This is one of the reasons King is one of my favorite authors. ( )

By all rights, Christine shouldn't work. A haunted car? Are you kidding me?

But it does work and it works very well. King pulls it off the way he makes all his outrageous shockers work. He grounds the supernatural shenanigans firmly in a narrative stocked with believable characters and the attention to every-day detail that gives me the ability to believe that a possessed '58 Plymouth Fury can drive on its own, hunting its enemies.

Of course, Christine doesn't start the book stalking the streets, looking for prey. In the beginning she is a rusted out wreck, for sale in a weedy yard. Misfit Arnie Cunningham sees her and must buy her. His friend (and our narrator) Dennis Guilder tries to talk him out of it, but is rebuffed.

Arnie hauls Christine to a garage and begins the restoration. Right off the bat, Christine has forced a wedge between Arnie and Dennis. She has also caused an uproar in the staid Cunningham family. And is it Dennis' imagination or is the web of cracks in Christine's windshield shrinking?

Christine works because the killer car is not the sole focus of the tale. At times it could almost be an allegory for addiction as we start with a nice but troubled kid who gets into something beyond his control. At first Christine is actually good for Arnie, he gains self confidence, though friends could see he is heading for trouble. Before long though he is devoting all his time and money to her and his personality is changing.

This is a Stephen King tale though, so there is more going on than a teen causing upset within a family. There's a reason Christine's a Fury. She can strike down her enemies with great vengeance. The section of the book where that happens, the second section, switches to third person narration and shows what Christine is capable of.

One chapter, in which a bully named Buddy Repperton has a run-in (you’ll pardon the pun) with Christine, is one of the single best pieces Stephen King has ever written. If you can put the book down midway through that twenty page chapter, you are stronger than me. It’s just so well done. He manages to make Christine creep up not just on Buddy, but on me as a reader as well. When Christine attacks it is like something out of Jaws. Even though you as a reader know what is going to happen, King's writing keeps you glued to the pages, needing to find out how it will happen.

The structure of the book did strike me as strange. It is broken into three large sections. The first and third section are narrated by Dennis Guilder. The second section is a third person omniscient narrator.

I can understand the use of the two narrative styles. Dennis' sections made me feel personally involved and helped to give the story emotional weight. The second section of the book had to be written third person as there is no way Dennis could have known all the details required. So I understand it. But reading the book, it felt... inelegant. If we are reading the book as a record of something Dennis lived through, I wonder if the second section couldn't have been presented in an epistolary format. As if Dennis had pieced this section together from various accounts/newspaper sources/etc.

Oh well. The narrative shifting aside, this was an excellent use of King's strengths. He managed to pack in the tension and scares of a horror story and invest them with the believability and depth of feeling to make me care about what would happen.

He came to me with an idea that I never thought would fly and proved me wrong. Excellent book. Recommended. ( )

This book is such an old and familiar favorite that it's hard to put a review together for some reason. This latest reading is either number 3 or 4 (probably) and while I remembered most of it, there was enough missing to give me some nice little jolts along the way (especially in the final garage scene).

When it first came out I was 15 and it was the 3rd or 4th King book I read. I remember a lot of disdain over it not just because he was a "cheesy horror writer", but because the damn thing was about a haunted car. How hokey, right? Well in lesser hands it might have been. Putting it another way, Christine herself was just a vehicle for a larger, more poignant story (groan at the pun if you must).

Like everything else he writes, Christine is about friendship and the many ways it can be threatened. The friendship at the nucleus of the novel is Dennis and Arnies's. In just about the best prologue I've ever read, Dennis explains a few things about the story he's going to relate, and also tells us about being friends with Arnie. At the opposite end of the book, in the epilogue, he says that while he thought about ditching his loser buddy, he never did because he needed Arnie to make him, Dennis, better. Between the ant farms, schlock horror movies, tree-forts, acne and mustard on Wonderbread sandwiches, there was real affection there. Later Dennis admits it was love. In my review for Duma Key I remarked that the narrative pulled me along, but I also dreaded it. Christine is the same way.

At 350 pages, here's what I noted - Christine's killing spree is the least interesting part of the book for me. It's the indirect destruction that makes the story. Thinking about Dennis and Arnie and their friendship, now in its death throes. Arnie and his parents' somewhat unhealthy, but functioning, family unit is also in shambles. Then there's Arnie and Leigh; what could have been is more painful that what truly was. Lastly, Arnie and Christine, under a few layers of delusion Arnie knows what she's doing to him. He's not surprised when LeBay shows up to cruise. He wants out, but she won't let him.

Dennis does what he can, but in the end Christine has her way. We aren't given explanations; her malevolence just is like the moon. Dennis himself is an unlikely teenager; thoughtful, modest, supportive, but makes for a good hero. He's likable, decisive and has a good heart. People naturally turn to him to help protect Arnie and he almost takes up his Knight persona without complaint. Was his football injury Christine's doing? The way things spiraled out of control while he was sidelined sure makes it seem like it. It was funny that he ended up a teacher, it's like a tic with King, making everyone a teacher.

The supporting cast is perfectly pitched. We have Arnie & Dennis's families; Dennis's definitely the more average clan complete with a mildly antagonistic sibling relationship (I think King was fantasizing his perfect relationship there), while Arnie's hyper-competitive mother Regina rules hers in a take-no-prisoners kind of way which does not bode well. Dennis is a BMOC and always coming to Arnie's side to fight his tormentors. The name Buddy Repperton is a hard one to forget. He encapsulates the perfect teenage, American thug. Hard drinking, hard driving, domineering and dull-witted. Arnie stood no chance, but managed to stay alive with Dennis to help. Once Christine decided to pitch in though, the tables were most thoroughly turned. In one of the best set up scenes in the book, she stalks Buddy like a tiger, moves in for the kill and then like many a cat, plays with him a while before finishing him off. The emotional tension of those lights in his rear-view mirror is almost unbearable, but in a delicious way. Buddy is such a villain that we want him gone, even if it's Christine doing the getting. Even crusty old Will Darnell grows on you despite your better judgment.

On the surface it might seem a silly tale, a haunted car, whoopee; but this is one of King's most emotional and sympathetic novels and well worth reading even if you don't believe in DIY car restoration. ( )

One of his earlier books & thus less wordy than his later ones. I found the action & suspense was OK, but I'd seen the movie first & really prefer it over the book. That might be me - I'm not a real fan of King's style of writing. ( )

Not one of my favorite Kings. I just didn't find the story or characters as compelling as in most of his other books. ( )