Madi’s Reviews > Needful Things > Status Update

Interesting name for a store, ain’t it? Answered Prayers. Makes you wonder what’s for sale inside.

Why, with a name like that it could be anything.

Anything at all.

Alan felt his belly try to fold in on itself, but he didn’t move. Instead, prompted by some instinct he made no effort to understand, he put his hands together in front of the station wagon’s left headlight. He crossed them, made a bird-shape, and began to bend his wrists rapidly back and forth.

The sparrows are flying again, Mr. Gaunt, he thought.

In fact, everyone in the WORLD belongs here, because everyone loves a bargain. Everyone loves something for nothing … even if it costs everything.

“Don smelled like a pack of skunks which had been first run through a vat of sulphur, then sprayed with fresh cowshit, and finally let loose to rant and racket their panicky way through a closed room. The smell preceded him; the smell followed him; but mostly the smell hung around him in a pestilential cloud.”

what a beautiful description.

Nettie had never called her back to let her know one way or another. This hadn’t surprised Polly much; the surface of Nettie’s mind was slippery, and things had a way of sliding right off.

But I believe In satisfied customers, Mr. Keeton, and only satisfied customers. I have been in business for many years, and I have built my reputation on satisfied customers.

Eddie Warburton, a broom in his hand and a Chesterfield in his mouth (the solid-gold Saint Christopher’s medal he had purchased at Needful Things the day before was safely hidden under his blue chambray shirt), had watched him trudge up the stairs to the second floor.

There are quite a few references to The Dark Half throughout this story, so I'm glad I read it just before this.

In fact, he believed the only three valid purposes microwaves served were re-heating coffee, making popcorn, and putting a buzz under take-out from places like CluckCluck Tonite.

At twenty to ten, Henry Beaufort, bartender and owner of The Mellow Tiger, had invited Hugh to put an egg in his shoe and beat it, to make like a tree and leave, to imitate an amoeba and split—in other words, to get the fuck out.