“Survivor” is the seventh book written by Tabitha King, the wife of macabre writer Stephen King.

There are no parallels in the content produced by the two, except an obvious ability to create entire towns with unique characters, precarious subcultures and engaging storylines.

The book starts out explosively with a tragic accident witnessed by Kissy Mellors, a senior photographer, while she was passing through her Sowerwine College, Maine, campus on her way home. The book follows the various effects the tragic night had on Kissy’s subsequent life.

Following the accident, three men enter her life: The driver of the car who killed the two girls, the policeman who first arrives at the scene of the accident, and the near famous campus hockey-jock who was sleeping with one of the now-dead girls.

Ironically, on the surface, the book is about Kissy and how she subsequently sleeps with these three men. But a more in-depth analysis shows a young woman dealing with growing up and making a life for herself.

It is easy to like Kissy, regardless of her bitchy outbursts and abusive nature toward the men in her life.

According to the book cover, “‘Survivor’ is fiercely frank and emotionally nuanced, bringing its heroine boldly to life through marriage, divorce, and motherhood.”

More realistically, the reader is driven to keep reading to see what other abusive, aggressive and bitchy things Kissy can do to punish the men in her life, solely for being men.

The book would have been more successful if the first person narration would have been limited to Kissy. King switches back and forth between the three main male characters and Kissy.

Also hindering the book is the author’s serious misunderstanding of how men talk to each other. For example, King’s locker room scene in the beginning of the book comes across as both unrealistic and unbelievable.

“You nailing [Kissy], I saw her Blazer outside your place this morning. And, you got that, I dunno, special glow about you,” King writes.

Throughout the book, King makes a gallant attempt to apply a stereotypical masculinity to her male characters, especially to Junior and the other hockey players on his team. It is obvious that King sees hockey players as people who lack anything resembling a redeemable characteristic.

Ironically, this hang-up can often be humorous and endearing in King’s writing. For example, she stereotypes during, “While he was out there breaking his ass, she was being someone else’s piece of ass.”

She also calls on another stereotype: The hockey player is a Canadian. Granted, in Maine, living so close to the border the likelihood does exist that he would live in Canada, however, her lack of research is obvious when she talks about his hometown of Kingston and his parents.

The book does makes a frank and valiant attempt at exploring Kissy’s “sensibility and sexuality, strength and vulnerability.”

Even if she does often come across as the world’s biggest bitch.

2 1/2 STARS

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Marty Forth is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Waterdown, Ontario, Canada.