[possible spoilers ahead, though they are but vague]

Apparently, Tabitha King rescued the first draft for this from a bin and had to semi-force the young Stevie King, who thought it was rubbish, to pick it up again.

What can I say? Thank you, Tabitha. Has Stephen listened to that niggling evil voice at the back of every writer's mind, no matter how ingenious, we would never have had this book - which would have been a shame, as it is an absolute masterpiece.

Quite how Stephen King knew exactly what it feels like to be a psychologically tortured teenage girl is beyond me, the point is that he does, and does a superb job of telling the world. The book is indeed chilling, but for most of the book the chills are provided by the sheer potential for evil of human being vs. weaker human being.

The horrors at the end are horrific, but to a point - since this is just a book and we may respond to books as irrationally and emotionally as we please, I cannot claim to have been horrified by what happened to Carrie's torturers.

In any case, a real, human, spell-binding tale about the dark that lurks in the hearts of little girls, and one of the very few books in the world to have made me stay up until dawn to finish them in one sitting.