Cujo (1981)

One story of King I only read once. As I said while reviewing Pet Sematary, I think I did not re-red both books because of animals that die. I am a big animal lover. Everybody knows me for the snail saviour. I even try not to trap on ants.

It has been years since I read this one, but I do recall it was scary from the start. A lot of building suspense as King does.

Want to read it now that I am older and not much wiser.

( )

A very tense story about every dog owners nightmare! ( )

Do we all know the basic story of Cujo? Big, lovable St. Bernard gets rabies and goes on a rampage. That's it. Sounds so simple, and it mostly is, but King can tell one heck of a story.

Really, this was about 3.5 stars for me, but I'm rounding it up because I read it without once closing it, in one 12-hour night shift, without even thinking about getting tired. In fact, I found myself idly wandering around the office, doing things that needed to be done, holding this book in one hand and working with the other. I seriously couldn't put it down.

But it was a little weak. There was this little subplot where he tried to make the story supernatural. I thought it was silly and unnecessary. It was scarier for being something that I (in my complete ignorance of rabies) think could maybe happen, at least for a little while.

And can I go on record as saying that I hate the name Tadder? If Tad is too short for you, why not move on to Theo? Your kid will not thank you for Tadder when he's being beaten up on the playground. I'm just glad I had finished this before my husband said, "How do you know he didn't mean it to sound like tater?"

But the fact that almost all the "horror" elements take place in such a confined space with just three characters, one of whom is a St. Bernard, earns King huge points. This really should not have been a page turner, and yet it was. There is a reason the man is so popular. ( )

Slam-bang, bare bones horror tale from the best in the business. Scary and touching with an ending that divides fans to this day. A masterpiece. ( )

This book, like all of King's books, explores people and their relationships and motives. In this one, we also see what could happen when the stars align, so to speak, and there is a perfect series of coincidences that lead up to one inevitable conclusion.

This book is one of those iconic books that everyone seems to know, even if they aren't a Stephen King fan: Lovable, loyal and all-around good dog Cujo becomes an insane killer as a result of rabies from a bat bite.

There is quite a lot of foreshadowing in this book, so once the end comes around, you really get the feeling that it was inevitable. There is also more than a few references to The Dead Zone, as this book can be considered a follow-up, if not a sequel, to that book. Similarly, Needful Things follows Cujo, but there is no need to read these in order; they fit together, but can stand alone.

I am a huge Stephen King fan, but I do have to admit there were some issues that prevented me from giving this book a higher rating. This was King's 10th published book (if we count two books published as Bachman), but in some ways, it felt like a debut novel.

Maybe I was just being nit-picky, but there were several incongruous details that bothered me. For instance, placing food in tin-foil, and then later taking it out of a Tupperware container.

Another thing that bugged me about this book was that there were no chapters. This struck me from the start, and probably accounts for why people read it so quickly. I am a fan of this format when it helps to tell the story, and when the story follows a linear pattern that shouldn't be broken with pauses to give the reader a chance to breathe. But, I don't think that this format enhanced this book, as the story jumped around from person to person to give the all-over view that King does so well, and could have been broken into chapters easily.

Again, maybe that is just me being picky. I did like the book overall... ( )