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. ( )

Holy shit, what a ride. ( )

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. ( )

While King's ability to scare his readers is, of course, one of his greatest gifts, I am especially drawn to the way he takes utterly fantastic and incredulous stories and turns them into believable, human, and authentic horror stories. ( )