For my "outside of class" reading project, I decided to read the book Christine by Stephen King. The book, published in 1983, focuses on a vintage 1958 Plymouth Fury, nicknamed "Christine". What makes this car worthy of naming the book after it, is the fact that the car is possessed by some extramundane being. Although the topic of a "haunted car" seems as though it would be far from terrifying, the book is still classified under the horror genre...and for good reason. As he does with a number of his books, Stephen King does a great job of combining the creepy, and supernatural with material objects that we can relate to, and yet still keep the story realistic enough for it to unnerve its readers. He blends the two well to create the reoccurring theme of fear throughout the book.
From the first person point of view of Dennis, the story follows the "adventures" of his best friend, Arnie, and himself increasingly revolving around the sentient car. As the story continues, and new characters are introduced, such as Arnie's new girlfriend Leigh, Christine begins to act more, and become more animate. In one instance, she seemed to threaten Leigh, therefore giving the appearance that the car was trying to consume all of Arnie's attention. The more time Arnie spends in Christine, the more he becomes withdrawn from Leigh, Dennis, his other few friends, and his family. At times, Dennis even views Arnie as being disillusioned, or even cynical. After multiple vandalism attacks, Christine repairs/restores herself, and Arnie seemingly becomes more and more of resemblance to Christine's previous owner. Multiple suspicious car accidents start being reported, and the town looks as though its last string of sanity is about the snap in half. Then, with a calm before the storm, hell breaks loose as Dennis discovers the truth about Christine, her previous owner, and the souls the car had taken.
The book didn't "scare" me, but as I read through the climax of the book, and after I completed the novel, I, subconsciously, began making connections between the automobiles I rode in every day to Christine. I cannot begin to describe the resemblances, because they're nearly non existent. Completely intangible. Probably all in my head. Likely connections I made towards patterns that I never noticed before. Still, the book made me think a little bit more, and inadvertently observe more of my surroundings when in cars. The style of this book, in my opinion, was purely written to frustrate the reader, yet still draw them in. King cuts off in exciting parts, and then switches to a flashback, or backstory, or what other characters are doing at the time of the important event taking place. He gives you a small treat, then takes it away, gives you a bigger treat, and takes it away. He essentially continues this process up until the last chapter of the book where he has a surprise waiting for you. This book strongly reminded me of another Stephen King book I read a little over a year ago, sort of following the same concept...From A buick 8, which I now realize is a follow up to this novel. Also, Christine reminded me of the Bob Dylan song, From A Buick 6. For some weird, unexplainable reason, every time the plot dulled out, or seemed less interesting to me, I found myself singing that song.
King kept the book running at a very fast pace once you got about a hundred pages in, and didn't take his foot off the gas. As expected, the book was well written, but what surprised me was the immense amount of backstory detail he decided to hold back until the end of the story. In many of his other of his novels, he revealed important information throughout the story to keep you interested and help the story develop at a constant rate. For anybody who loves anything about cars, the supernatural, the creepy, thought-provoking, and straight up weird in books, I would strongly recommend this book. The only piece of information that I would include is that you really do have to tough out the few slow parts, because reaching the end of the book is more than worth the effort.
Steven Ø'Connell
11/4/13
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
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