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Loading... Christine (original 1983; edition 2016)by Stephen King (Author)
Work InformationChristine by Stephen King (1983)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Great book. A fine example of what made Stephen King's early work great. ( ) Arnie Cunningham is your classic loser: slightly built, grotesquely acned, chess player and, obedient son. What he has going for him is mechanical skills and a best friend, Dennis. Told from Dennis's point of view, this is the faux bildungsroman of Arnie when, one day, he spies a 20-year old beat-down Plymouth Fury for sale and manages to scrape together the money to buy it. But the car's previous owner might not be as willing to part with it after all-- even though the old man has passed away... The car seems to have a mind of its own and Arnie isn't quite himself. Set in 1979 in upstate Pennsylvania, King captures the zeitgeist and details of the time and place with deft touches. Arnie's anger, resentment and jealously bubble & simmer; Dennis's angst and sex drive propel him into acts of moral equivocation; And Christine (eponymous car) and Leigh Cabot (a girlfriend) compete in ying-yang fashion for attention and love. Dismiss King as a pulp writer if you will; but the simple prose is an exposition of psychological terror and freudian manifestations. King’s love for American cars was a significant part of his early career. Christine reflects on that with themes of youth, maturation, cars, friendship, and terror! Christine is not my favorite King novel. I would place this well below others like The Stand, The Shining, or The Dark Tower on my personal list. It’s still a pretty enjoyable King novel. Despite rocky patches, it was enough to put me on the King's path I’ve been on ever since. I think the first issue I had was the length. The 700-page book normally doesn’t bother me, but for Christine, it was overwhelming. For me, there were too many chapters without enough substance. Initially, I was expecting graphic descriptions of twisted events that kept me awake at night. Although I hate saying this, I could not get into some of this book. A few scenes made my skin crawl, and I flitted through the pages, getting that “Classic King” feeling. When that happens, it’s amazing. Things went quite a few pages later, and it left me hanging. In reality, a possessed car was not as scary as I thought.
A POSSESSED car? An insanely angry 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine that drives itself around attacking people? This time Stephen King has gone too far, I said to myself as I began to catch the drift of his eighth and latest horror novel, ''Christine.'' This time he's not going to get me the way he did in ''The Shining,'' ''The Stand,'' ''Cujo'' and his other maniacal stories. This time he's just going to leave me cold. SEVERAL years ago Stephen King published ''Night Shift,'' a collection of short stories that had appeared in magazines before his debut as a novelist. Among them was ''Trucks,'' in which the products of Detroit's auto industry were anthropomorphized and portrayed as barbaric, homicidal and utterly antihuman. I recall the piece vividly, because Mr. King made those vehicles - all vehicles - live not only on the page but in my imagination. ''Trucks'' might also have been the inspiration for Mr. King's latest novel. Belongs to Publisher SeriesBastei LĂĽbbe Taschenbuch (13054) Is contained inContainsHas the adaptationAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Horror.
Mystery.
Suspense.
HTML: It was love at first sight. From the moment seventeen-year-old Arnie saw Christine, he knew he would do anything to possess her. Arnie's best friend, Dennis, distrusts herâ??immediately. Arnie's teen-queen girlfriend, Leigh, fears her the moment she senses her power. Arnie's parents, teachers, and enemies soon learn what happens when you cross her. Christine is no lady. She is Stephen King's ultimate, blackly evil vehicle of terror. This is the story of a love triangle involving teenage misfit Arnie Cunningham, his new girlfriend, and a haunted 1958 Plymouth Fury. Dubbed Christine by her previous owner, Arnie's first car is jealous, possessiveâ??and deadly No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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