present time. The story takes place in 1975 and 1976, a couple of
years before the events told in Carrie. But apart from an early in
the book, by-the-way naming of Chamberlain, Maine being close to
Jerusalem's Lot, King makes no explicit mentions of further
relationships between the two stories. There are several implicit
parallels between the two stories, though. A small, rural American
town goes under due to both natural and supernatural evil. A town
experiences huge, destructive fires. The main characters are
partially driven by revenge. However, the differences between the two
books are more striking. In 'salem's Lot, King expands the cast into
an ensemble of characters and weaves their stories into an even more
engulfing tapestry. And being a vampire story, the divide between
good and evil is much more obvious. The evil is an external one which
gives the drama more of an us vs them arc.
The social commentary seems more explicit in 'salem's Lot, too. The
decline of rural America, the cynicism of capitalism and the
exploitation and struggle of the working class are all mentioned in
various ways. The town's richest man being a successful real estate
agent who helped usher in the era of the trailer home, is a nice
touch. The Korean war and Watergate come up, and the Vietnam war is
directly named in several passages. The Vietnam war is implied, too.
The main villain sets up a primitive but horrendously effective booby
trap. The vampires hide in dark, narrow underground lairs, forcing the
heroes to dive into the darkness to seek them out and kill them. The
horrific use of fire as a weapon is another parallel.
Throughout the book, most of the chapters are named after the town's
various characters. King presents them to us in turn one after the
other, describing their more or less mundane daily lives. Slowly we
start to see their interconnections, and we get sense of the emerging
terror from the outside. This technique reminds me of disaster
movies, which often build the tension slowly towards a crescendo.
Unlike many disaster movies, though, the story here doesn't sizzle
out when we pass the half way mark. King mostly manages to pull it
off, but it does feel like the heroes seek out Dracula/Barlow a bit
too soon. The narrative seems to be heading towards a full-on,
chaotic vampire infestation, which in the end is partly averted and
partly left undescribed.
While most of the book is narrative and dialogue driven, some
sections of the book feel more filmatic. King masterfully immerses
the reader with a few descriptions of locations around the town. A
couple of passages feel like a camera moving across the landscape.
And long gazes through windows and across the town are a common
motif. In particular, several of the town's people have their eyes
drawn towards the looming house on the hill. The Marsten House
becomes a character in itself, sometimes appearing to threaten the
characters. We get to know that the House has a dark history. It was
the home of a 1930s gangster, the site of a murder suicide, and is
seemingly connected to the disappearences of several children a few
decades back. And it is implied that there is a connection between
the former and current inhabitant.
I haven't read many vampire books, John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let the
Right One In was the previous one. The opening of 'salem's Lot, with
an unknown man travelling with a seemingly unrelated child, took me
straight up to Let the Right One In. And there are more obvious
similarities. Both books have a child as a main protagonist. They
both have autobiographical aspects, with the author being represented
by some of the characters, and being set to locations which are the
same as, or close to, where the author grew up. And they both paint a
vivid picture of the historical time they take place in.
