Dolores Claiborne
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| Dolores Claiborne | |
 First edition cover |
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| Author | Stephen King |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror, Crime |
| Publisher | Viking Penguin |
| Publication date | 1993 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 305 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-670-84452-7 |
| Preceded by | Gerald's Game |
| Followed by | Insomnia |
Dolores Claiborne (1992) is a horror/crime novel by Stephen King. The novel is narrated by the title character. Atypically for a King novel, it has no chapters, double-spacing between paragraphs, or other section breaks; thus the text is a single continuous narrative which reads like a transcription of a spoken monologue.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
As the story begins, Dolores Claiborne is in a police interrogation and wants to make clear to the police that she did not kill her wealthy employer, an elderly woman named Vera Donovan whom she has looked after for years. She does, however, confess to the indirect murder of her husband, Joe St. George, almost 30 years before. Her "confession" develops into the story of her life, her troubled marriage, and her relationship with her employer.
Unlike most other works by King, the only supernatural event in the book is a psychic vision.
[edit] Connection to King's other works
This novel is most closely connected to Gerald's Game. In Gerald's Game, it is revealed that Jessie Burlingame was sexually abused by her father during a solar eclipse. The same solar eclipse is detailed in Dolores Claiborne, and during the eclipse Dolores has a psychic vision where she sees Jessie being abused. Many years later, Dolores again imagines that Jessie is in danger; assumedly she is seeing the events detailed in Gerald's Game, with Jessie handcuffed to a bed. The two novels were initially conceived to be part of a single volume, titled In the Path of the Eclipse. Later editions of the novel have a foreword that explains the connection between the two.
The novel's fictional Little Tall Island is also the setting for King's screenplay Storm of the Century, which was filmed and broadcast in 1999.
There is also a reference to the town Jerusalem's Lot, as referred to in 'Salem's Lot and the short stories Jerusalem's Lot and One for the Road, when Dolores mentions "that town upstate where they say no one lives".
Shawshank Prison (the setting for Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption) is also referred to several times in the novel.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
Dolores Claiborne was adapted into a 1995 film starring Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh, directed by Taylor Hackford.
[edit] Editions
- ISBN 0-670-84452-7 (hardcover, first edition, 1993)
- ISBN 0-606-05811-7 (prebound, 1993)
- ISBN 0-451-17709-6 (mass market paperback, 1993, reprint)
- ISBN 0-8161-5641-7 (paperback, 1993, Large Type Edition)
- ISBN 2-277-04742-2 (paperback)
[edit] See also
- Dolores Claiborne (film)
- Solar eclipses in fiction
- List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors
