Book Review: Gerald’s Game By Stephen King
Gerald’s game involves handcuffs and needs only two players. The other participant in the proceeding being his wife Jessie. Today the Burlingames are playing away from home and have gone up to their lakeside cabin. It is off season so there is little chance of any unwanted spectators showing up and interrupting play. There is only one little problem in all of this: Jessie isn’t sure that she wants to play after all, but she already has her kit off and is cuffed to the bed.
When Jessie calls time out, Gerald doesn’t seem to want to hear her and with no referee to shout foul it looks like she will have to play on to the end. Obviously Jessie is not exactly her husband’s biggest fan about all of this, and when Gerald goes to tackle her, she sees the balls and takes a free kick. And that is when her real problems start. Gerald is not the fittest of players and the blow causes a heart attack.
Gerald’s Game is over 300 pages long, so for over 300 pages the main character is cuffed to a bed. When you think about it in these terms you might be excused if you thought the story could get boring. Gerald’s Game certainly isn’t boring though, even if Jessie is wearing the bonds of kinky love for the vast majority of the book.
As the story progresses the reader is privy to Jessie’s thoughts and gets to know her a little better and she does some soul-searching and gets to know herself a little better as well. Secured to a mahogany bed-stead, Jessie has a lot of time to think. Some of that time is spent trying to figure out how to escape and some of the time is spent trying to come to terms with memories of the past—painful memories that she has pushed to the back of her mind and forgotten.
In many ways the torments that Jessie has to face, while sorting through her memories, are nearly as bad as the torment that her present predicament offers. Not all of her worries, however, come from these two sources. The naked woman cuffed to the bed is not always alone in the room.
I liked this story. The master craftsman has crafted another masterpiece and all it took was words and paper and that little something extra that is Stephen King.