Teeming with memorable characters and the usual heady morals of a Stephen King novel, Needful Things is a slow paced wonder with a lot of heart and soul (literally).

Gaunt is always right and the bargain isn’t over until he says so. But didn’t the sign in his shop always warn you – buyer beware. And with this influx of prized possessions comes deceit and horror, always backed by the at-first dulcet tones of Mr. Gaunt just has one little ask – a harmless prank – something childish, for sure, but for that extra special possession that just speaks to your soul, well, you’d do just about anything.Īnd that’s how it starts, first with an 11 year old boy who desperately wants a Sandy Koufax baseball card and then slowly, one by one, through the entire town from a pair of Elvis’s glasses to carnival glass lampshades to a cure for agonizing pain. Of course, if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. Needful Things has everything from trash to treasure, and the prices (never displayed) are all very reasonable. Enter Leland Gaunt, one very special shop owner who has a deal you cannot refuse. But underneath all these southern mannerisms is a powder keg of old resentments, fears, and misinformation. Its divisions even appear quaint – the biggest stink being between the Baptist and the Catholic Church as they debate the morality of the latest public fundraiser – Casino Night. I don’t think it is.The little town of Castle Rock has seen a lot – from gruesome murders to rabid dogs and trapped children – and yet many still call it home and on the surface it’s a quiet, uneventful home. It really satirized that American idea that it’s good to have everything that you want. And the way that it played out was funny, in a black-comedy way.

What it turned out to be, I thought, was a satire of the whole Ronald Reagan ethos of “greed is good, consumerism is good.” To me, it was a hilarious concept. I thought, “What if somebody came to this town and forced all these people to do nasty things like pranks to get things that they really wanted.

King: Of all the books I’ve written that have gotten lousy reviews - and there have been some that have - I would say I’m most disappointed in this one just sort of missing the mark critically. In this novel, he wipes the town off the map after a man who may or may not be the devil opens up a shop that offers the residents of Castle Rock anything their heart desires - for a price. King had already set several of his novels (The Dead Zone, Cujo, The Dark Half ) in the town of Castle Rock, Maine, by the time Needful Things (690 pages) came around.

Needful Things by Stephen King