Archives de Tag: Stephen King

Misery – Stephen King

08 mercredi Juin 2016

Posted by in En VO, Policiers / Thrillers, Romans étrangers

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Stephen King - MiseryLes premières phrases

«  umber whunnnn

yerrrnnn umber whunnnn

fayunnnn

These sounds: even in the haze.

But sometimes the sounds – like the pain – faded, and then there was only the haze. He remembered darkness: solid darkness had come before the haze. Did that mean he was making progress? Let there be light (even of the hazy variety), and the light was good, and so on and so on? Had those sounds existed in the darkness? He didn’t know the answers to any of these questions. Did it make sense to ask them? He didn’t know the answer to that one, either.

The pain was somewhere below the sounds. The pain was east of the sun and south of his ears. That was all he did know.

For some length of time that seemed very long (and so was, since the pain and the stormy haze were the only two things which existed) those sounds were the only outer reality. He had no idea who he was or where he was and cared to know neither. He wished he was dead, but through the pain-soaked haze that filled his mind like a summer storm-cloud, he did not know he wished it.  »

Circonstances de lecture

Parce que je suis fan de Stephen King.

Impressions

Stephen King est définitivement un de mes auteurs préférés. J’ai dévoré « Misery », ce classique que je n’avais pas encore pris le temps de lire. C’est bien simple, une fois les premières pages tournées, j’ai été hantée par ce livre et je n’avais qu’une envie : rentrer chez moi le soir pour vite connaître la suite !

L’histoire – vous la connaissez peut-être – : un écrivain, Paul Sheldon,  se réveille après un accident de voiture chez une de ses fans inconditionnelles, Annie Wilkes. Celle-ci, au lieu de le conduire à l’hôpital (il a tout de même les deux jambes cassées…), l’a ramené chez elle. Point positif : c’est une ancienne infirmière et elle a une quantité impressionnante de médicaments anti-douleur dans sa salle de bains. Point négatif : elle est complètement folle. Et lorsqu’elle apprend que Paul Sheldon tue l’héroïne de ses bestsellers dans son dernier roman, elle lui ordonne d’écrire la suite et de ressusciter son personnage préféré. Bien sûr, avec Stephen King, on a droit à une bonne dose d’hémoglobine et de scènes bien tordues, mais « Misery » propose aussi une très bonne réflexion sur l’inspiration des écrivains. Tout simplement GÉNIAL !!!

Un passage parmi d’autres

 « Annie, will you tell me one thing?

« Of course, dear! »

« If I write this story for you – « 

« Novel! A nice big one like all the others – maybe even bigger! »

He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. « Okay – if I write this novel for you, will you let me go when it’s done? »

For a moment unease slipped cloudily across her face, and then she was looking at him carefully, studiously. « You speak as though I were keeping you prisoner, Paul. »

He said nothing, only looked at her.

« I think that by the time you finish, you should be up to the… up to the strain of meeting people again, » she said. « Is that what you want to hear? »

« That’s what I wanted to hear, yes. »

« Well, honestly! I knew writers were supposed to have big egos, but I guess I didn’t understand that meant ingratitude, too! »

He went on looking at her and after a moment she looked away, impatient and a little flustered.

Stephen King – Misery – 1987 (Hodder & Stoughton)

Doctor Sleep – Stephen King

03 vendredi Jan 2014

Posted by in En VO, Romans étrangers

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Stephen King - Doctor SleepLes premières phrases

«  On the second day of December in a year when a Georgia peanut farmer was doing business in the White House, one of Colorado’s great resort hotels burned to the ground. The Overlook was declared a total loss. After an investigation, the fire marshal of Jicarilla County ruled the cause had been a defective boiler. The hotel was closed for the winter when the accident occurred, and only four people were present. Three survived. The hotel’s off-season caretaker, John Torrance, was killed during an unsuccessful (and heroic) effort to dump the boiler’s steam pressure, which had mounted to disastrously high levels due to an inoperative relief valve.

Two of the survivors were the caretaker’s wife and young son. The third was the Overlook’s chef, Richard Hallorann, who had left his seasonal job in Florida and come to check on the Torrances because of what he called « a powerful hunch » that the family was in trouble. Both surviving adults were quite badly injured in the explosion. Only the child was unhurt.

Physically, at least. »

Circonstances de lecture

Acheté à Londres chez Hatchards. Parce que c’est la suite de « The Shining » !

Impressions

C’est avec plaisir que l’on retrouve le petit garçon de « The Shining », devenu adulte. Succombera-t-il aux mêmes maux que son père, à commencer par son problème d’alcoolisme ? Parviendra-t-il à vivre avec son don ? Et qu’arrivera-t-il lorsqu’il rencontrera une petite fille encore plus douée que lui ? « Doctor Sleep » n’est pas aussi angoissant que « The Shining ». C’est plutôt un roman fantastique où le mal n’est jamais bien loin…  Une bonne suite cependant, qui se lit d’une traite.

Un passage parmi d’autres

 Two years later, on the day before the Thanksgiving break, halfway up a deserted stairwell in Alafia Elementary, Horace Derwent appeared to Danny Torrance. There was confetti on the shoulders of his suit. A little black mask hung from one decaying hand. He reeked of the grave. « Great party, isn’t it? » he asked.

Danny turned and walked away, very quickly.

When school was over, he called Dick long-distance at the restaurant where Dick worked in Key West. « Another one of the Overlook People found me. How many boxes can I have, Dick? In my head, I mean. »

Dick chuckled. « As many as you need, honey. That’s the beauty of the shining. You think my Black Grampa’s the only one I ever had to lock away? »

« Do they die in there? »

This time there was no chuckle. This time there was a coldness in Dick’s voice the boy had never heard before. « Do you care? »

Danny didn’t.

When the onetime owner of the Overlook showed up again shortly after New Year’s – this time in Danny’s bedroom closet – Danny was ready. He went into the closet and closed the door. Shortly afterward, a second mental lockbox went up on the high mental shelf beside the one that held Mrs Massey. There was more pounding, and some inventive cursing that Danny saved for his own later use. Pretty soon it stopped. There was silence from the Derwent lockbox as well as the Massey lockbox. Whether or not they were alive (in their undead fashion) no longer mattered.

What mattered was they were never getting out. He was safe.

That was what he thought then. Of course, he also thought he would never take a drink, not after seeing what it had done to his father.

Sometimes we just get it wrong.

Doctor Sleep – Stephen King – 2013 (Hodder & Stoughton)

Under the Dome – Stephen King

23 mercredi Oct 2013

Posted by in En VO, Romans étrangers

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Stephen King - Under the DomeLes premières phrases

«  From two thousand feet, where Claudette Sanders was taking a flying lesson, the town of Chester’s Mill gleamed in the morning light like something freshly made and just set down. Cars trundled along Main Street, flashing up winks of sun. The steeple of the Congo Church looked sharp enough to pierce the unblemished sky. The sun raced along the surface of Prestile Stream as the Seneca V overflew it, both plane and water cutting the town on the same diagonal course. 

« Chuck, I think I see two boys beside the Peace Bridge! Fishing! » Her very delight made her laugh. The flying lessons were courtesy of her husband, who was the town’s First Selectman. Although of the opinion that if God had wanted man to fly, He would have given him wings, Andy was an extremely coaxable man, and eventually Claudette had gotten her way. She had enjoyed the experience from the first. But this wasn’t mere enjoyment; it was exhiliration. Today was the first time she had really understood what made flying great. What made it cool. »

Circonstances de lecture

J’avais très envie de me replonger dans un Stephen King.

Impressions

« Under the Dome » est un de ces livres de plus de 1 000 pages qu’on lit à toute vitesse. Stephen King aime délayer son histoire. Ici, il scrute toute une flopée d’habitants d’une petite ville du Maine emprisonnée subitement sous un dôme transparent. Le départ de l’intrigue est bien posé : on découvre petit à petit tous les personnages (très nombreux !) de ce gros roman. Et on s’y attache.

Reste que les « méchants » de l’histoire sont vraiment trop caricaturaux. Ils semblent avoir tous les vices… Dommage car sinon « Under the Dome » est vraiment prenant. Surtout, Stephen King montre à quel point la part d’ombre des hommes peut très rapidement prendre le dessus dans des situations inhabituelles.  De quoi faire froid dans le dos ! De ce côté-là, Stephen King parvient à nous plonger dans une ambiance de plus en plus noire, glauque et violente, et à tenir en haleine jusqu’aux dernières pages. Même si l’origine du dôme manque d’originalité, ce n’est peut-être pas l’objectif premier de l’auteur. En revanche, s’il a voulu démontrer à quel point la nature humaine peut vite sombrer dans la cruauté, l’égoïsme exacerbée et la bêtise, alors oui « Under the Dome » est une réussite.

Un passage parmi d’autres

 Later on – much too late to do any good – Julia Shumway would piece together most of how the Food City riot started, although she never got a chance to print it. Even if she had, she would have done so as a pure news story : the five Ws and the H. If asked to write about the emotional heart of the event, she would have been lost. How to explain that people she’d known all her life – people she respected, people she loved – had turned into a mob? She told herself « I could’ve gotten a better handle on it if I’d been there from the very beginning and seen how it started », but that was pure rationalization, a refusal to face the orderless, reasonless beast that can arise when frightened people are provoked. She had seen such beasts on the TV news, usually in foreign countries. She never expected to see one in her own town.

And there was no need for it. This was what she kept coming back to. The town had been cut off for only seventy hours, and it was stuffed with provisions of almost every kind; only propane gas was in mysteriously short supply.

Later she would say, « It was the moment when this town finally realized what was happening ». There was probably truth in the idea, but it didn’t satisfy her. All she could say with complete certainty (and she said it only to herself) was that she watched her town lose its mind, and afterward she would never be the same person.

Under the Dome – Stephen King – 2009 (Gallery Books)

The Shining – Stephen King

29 dimanche Jan 2012

Posted by in En VO

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Les premières phrases

«  Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick. 

Ullman stood five-five, and when he moved, it was with the prissly speed that seems to be the exclusive domain of all small plump men. The part in his hair was exact, and his dark suit was sober but comforting. I am a man you can bring your problems to, that suit said to the paying customer. To the hired help it spoke more curtly: This had better be good, you. There was a red carnation in the lapel, perhaps so that no one on the street would mistake Stuart Ullman for the local undertaker.

As he listened to Ullman speak, Jack admitted to himself that he probably could not have liked any man on that side of the desk – under the circumstances.

Ullman had asked a question that he hadn’t caught. That was bad; Ullman was the type of man who would file such lapses away in a mental Rolodex for later consideration.

« I’m sorry? »

« I asked if your wife fully understood what you would be taking on here. And there’s your son, of course. » He glanced down at the application in front of him. « Daniel. Your wife isn’t a bit intimidated by the idea? »

« Wendy is an extraordinary woman. »

« And your son is also extraordinary? »

Jack smiled, a big wide PR smile. « We like to think so, I suppose. He’s quite self-reliant for a five-year-old. »

Circonstances de lecture

Lu il y a plus de dix ans… Le meilleur Stephen King à mon goût.

Impressions

Jack et sa femme Wendy s’installent avec leur petit garçon de 5 ans, Danny, dans un hôtel à l’écart de tout… Un enfant loin d’être ordinaire… Car c’est un « shiner » et il a un compagnon de jeu imaginaire. Dans ce lieu coupé du monde extérieur,  son don devient un enfer. L’hôtel vide semble prendre vie, pour le pire… Flippant.

Un passage parmi d’autres

 The first time he had been out in the back yard and nothing much had happened. Just Tony beckoning and then darkness and a few minutes later he had come back to real things with a few vague fragments of memory, like a jumbled dream. The second time, two weeks ago, had been more interesting. Tony, beckoning, calling from four yards over: « Danny… come see… » It seemed that he was getting up, then falling into a deep hole, like Alice into Wonderland. Then he had been in the basement of the apartment house and Tony had been beside him, pointing into the shadows at the trunk his daddy carried all his important papers in, especially « THE PLAY. »

« See? » Tony had said in his distant, musical voice. « It’s under the stairs. Right under the stairs. The movers put it right… under… the stairs. »

Danny had stepped forward to look more closely at this marvel and then he was falling again, this time out of the backyard swing, where he had been sitting all along. He had gotten the wind knocked out of himself, too.

Three or four days later his daddy had been stomping around, telling Mommy furiously that he had been all over the goddam basement and the trunk wasn’t there and he was going to sue the goddam movers who had left it somewhere between Vermont and Colorado. How was he supposed to be able to finish « THE PLAY » if things like this kept cropping up?

Danny said, « No, Daddy. It’s under the stairs. The movers put it right under the stairs. »

Daddy had given him a strange look and had gone down to see. The trunk had been there, just where Tony had shown him.

The Shining – Stephen King – 1977