Christine (1983)

Another great read by Stephen King.
Not my favourite but I really enjoyed it. It has been years and back in the days when I only read in Dutch so I read all his books in Dutch. I bought them the day they were published here.
So now I am stuck with a huge collection of his books in Dutch. I only read Dutch now when it is a Dutch author. I can't really write proper review, because it has been too long since I read it.

Also I have to guess the year when I read it. ( )

Can't guess as to when I properly read this. I just grabbed it out of a box I haven't touched in at least three years, though, so I'll make a guess. Anyway, this is one of my Mysterious Disappearing Reviews which GR can neither explain nor recover (I have now given up on even reporting the issue unless I have a list of evidence for the review's existence, which in this case I don't). So I'll keep this brief: I remember liking this, being drawn to read the rest of it, feeling pretty unsettled -- for a concept that failed in Supernatural's series one episode Route 666, the idea of a haunted car worked pretty well for me -- and all those pleasantly-chilled feelings that come with reading horror with a reasonable imagination and a willingness to suspend some disbelief.

Looking at the wikipedia summary, I don't remember the last part of the novel, which is odd -- but the rest definitely stuck in my head. ( )

Scary and compelling. Read it non-stop one weekend .A top 10 King for me. ( )

Scary and compelling. Read it non-stop one weekend .A top 10 King for me. ( )

This is one of the few King stories that I had never read. I don't know why I'd never read it, but it just seemed to me like reading about a car wasn't really my thing. I'm not a car girl. I drive one, but I don't dream about them, or get excited by them. I guess I was afraid that this book would be a few hundred pages of specs and details and owner's manual stuff, mixed in with a maniacal car tormenting stupid car-kids that would annoy me rather than making me hope they make it to the last page.

You'd think that after all the King books I've read, and all the times that I go to bat for King saying that he doesn't write tripe like I just described, that I would have expected better. But old judgements die hard, I think, and for as long as I can remember I thought that this book wouldn't be my kind of thing, so I'd never really rushed out to read it.

But now I have, and I can tell my younger stupid self that I was wrong. Of course this book is about a car on the surface, but it's about love and friendship underneath. About how friendship and loyalty and trust can easily turn to hatred, betrayal and vengeance with the right set of circumstances. Christine is the right set of circumstances, that's for sure.

I really enjoyed this story. I loved the two main characters, Arnie and Dennis, and how we get a full sense of their friendship before things start to go wrong. Dennis narrates the first and last sections in first person, and the middle section is a third person narrative which feels almost like an intermission. The second section is where King starts taking things to the next level... showing us little bits and pieces here and there that we wouldn't be able to see from Dennis himself. But I have to say that I really preferred Dennis's narration. I liked Dennis, he's funny, and smart and honest. I loved seeing a kind of protective friendship through the eyes of the friend higher up on life's totem pole. So often we see these kind of relationships from the outside, or from the picked on friend who almost hero-worships the protector friend, but in this case, we get to see the other side, and I respected Dennis all the more for the normality of it. He didn't see himself as a hero, or as doing some nice deed a la the Boy Scouts, or as being charitable toward someone who needed the help. He was just a friend who wanted to keep his friend from being hurt as much as possible. The banter between them that was like a light-hearted male cover for their true friendship touched me. The way that they were open and honest with each other, and intuitive enough in their friendship to know what the other needed at any given time, and close enough to go to bat for each other when needed just proves that there are such things as soul-friends, just as I think that there are soul-mates.

I always love reading King for the way that he gets right to the heart of things and opens them up and starts poking around, pointing out different component parts and the way that they work together to make the whole. He takes a little piece of life, and he shows us what it's made of by throwing a wrench in the works and seeing what happens and then writing it down for posterity. The wrench in this case is a bad-mannered car and a teen who never had anything of his own to take pride in.

Arnie's transformation from pimply, bespectacled, mom-micromanaged chess nerd to angry, bitter, single-purpose hardcase was fascinating. Christine became the focus of his life, his life-line. Everything else became background noise and unimportant. I kept thinking, "He's smart, he'll see what's happening, right?" but no. And not just because the book would have nowhere to go if he did, but because it was believable that he wouldn't. The blinders were on, and the outside, rational world was beyond them.

I was surprised by the ending. All along, I thought that it would go one way, and then when it didn't I was as shocked as anyone. I love when that happens, and I love when, without even knowing it, I've invested a part of myself in the characters end up hurting right along with them. King seems to be able to get this reaction out of me every time I crack one of his books.

...And people think he's just a horror writer. ( )