Fifty years ago this week, Stephen King’s debut novel, Carrie, was published and the career of one of the most prolific horror writers began. If you’re not already familiar with the book or any of its adaptations (three films, a musical, etc.) then I’ll lay out the plot real quick: Carrie White, outcast for any number of reasons, develops telekinetic powers after her first period and unleashes them on her tormentors when a cruel prank goes too far at prom. Notably, Carrie has one of the highest known body counts, especially compared to other antagonists of the time period and especially in such a limited time frame. Carrie’s legacy is an enduring one, and Tiffany D. Jackson takes that familiar story and gives it a few important twists. The result is a modern horror story that rises to new heights.
Maddy Washington has lived seventeen years with a secret, and ongoing rituals to protect her. A freak rainstorm during gym class, however, reveals what she and her father have been trying to hide – Maddy is Black. She’s been passing for most of middle and high school, but, once her curls are on full-display, her classmates – already cruel bullies – turn against her in new ways. At the same time, Maddy discovers she may have a great and powerful gift and learns how to control it. As she begins to discover the realities of race and the status quo of her local town, Maddy questions everything she’s been taught or known. Her desperate hope for normalcy is answered when Kendrick Scott, handsome Black footballer with dreams of his own, invites her to their first integrated prom. Unfortunately, the cruelty was just beginning and, when pushed too far, Maddy’s revenge is bloody.
While the initial beats and structure are similar to its inspiration, The Weight of Blood pins much of its message in modernity. Along with news articles and book excerpts, the story is framed by a podcast in the future investigating whether the mass deaths in Springville, Alabama are an unforeseen tragedy or something supernatural. The internet plays a large role in how information is disseminated inside and outside of the town, and cyber bullying is shown to be a unique terror when compared to pre-online life. Most importantly, the novel tackles race in various ways and creates dialogues about what constitutes race and racism in the 21st century.
The novel positions Maddy in interesting ways. She’s a teenage girl coming into a power she doesn’t fully understand, but desperately wants. She has a wry sense of humor and a desire for normalcy that could destroy everything. Maddy’s relationships with the people around her create intriguing situations and tensions. Whether it’s getting to know her prom date over her first milkshake, buying the vintage dress of her dreams, or wishing the bullies would stop, Maddy is someone with hidden strength that grows stronger. Her father’s toxic love and her wish to appease him makes for a tense dynamic, and the prayer closet in this iteration is particularly heinous.
While Maddy is a compelling character, the novel shines best with how it uses its supporting cast. The same multiple viewpoint format was used in Carrie, but – other than sharing their thoughts on Carrie or motivations – they’re not quite as developed, except for Sue Snell. Jackson takes the opposite approach and creates multiple characters that showcase the variety of attitudes topics like bullying, racism, or growing up can have. Kendrick Scott is given way more agency and development. He’s more than just the star quarterback or the token friend, and his desires for the future and changing opinions and observations about Springville High are compelling. Wendy, his white girlfriend, wrestles with her part in Maddy’s bullying and whether her desire to help is entirely altruistic. In another life, Wendy could be Carrie since she clings to popularity to escape poverty, desperate for acceptance the same. Jules, the worst of Maddy’s bullies, shows the consequences of once “acceptable” actions in the real world. Even characters without viewpoints, like Kendrick’s sister Kali, fill the pages with memorable voices in this nuanced conversation.
Carrie’s ostracization and bullying came from her ignorance of popular trends, her religious fanaticism, her weight and acne, and plain weirdness. A few of those apply to Maddy too: her clothes are outdated, she was homeschooled until she was twelve, and she intentionally keeps away from everyone. However, once Maddy’s race is brought into focus, the bullying becomes more horrific from a modern POV. It paints a clearer picture of who the antagonists are meant to be (and the passive that fall in between), and against a girl who hasn’t really done anything to deserve this hate. The motif of control–narratives, tradition, bodies, lives–is really exemplified by Maddy’s hair. It’s the thing that reveals her secret, that her father tries to manually control with grease and an old hot comb, that is beautified and ruined throughout the text.
The novel intentionally digs into ideals and histories of Blackness, particularly in the South, as well as how those stories are framed by others. I think Jackson’s choice to set the main story in 2014 is really effective at framing the conversations characters are having. The novel’s awareness of the larger sociopolitical events and how our larger cultural conversations have changed over the past decade is spot on. The deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner are acknowledged in much of the subtext of the novel, such as Kendrick’s choice not to wear hoodies anymore. Maddy comes from a place of passing privilege, but her ignorance about Black history is related solely to how it’s often framed. This is largely because of her father, a Gen-X guy who wishes he’d grown up in the “golden age of the 1950s.” That nostalgia-washed traditionalism is a large part of what made “Make America Great Again” so prevalent in the upcoming years. In the larger framing, though, Jackson clearly says change will come – sometimes violently.
While the climax is obviously the most horrific (and satisfying), little bits of social horror are added throughout. They’re the kind of scenes that make you pause, but not because anything gory or dreadful is happening. These terrors and how they’re contextualized is like a waking nightmare – a reality for many minorities in America. Jackson’s re-imagining of the infamous bucket scene is harrowing and the text diverts only to cause more mayhem. The tense stand-off between the local police force, protestors, and prom goers is a scene horror readers may see coming and wish they could stop. Ultimately, the novel asks if Maddy’s revenge is justified by the crimes against her, or if she’s truly the villain.
Other reviews have said The Weight of Blood doesn’t do enough to move away from the source material and, overall, I’d agree. That said, the changes Jackson makes are intentional, with the book even pointing that out in comparison to the original. Maddy and Carrie are two sides of the same coin, both not allowed to be themselves, feared and controlled. Saying that Jackson only added racism to the plot ignores the various ways she’s threaded that through the novel and how it’s changed characters, added necessary depth and subplots, and brought a larger conversation to life. One of my few peeves, however, is that some of the reasoning from Carrie was pulled through here but didn’t fully feel at home. Like Wendy not going to the prom at all, when she could just buy her own ticket and see her hard work at play. Or Wendy giving up a full ride and cobbling together scholarships so she could go to school with her boyfriend.
Overall, I tore through The Weight of Blood in about a day and had so much fun reading it. It was like rediscovering Carrie all over again, but in a way that felt new enough to satisfy. Maddy Washington is an interesting enigma and, while there were some intentional mysteries left in that ending, I wish I had a hidden epilogue or something. In the meantime, I can only imagine the happiest of endings for her. I recommend this novel for fans of the original text who want a different spin, but even those who have never read it will enjoy this. Those who want to see how a Black character would fare in the same plot will find some answers here. For readers who like their horror served with social commentary, this is a great choice. This novel is perfect if you like forbidding fathers, high school drama turned to eleven, or sweet sweet justice. Find a copy today and make it rain blood.
Reading Malone 