Dolores (novel)

Dolores (in the original: Dolores Claiborne ) is a novel by the American writer Stephen King from 1992. The film adaptation of the same name was made two years later with Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh in the leading roles.

novel

The novel is told by the main character. Atypical of a King novel is that there are no chapters, blank lines between paragraphs, or other subdivisions; it is a single continuous text that reads like the transcription of a spoken monologue .

At the beginning of the story, Dolores Claiborne is under police interrogation. In it, she explains that she did not kill Vera Donovan, a wealthy elderly lady who she cared for for years. However, she admits to having murdered her husband Joe St. George almost 30 years ago. Her "confession" develops into the story of her life, her troubled marriage and her relationship with her employer Vera Donovan.

In contrast to other works by King, the novel contains very few supernatural elements. The only ones that exist create a connection to King's previous novel The Game . Later editions of the novel include a foreword explaining the context.

filming

The film differs from the novel in two important ways. For one, the events leading up to Joe's assassination took place over a few months in 1975. In the novel, Dolores fights against Joe for the first time in 1961, but she doesn't kill him until July 1963.

On the other hand, the focus of the film is less on the investigation into the death of Vera Donovan, but more on the relationship between Dolores and her daughter Selena. As more truths about family life emerge, the relationship between mother and daughter deteriorates. Selena has long suspected her mother killed her father and now she finally wants to hear the truth. Dolores eventually manages to convince her daughter that she had no other choice and that they are both victims of Joe St. George: Dolores, who suffered from Joe's increasingly brutal beatings and insults, and Selena, that of Joe was abused. That is why Dolores, after she confided in Vera Donovan and she had suggested killing Joe, lured Joe onto an old rotten well cover behind the house on the day of the solar eclipse. Joe broke the cover and died at the bottom of the dried up well. Everyone assumed an accident.

Links with other works

• The novel is closely linked to Das Spiel ; During the fateful solar eclipse of July 20, 1963 for both main characters (Jessie was sexually molested by her father, Dolores killed her husband) the reality blurs and they can see each other. After Das Spiel , this passage was puzzling for a long time; only the appearance of Dolores brought clarity.
• Little Tall Island is also the setting for The Storm of the Century , which commemorates Dolores Claiborne.

Literature and Links

• Stephen King: Dolores. Ullstein, 2005, ISBN 3548263070
• Detailed table of contents in Kingwiki