Gerald's Game

August 31, 1992
While this is one of the best-written stories King has ever published, it will offend many through sheer bad taste. Jessie and Gerald Burlingame have been married for 20 years. Kinky sex is Gerald's game; lately he has taken to handcuffing his wife to the bedposts. During one such session, via a series of bizarre circumstances, Jessie accidentally kills her husband, and for the next 28 hours she is trapped. King effectively uses this tragicomic conceit to take us deep into the mind of ``Goodwife Burlingame.''sic For the first third of the book he is at the top of his form, creating in Jessie one of his most intense character studies. Then, Jessie's ruminations lead her to remember a long-repressed episode of incest that is startling not because it becomes a central element of the plot, but because the details of the sexual relationship between father and daughter are salaciously--and lengthily--described. The gory stuff--how Jessie escapes her handcuffs, for example--is prime King, but this is subsumed in the book's general tastelessness. A lame wrap-up to what might have been a thrilling short story only further compromises the enjoyment readers might have found in this surprisingly exploitative work. 1.5 million first printing; $750,000 ad/promo; BOMC main selection.

As the greater part of this story takes place during the two days Jessie is handcuffed to her bed--and by now everyone knows why--and as this 12-cassette program is 13 hours long, it seems to take place in real time. That time goes by quickly indeed thanks to King's provocative, spooky plotting and actress Lindsay Crouse's enthusiasm, her skillful reading, and her facility with the voices in Jessie's head as she sorts out her traumatic past and finds the courage to survive. The few sound effects used to signal the beginning and the end of a cassette and important shifts in action are appropriately eerie. S.K. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine