Gerald's Game

Title: Gerald's Game

Author: Stephen King

Published in: 1992

Date read: 16th February 2020

Score: 4/5

Genre: Horror, Psychological, Thriller

Plot: (Warning, may contain spoilers):
"Gerald's Game" by Stephen King is a harrowing psychological horror novel that traps its protagonist in a nightmare of her own making, forcing her to confront past traumas and fight for survival against seemingly impossible odds.

The story opens with Jessie Burlingame and her husband, Gerald, at their remote summer house on a secluded lake in Maine. Gerald, a manipulative and controlling man, initiates a kinky sex game where he handcuffs Jessie to the posts of their bed. However, the game takes a horrifying turn when Gerald suddenly suffers a massive heart attack and dies, collapsing onto the bed and leaving Jessie utterly alone and inextricably chained.

Trapped, helpless, and with no one around for miles, Jessie's immediate struggle is physical: how to escape the handcuffs. As hours turn into a day, her situation becomes increasingly desperate. Hunger, thirst, the pain from the handcuffs, and the encroaching darkness of the remote house begin to take their toll.

However, the horror quickly transcends the physical. Jessie's isolation and increasing delirium bring forth terrifying hallucinations and fragmented memories. She is haunted by the presence of a stray dog, which eventually begins to gnaw on Gerald's corpse, and by a chilling, silent figure she dubs the "Moonlight Man," who appears in the darkness, seemingly watching her.

More profoundly, her current predicament triggers a flood of repressed memories from her childhood, particularly a deeply traumatic incident involving her father during a solar eclipse when she was twelve. This long-buried secret, hinting at sexual abuse, slowly surfaces, revealing the psychological chains that have bound her throughout her life, mirroring her physical predicament.

As Jessie fights for survival, both physically and mentally, she must confront these past traumas and make peace with them to find the strength to escape. The novel is a brutal and unflinching exploration of resilience, the power of the human mind under extreme duress, the insidious nature of psychological abuse, and the triumph of a woman reclaiming her agency. The climax involves Jessie's desperate, gruesome act to free herself and her harrowing journey to escape the isolated house, carrying with her not just physical scars, but a new understanding of herself.

Comments:
Excellent book with so much more to it than I was expecting. I was most disturbed about the fate of the dog.

Books that we've read by Stephen King (68):
Carrie (1974), 'Salem's Lot (1975), The Shining (The Shining, #1) (1977), The Stand (1978), Night Shift (1978), The Dead Zone (1979), Firestarter (1980), Cujo (1981), The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1) (1982), Different Seasons (1982), Christine (1983), Cycle of the Werewolf (1983), Pet Sematary (1983), The Talisman (The Talisman, #1) (1984), Skeleton Crew (1985), It (1986), The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower, #2) (1987), The Eyes of the Dragon (1987), The Tommyknockers (1987), Misery (1987), The Dark Half (1989), Four Past Midnight (1990), The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, #3) (1991), Needful Things (1991), Dolores Claiborne (1992), Gerald's Game (1992), Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993), Insomnia (1994), Rose Madder (1995), The Green Mile (1996), Desperation (1996), Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, #4) (1997), Bag of Bones (1998), The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999), Hearts in Atlantis (1999), On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), Black House (The Talisman, #2) (2001), Dreamcatcher (2001), Everything's Eventual (2002), From a Buick 8 (2002), Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, #5) (2003), Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, #6) (2004), The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, #7) (2004), The Colorado Kid (2005), Cell (2006), Lisey's Story (2006), Duma Key (2008), Just After Sunset (2008), Under the Dome (2009), 11/22/63 (2011), Full Dark, No Stars (2011), The Wind Through the Keyhole (The Dark Tower, #4.5) (2012), Dr. Sleep (The Shining, #2) (2013), Joyland (2013), Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1) (2014), Revival (2014), The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015), Finders Keepers (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #2) (2015), End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #3) (2016), Elevation (2018), The Outsider (2018), The Institute (2019), If It Bleeds (2020), Billy Summers (2021), Later (2021), Fairy Tale (2022), Holly (2023), You Like It Darker (2024)