Gerald's Game
| Written by: | Stephen King |
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| Central Theme: | |
| Synopsis: | |
| Genre(s): | Suspense |
| First published: | May 1992 |
A horror novel by Stephen King. The setup is rather High Concept -- during a bondage game proposed by husband Gerald, things go south. Gerald himself ends up dead, and protagonist Jessie Burlingame finds herself in a whole heap of trouble when she's still handcuffed to the bed.
But you said these tropes sounded like fun:
- Chained to a Bed
- Better Than Sex: When Jessie finally gets rid of the handcuffs, she feels ecstatic, and thinks that if sex was even half this good, people would be doing it on every street corner.
- Bondage Is Bad: Surprisingly averted; it's the motivation that can be bad, yes, but not the act itself. Of course, you probably won't want to run off and play with some handcuffs right after reading this.
- Daddy's Girl: Jessie was like this... until her father sexually molested her.
- Hearing Voices
- Parental Incest: And not just confined to backstory either. No, King tackles this ugliness head on.
- Looks Like Orlok: The creepy stranger, mostly.
- Signature Style: Stream-of-consciousness writing? Italicized, parenthetical snatches of phrases representing the main character's little brainfarts? Multiple contexts for the same phrase, all of them disturbing? Must be a Stephen King book.