Decent, but not fantastic for me personally. Am I missing something?

[dwalters]

I just got done with my first read-through of Christine. I've been reading SK's work for about the last 18 years or so but for some reason I always shied away from this one. Something about a killer car just didn't strike me as all that interesting. However, I had heard from quite a few hardcore King fans that this was one of their favorites so I finally gave it a shot.

It really wasn't bad. It was a lot more interesting than I had thought it would be, and the story moved quickly, which I definitely liked. But overall it just didn't impress me as much as it seemingly does for most other fans. I thought Arnie's slow transformation was one of the most interesting aspects of the story and the more I found out about LeBay's character the more he kind of captivated me, but for the people out there who *really* like this one, I'm curious what made this book so good for you. Any thoughts?

[doowopgirl]

Not one of my favorites either. As a hardcore fan, I read all of it, but I do discriminate as to what I like best. Like you I liked the characterization, but he story itself was never a favorite. I read From a Buick 8 with the same trepidation and the first time I was not impressed. However, A second reading improved my opnion. Still. not one of my faves, but again good characters.

[GNTLGNT]

I've always listed it in my top 15-more because I'm a die-hard Plymouth fan(love ya Ma Mopar!)-then because it was a top-notch story. The idea of the killer Fury was a good concept-but the above mentioned characters were what made it a good read for me. There are times when Uncle Steve's characters far out-shine their story concepts and that's O.K., not every one has to be a home-run. Would be a boring "game" if that were the case.

[fushingfeef]

I don't consider this to be one of his best. The changes in point of view always throw me off. But even mediocre King is still fun to read.

[wally wonder]

there's all sorts of things that made it an enjoyable story....arnie up against the wall...the guys in the shop giving him what for, but he still plugs along...the kids on the street, giving him what for, but he still plugs along...lebay...a guy that is pretty easy to dislike, but his presence made the story what it is...dennis...the girl, what was her name...heh heh...the hitchhiker doin the old heimlich maneuver...i thought that character is a hoot, a kind of cameo by sk, that's how i read some of the characters like him....there are characters like that in other sk stuff...sorta like hitchcock, didn't he appear as someone in his movies?...i was always watching for him, anyway...it's easy to liken christine, the gawguss car, .... to the horror genre, petunia, the kaka sucker as the kind of critic that would rather do without....and you know that somewhere, some when, there will be a rebirth of....what...evil?....horror?...it will keep comin round one way or another, one shape or another.

[ginapenn]

This is easily one of my favorites but it's probably because it was one of the first SK books I ever read.

[jcasey]

Sorry, didnt like either book very well. I did like Christine more than Buick. Reading and finishing the Buick book was like pulling teeth. Just really loathed that book...not enough action and just seemed to drag on. I always expect my heart to start pounding when I get to an exciting part of one of SK's books and it just never got there with either. Maybe bc Im not a big car fan.

[Rand]

Wall of words warning.

Spoiler warning too.

Christine would be on my top 10 favorite King story list and, as with some others here, it's because of the characters. No surprise really, since creating characters a reader can easily care about is King's greatest strength as a writer, and the reason no movie can ever live up to the story it's based on.

Arnie is one of the two most pitiable characters that King ever created, along with Harold Lauder from The Stand. A social reject who can't get anything quite right unless he's just alone with Dennis. As I read the book, I alternately want to shake him for being so emotionally weak, and slap his parents around for making him that way. I'd guess that a lot of us would have been quite happy to see Regina stroke out.

People might not think that a story this simple can have a strong social commentary buried in the plot, but it's there. The parents, who back every good cause on the face of the earth, not only can't see their own son's suffering, but don't even want to try. He's not their child, he's their trophy, the little version of them that they can parade around to show their peers how clever they are for creating a son so smart and well behaved.

King makes it clear to us that Arnie, even before Christine, is set to be a life long loser. He's crippled in the face of authority, has no self esteem and little chance of ever developing it, and is a door mat for the rest of the world, or the predatory elements in it. He's a patsy to his parents, to the school bullies, to Lebay, to Darnell, and to a random family in a random house where he had the misfortune of getting a flat. He's not a person, he's a thing to be ordered around and shouted at, or worse, if he doesn't jump fast enough.

Eventually, he even becomes a patsy to his best and only friend, as Dennis takes the only girl Arnie ever dated. Yes, Dennis feels terribly guilty about the whole thing, but that doesn't stop him from seeing her. The way King wrote that whole Dennis-Leigh romance was great. Most people, even those who usually look beneath the surface, certainly felt this was exactly what should have happened. They/we rooted for Dennis.

Good old cool popular jock Dennis, why shouldn't he have gotten the prettiest girl at school after Arnie began his evil transformation? Why shouldn't he have already been jealous of Arnie having Leigh even before the transformation became clear to anyone? After all, Arnie is a loser, and only the influence the car was starting to exert on him allowed him to get together with Leigh in the first place. Dennis is an all around great person and a male version of the prettiest girl at school, so he had to get Leigh. Even though Leigh was Arnie's (sort of ex) girlfriend, and Dennis was Arnie's best friend, and they both saw that Arnie was hurting and in trouble.

Come on, admit it. You rooted for Dennis too, and hoped that Arnie wouldn't catch him with Leigh, didn't you? I knew it. So did I.

This whole romantic byplay was, I believe, part of the underlying social comment. Dennis didn't need to get together with Leigh for the story to work. I think it was sort of a "gotcha!" device. Even with all the pain we know Arnie is going through, all the sympathy we have for his situation in life and his succumbing to the influence of the car, even with all of the pity we feel for him, we still want Dennis to get the girl. Arnie's girl. Because it's the way things are supposed to be in this world. It simply feels right, and that's the "Gotcha!". How do we feel sorry for Arnie while we root for that betrayal, even before we know that the car wins?

In the movie version, the screenwriters threw away almost everything but the evil car. They even, purposely, missed the point that the car wasn't evil, the former owner was evil and his evil possessed the car as much as it possessed Arnie later on. I mention this because, as readers, we can throw away the evil car.

Other things could have happened to change Arnie's behavior, with most of the same results. We wouldn't have had a car that could flawlessly speed over snow covered streets, or fix itself when it was damaged, but everything else could have played out much the same way if the car was just a car and Arnie had become a drug addict. The boost in confidence that let him get Leigh and stand up to the bullies at school, the sudden defiance of his parents, the unreasoning rage that caused him to lose Leigh, the desperate need to agree to breaking the law for Darnell so he could support his habit, and even the secret meeting of Dennis and Leigh to discuss how to help Arnie, which resulted in them betraying him instead.

The book makes it so easy to focus on what the car/Lebay is doing to Arnie, what it's making him become, that it's easy to miss what some of the characters are doing to him. Even to overlook that Dennis is not a hero, he's an anti-hero. Or that Leigh is no better since she knows that, besides herself, Dennis is everything to Arnie, yet she still pursues their romance. It makes it easy to overlook that it's societal conventions, as well as individual actions, that really drove Arnie (sorry for that pun) to become what he did, and set him up to fall prey to the influences which ended up taking over, and ending, his life.

[dwalters]

Wow, Rand! Very interesting insight. I have to admit you are right about rooting for Dennis to get together with Leigh. But really by the time things got to the point where they actively liked each other, Arnie was far into "not ok" territory and was becoming physically dangerous to be around. So my sympathy for the whole stuation was kind of knowing that she was safer being away from Arnie, and Dennis, being an essentially good guy despite his "betrayal" to Arnie, was there to protect her.

Also thanks for what you said about the movie adaptation. I'll probably stay away from that

[SusanNorton]

I enjoyed this book very much - everything about it. I was a high school senior the first time I read it (1983), and I felt a connection with the characters. A very good book, IMO.

I like the movie very much, too, whatever that says about me.