Dolores Claiborne
Dolores Claiborne (1993) is a novel by Stephen King.
When it first came out many fans were surprised and/or dissatisfied because the book did not live up to their expectations of a horror novel. It is written in spoken English—even in dialect—and is told by the title character. Also atypically for a King novel, the book has no chapters, nor even blank lines or other section breaks, thus the story is a single continuous narrative monologue.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
As the story begins, Dolores Claiborne is in a police interrogation and wants to make clear to the police that she did not kill her wealthy employer, an elderly woman named Vera Donovan whom she has looked after for years. She does, however, confess to the murder of her husband, Joe St. George, almost 30 years before. The novel develops into the story of her life, her troubled marriage, and her relationship with her employer.
There are very few supernatural elements in the novel. What little there is could have been left out without any major change in the plot. The reason they are there is to create a connection to King's previous novel, Gerald's Game. Some readers think that the book would have been better without this connection: It is not very important, and it is also never explained so people that have not read Gerald's Game are left in the dark. Later editions of the novel have a foreword that explains the connection.
The novel was adapted for the screenplay of a 1995 film of the same name with Kathy Bates in the title role. The film differs from the novel in two important aspects. First, the events leading up to Joe's murder take place over the course of several months in 1975. In the novel, however, Dolores first rebels against her husband in 1961 or so, but she doesn't kill him until July 1963.
More importantly, the film focuses on Dolores' relationship with her daughter, Selena (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh). While Dolores only hints at their estrangement in the novel, here it is obvious that the two do not get along. Their relationship becomes increasingly combative as Selena demands to know the truth about her father's demise as well as Vera Donovan's mysterious death.
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