With potent storytelling, King paints a surreal picture of small town America in the eighties. He felt that this was a decade when everything came with a price tag with the final items being honour, integrity, self-respect and innocence and he turned this concept into a small-town curio shop.
Leland Gaunt opens a new shop in Castle Rock called Needful Things. Anyone who enters his store finds the object of his or her lifelong dreams and desires: a prized baseball card, a healing amulet. In addition to a token payment, Gaunt requests that each person perform a little ‘deed’. Usually a seemingly innocent prank played on someone else from town. These practical jokes cascade out of control and soon the entire town is doing battle with itself. Only Sherriff Alan Pangborn suspects that Gaunt is behind the population’s increasingly violent behaviour.
If you’ve never read a horror novel before, you’d find yourself gently drawn into the mystery of this little shop and its strange proprietor who seems to be able to look deep into the soul of each customer and uncover their secret desires. But this is not for the faint hearted. There is an explosive sting in the tail. Love him or hate him – and we were decidedly split – his storytelling skills are undeniable.