This has to be one of the most descriptively disgusting books I've ever read. If the monster bloodily blossoming from John Hurt's innards in the film Alien seemed revolting, then the ogres disgorged from the human orifices in these pages are repellent in the extreme.
It begins soberly enough, with the reunion in rural Maine of four friends who meet annually to hunt, drink and converse. Henry is a psychiatrist, Jonesy an academic, Pete a car salesman and Beaver a carpenter. In their youth, they befriended a mentally retarded young man called Douglas - or Duddits - an event that bound them together for life and also conferred on them a supernatural power, known as "seeing the line", which enabled them to communicate telepathically with one another.
During this latest trip into the backwoods, Jonesy almost shoots a man called McCarthy, who allows that he has been lost in the wilderness for a number of days. Taken back to the cabin, he begins to behave in an alarming manner, belching horribly, passing noxious wind and finally dying most grotesquely in the bathroom.
In order to keep captive whatever creature McCarthy, eh, deposited in the toilet, Beaver has to sit on the lid while Jonesy goes in search of sticky tape. However, the "thing" gets loose, chews Beaver to death, then puts it up to Jonesy to face it in mortal combat.
In the meantime, Henry and Pete have met up with another alien weasel carrier, a woman this time. Pete goes the way of Beaver, while Henry lives to fight another day. There is also a rotting man called Mr Grey, a rebel general called Kurtz, and the reappearance of the Boo Radley-like Duddits.
I'm afraid my stomach wouldn't hold out for much of the way, and I had to skip parts here and there. There are almost 600 pages of this stuff and for someone like me, who can't even take the X Files, it is not easy reading. I've enjoyed King's novels such as Dolores Claiborne and Misery, when he stayed with ordinary human evil, but this extraterrestrial hokum merely serves to make me go "Yuck".
One last observation: Every copy of Dreamcatcher should come with a Government Health Warning: "This novel should not under any circumstances be read while sitting on the toilet"!
Vincent Banville is a writer and critic