This is one of the few older King books that I haven't read yet.

And it's another one that I am really angry I put off for so long.

I was skeptical at first. How could I possibly love an almost 650-page book about a car that comes to life and murders people?

But I should have had more faith in King because he rarely disappoints.

A big theme in this book is friendship, and it's a theme that I am very drawn to and love when it's executed properly, just like in this book.

I can understand that some people might have pacing issues with this one as it has a very slow start.

However, I loved it.

I also really liked that two-thirds of the novel is written in the first person while the middle third is in the third person.

It's an interesting writing technique that I think could have gone wrong, but it works well in this case.

Honestly, if I really think about it, this might be one of my top five King works, simply because of the ending.

The last part of the last chapter and the epilogue hit me like a ton of bricks and left me both crying and with my mouth wide open.

For fear of spoilers, I won't mention anything else, but just know that I think this is one of King's best endings.

I wouldn't recommend people start with this as their first King book, but if you are a King reader and somehow haven't read this one, it's definitely worth it.

One of the numerous cornerstones of King's early career was his profound love for the American automobile. And Christine manages to bring together a plethora of his early themes - youth, the process of coming of age, cars, friendship, and horror! Even after re-reading this classic story about a possessed car, it remains one of my least favorite King novels. It is still a great tale, to be sure. However, unlike many of his better works, it is not one that I will revisit frequently, if at all. Receiving a 7 out of 12 from me, it is far from being my lowest rated King book. The truth is, I simply don't care about any of the characters in this book! For me, the one thing that I truly do like about this book is the classic cover of the edition that I own.

It's interesting how King's works can have such a wide range of appeal. While some of his novels are absolute masterpieces that I can read over and over again, others, like Christine, just don't quite hit the mark for me. But that's the beauty of literature - everyone has their own tastes and preferences.

2016 read; 2003 read

Even after a second read through, this remains one of my least favourite King books.

The first time I read it, I found it to be so slow-paced. And unfortunately, not much changed the second time around. It took an eternity for me to get into it, and I felt as if it was just dragging on and on without end.

The idea behind the story was so promising. However, for me, it lacked a lot of King's usual OOMPH. I simply could not connect with any of the characters. They felt flat and two-dimensional, lacking the depth and complexity that I have come to expect from King's works.

And this lack of connection to the characters makes it extremely difficult for me to enjoy a book. After all, connecting to the characters is of utmost importance to my enjoyment of a story.

Despite all of this, I really loved the idea of Christine. That's why this story is still getting three stars and not a lower rating. It's also one of the very rare cases where I'll actually say that I preferred the movie over the book. I know, it's quite shocking!

You never forget your first time, and the memories of my initial encounter with Stephen King when he lured me into the back of a 1958 Plymouth Fury and had his way with me are still clear over 30 years later.

For the record, he wasn’t gentle. I was a wee lad of 13 when this came out. Stephen King had already established his reputation as America’s boogeyman after his breakout in the ‘70s. I wasn’t much of a horror fan then. Despite my increasing reading of ‘grown-up’ fiction, I had no interest in the King novels and movies that were freaking the adults out.

One day, I was sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office and read a magazine article about King and his new book centered on a haunted killer car. “That sounds pretty cool,” I thought. After my appointment, I went to the library which was right around the corner from my doctor’s office. (Ah, small towns...) I can’t remember if I actually was able to get it then or if I had to put my name on the hold list. I suspect that a new King novel probably had a waiting list. In either case, I soon got my grubby little mitts on a copy and read my first Stephen King novel. The countless hours since devoted to reading his work and the small fortune I’ve spent accumulating his books over the years are a testament to how deeply the hook was set.

Looking back now, that seems kind of odd because Christine is not my favorite King novel. In fact, it’d be well down my personal list after others like The Stand, The Shining or The Dark Tower series. Still, it’s a pretty good King novel and was more than enough to put me on the King path that I’ve been on ever since despite the occasional rocky patches.

I still remembered being surprised at how relatable the story was. The way I’d heard adults talk made me think that the entire book would be a bloodbath. Instead, I was shocked to see that King actually focused most of the early part of the book on a couple of small town high school guys who didn’t seem any different from the older teens I knew. I remember thinking that this was the first book I’d read that had people living in a way that seemed familiar to me. That’s why when the horror started creeping in from the edges; it made it that much worse.

Geeky loser Arnie and high school stud duck Dennis have been friends since they were children. As they’re getting ready to start their senior year, Arnie spots a For Sale sign on a rusting piece-of-shit 1958 Plymouth Fury nicknamed Christine by its owner, a nasty old bastard named Roland LeBay. Despite Dennis’s best efforts to talk him out of it, Arnie insists on buying Christine which puts him at odds with his academic parents, especially his domineering mother who has managed to control every aspect of his life to that point.

As Arnie works on what seems to be a miraculous restoration job on Christine, he becomes increasingly obsessed with the car and angry at the world. Dennis was uneasy about the vehicle from the beginning and gets more suspicious as his best friend seems less and less like himself. When people who crossed Arnie start turning up dead via bizarre vehicular homicides, Dennis’s dread of Christine leads him to believe the impossible.

It’d be easy to dismiss this as the book about the evil car, but like most good horror there’s a more human theme lurking in the story. In this case it’s about how childhood friends can drift apart and how inexorable that can be in some circumstances. Dennis and Arnie wouldn’t be that much different than anyone who gets wrapped up in the changes that adulthood is about to lay on them only to look up and realize that the person who always used to be at their side has gone their own way. That’s a sad fact of life that King uses as the foundation of the book only he uses a murderous car as the wedge he drives between them instead of the more mundane distractions that usually do the job.

The other hook that he hangs the story on is based on the old nerd-gets-revenge fantasy. Despite Arnie’s sweet nature he’s so incapable of standing up for himself that even Dennis finds him pathetic at times. When Arnie develops a backbone and begins dating the prettiest girl in school you can’t help but root for him even as you know that the cause of these changes is Christine and therefore can’t be a good thing.

With all this going for it, then why doesn’t Christine rank higher in the King pantheon? A couple of factors drag it down. At the time it was published this was King’s longest book other than his epic novel The Stand, and that one was about the end of the world so some wordiness wasn’t out of line. Some of the bloat that would often characterize his later work was beginning to creep into this one. The set-up of Arnie and Dennis’s history and Arnie’s status as the unlucky geek of their school goes on too long. Also, the character of Dennis is just a little too good to be true. Not every teenage boy is a raging sociopath, but after a while I did find it hard to believe that a good looking star athlete with plenty of girls chasing after him would really be best friends with the school misfit as well as a loving and respectful son to his parents.

Then there’s the fact that while the destruction of Arnie’s personality is a big chunk of the book the actual bloodshed comes at the wheels of Christine, and while King writes several gruesome death scenes and creates some very creepy moments it’s still just a car. Even with magical evil powers you still think you could get away by just going into a tall building and waiting until it runs out of gas.

Despite the elements that keep it from being considered among his best work, Christine is still a good example of what King does best by mixing human weakness with supernatural elements to create a story that keeps you turning pages.

Also posted at Kemper's Book Blog

This is one of the few King stories that I had never read. I don't know why I'd never read it. Maybe it was because it just seemed to me like reading about a car wasn't really my thing. I'm not a car girl. I drive one, but I don't dream about them, or get excited by them. I guess I was afraid that this book would be a few hundred pages of specs and details and owner's manual stuff, mixed in with a maniacal car tormenting stupid car-kids that would annoy me rather than making me hope they make it to the last page.

You'd think that after all the King books I've read, and all the times that I go to bat for King saying that he doesn't write tripe like I just described, that I would have expected better. But old judgements die hard, I think. For as long as I can remember, I thought that this book wouldn't be my kind of thing, so I'd never really rushed out to read it.

But now I have, and I can tell my younger stupid self that I was wrong. Of course this book is about a car on the surface, but it's about love and friendship underneath. It's about how friendship and loyalty and trust can easily turn to hatred, betrayal and vengeance with the right set of circumstances. Christine is the right set of circumstances, that's for sure.

I really enjoyed this story. I loved the two main characters, Arnie and Dennis. We get a full sense of their friendship before things start to go wrong. Dennis narrates the first and last sections in first person, and the middle section is a third person narrative which feels almost like an intermission. The second section is where King starts taking things to the next level, showing us little bits and pieces here and there that we wouldn't be able to see from Dennis himself. But I have to say that I really preferred Dennis's narration. I liked Dennis. He's funny, and smart and honest. I loved seeing a kind of protective friendship through the eyes of the friend higher up on life's totem pole. So often we see these kind of relationships from the outside, or from the picked on friend who almost hero-worships the protector friend, but in this case, we get to see the other side, and I respected Dennis all the more for the normality of it. He didn't see himself as a hero, or as doing some nice deed a la the Boy Scouts, or as being charitable toward someone who needed the help. He was just a friend who wanted to keep his friend from being hurt as much as possible. The banter between them that was like a light-hearted male cover for their true friendship touched me. The way that they were open and honest with each other, and intuitive enough in their friendship to know what the other needed at any given time, and close enough to go to bat for each other when needed just proves that there are such things as soul-friends, just as I think that there are soul-mates.

I always love reading King for the way that he gets right to the heart of things and opens them up and starts poking around, pointing out different component parts and the way that they work together to make the whole. He takes a little piece of life, and he shows us what it's made of by throwing a wrench in the works and seeing what happens and then writing it down for posterity. The wrench in this case is a bad-mannered car and a teen who never had anything of his own to take pride in.

Arnie's transformation from pimply, bespectacled, mom-micromanaged chess nerd to angry, bitter, single-purpose hardcase was fascinating. Christine became the focus of his life, his life-line. Everything else became background noise and unimportant. I kept thinking, "He's smart, he'll see what's happening, right?" but no. And not just because the book would have nowhere to go if he did, but because it was believable that he wouldn't. The blinders were on, and the outside, rational world was beyond them.

I was surprised by the ending. All along, I thought that it would go one way, and then when it didn't I was as shocked as anyone. I love when that happens, and I love when, without even knowing it, I've invested a part of myself in the characters and end up hurting right along with them. King seems to be able to get this reaction out of me every time I crack one of his books.

...And people think he's just a horror writer.

Don't you give me no dirty looks.

Your father's hip, he knows what cooks.

Just tell your hoodlum friend outside.

You ain't got time to take a ride.

Yakety yak (don't talk back).

This is Dennis's story, the story of his best friend Arnie and his car, Christine.

Objectively, this is far longer than it needed to be. But am I complaining? No, absolutely not. I was here for every single sentence.

I loved how every chapter started with song lyrics. I frequently headed over to Spotify while reading this book, listening to the tracks, getting into the spirit of things. I could envision Christine and Arnie motorvating around town in my mind.

I really enjoyed these characters as well. King always knows how to give his characters depth, and every one of them was very vivid to me. Even Christine, that car had a distinct personality and held her own on the pages.

And was I scared? I was certainly freaked out by this story. I think it's going to be a while before I stop looking at cars driving in the dark and wondering who, or what, is driving them.

Another five-star book, I was completely immersed. Let's motorvate!

One of the better Stephen King books I've read in a while is "Christine".

I read this right after reading "Salem's Lot" and noticed a similar formula in King's writing. Like "Salem's Lot", the first half of "Christine" is devoted to character development and drawing you into the setting. There are some dark elements mixed in early on to keep you interested.

Then, the second half of the book really takes off and things go crazy. This time we're in Libertyville, PA (which is an awesome name for a fictional town). I would argue that King is a better fiction writer than a horror writer. What I loved about this book was how well I was pulled into high school in the later 1970s.

I didn't graduate high school until the early part of this millennium, but I loved reading about Arnie and Dennis' friendship, their relationships with girls from school, football games, hanging out and getting pizza, and just being a teenager without a care in the world. The stuff about the crazy, possessed car was fun, too.

But in my opinion, the horror rides shotgun to the rest of the story. And, yes, spoiler alert: This book is about an evil car. It seems ridiculous, doesn't it? I don't know if any other writer could pull this off without making me want to roll my eyes, but I was really into the story.

I didn't know what to expect, but I had a hard time putting this down, and I was honestly a little surprised. Oh, and even the ending was great! I feel like that isn't the case most of the time with Stephen King, but this one ended nicely, and I especially loved the epilogue. It ended the way it should have ended.

If you read it, hopefully you'll see what I mean. King isn't my favorite author. In fact, sometimes I can't stand the guy. But, I always find myself coming back and reading through several of his books, then taking a long break because I get sick of him, then I come back again and I'm all cool with him, then I hate him again.

Right now, I'm back in full King mode, but also mixing in some other stuff. When his books stop popping up on my shelves, you'll know he's pissed me off again. He's like a boomerang I can't throw hard enough.

CHRISTINE has always been a book that piqued my curiosity. When I was a child, a hardback copy of it sat conspicuously on the bookshelves of my Grandma's bedroom. The cover featured a bright, menacing-looking Plymouth Fury, and I vividly remember being captivated by it. However, when I began reading Stephen King novels on my own, it wasn't the one I chose. In fact, it's the only major novel from his prime that I hadn't read.

Why was that?

Undoubtedly, it's because my interest in cars isn't that great. Yes, I'm from the land of 'Top Gear', but this obsession with big old 1950s automobiles seems to be more of an American thing than a British one. Put it this way, it's difficult to imagine that James Herbert could have gotten away with a similar book about a Morris Minor. So, reading a book centered around a car, even by an author I adore, just seemed like a chore to me.

And perhaps that's a big part of why I didn't really enjoy it. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how forcefully the narrative pushed me to go along with it, I couldn't view Christine as a legitimate threat. Big, red, and furious as she might be, every time I pictured it, the car was like a Tex Avery animation.

Frankly, your book is in trouble when your regular reader can only envision its main threat as a cartoon.

But it's more than that. CHRISTINE is overly long, which isn't entirely unexpected for King, but it's also often quite dull. The element that's supposed to liven it up, Christine's attacks, even become tediously repetitive. King actually seems to be aware of this, as one or two of the attacks occur off-screen.

What's truly astonishing, though, is how underdeveloped the characters are. Most of them - students and parents alike - are mere thumbnail sketches. This is especially blatant in the case of Leigh Cabot, who serves as the heroine here. She is so poorly drawn that I knew little more about her at the end than I did at the beginning. The narrator in the final act regrets his teenage sexism towards her, but the entire book is like that - she's a character who exists solely to be pretty, sexy, in danger, and nothing else!

So, the only one of King's early major novels that I hadn't read, and now - without a shadow of a doubt - my least favorite.

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It's 1978, and high-schooler Art Cunningham, yearning for some semblance of control over his own life, makes the fateful decision to purchase a battered old 1958 Plymouth Fury from the notorious scumbag, Ronald D. LeBay. Art's best friend, Dennis, views the car as a lost cause. As Art becomes increasingly consumed by the vehicle's restoration, their lives take an unexpected turn down a dead-end road.

By this point, I've delved into a significant portion of Uncle Stevie's work. However, for some reason, Christine has always eluded my full attention. I initially thought it was just an overly silly concept - a killer car? Seriously? But it's an 80s King novel, which is often regarded as his peak in popularity (unless you consider perhaps the last five years or so), and also a time when he was heavily into drugs. With that in mind, I figured this book would either be completely insane or a total flop like The Tommyknockers (a book I also haven't read).

My wife is a big fan of TikTok, and a few weeks ago, she sent me a video of a guy discussing how underrated Christine is. The essence of his review was that one shouldn't approach this book simply as a story about a killer car, but rather as a novel about friendship and the heart-wrenching experience of watching someone you care about lose themselves to the point of being unrecognizable. I truly believe this perspective completely transformed how I would come to view this book. Yes, at its core, it's still a story about a car that murders people, and that's likely what attracted John Carpenter to make the movie. But it has much deeper layers.

The lore surrounding the car and the reasons behind its insatiable bloodlust were masterfully crafted. Many of the scenes designed to induce scares had me on the edge of my seat and truly captured my imagination. I also discovered that I will physically recoil if you write a scene where someone is choking on a hamburger - it's just极其不舒服的 stuff.

Over the past few days, I've been going back and forth on whether I liked the ending. It's no exaggeration to say that a lot happens. There is so much action packed into the last 30 or so pages that I had difficulty following it all. That being said, the scenes become incredibly gory and unrelentingly brutal. To borrow an overused phrase, King had the pedal to the metal during the conclusion - like some crazed, coke-fueled demolition derby.

While it's unlikely to make it into my top 10 Stephen King books, Christine was better than I anticipated. It unfortunately has the misfortune of being released in the same year as King's absolute masterpiece, Pet Sematary (1983), so I can understand why it has been somewhat overshadowed. Do yourself a favor - if you're a King completionist, don't overlook this one.

Let's face it. When you're deeply into an outstanding Stephen King novel and the story has you firmly in its mental clutches, there truly is no way to put that book down, regardless of how loudly real life is beckoning you back. I vividly remember such a moment when I was reading Pet Sematary. I was completely engrossed, almost in a rather pitiful way. I would rush out of work and then sit in the car after working hours, simply to get my fill of the story. Oh, and damn it, I surely did get my fill.

Christine, on the other hand, was a bit of a mixed bag. It wasn't as excellent as, say, The Shining or Pet Sematary, but it definitely wasn't as dreadful as The Outsider.

I think the initial problem I had with it was the length. A 700-page book usually doesn't daunt me, but this one seemed way too long for Christine. There were numerous chapters, yet there just wasn't enough substance for my liking. I was anticipating vivid descriptions of twisted events, the kind of stuff that keeps you awake at night. Unfortunately, and I hate to say this, but some parts of this book were just too tame for my tastes.

Thankfully, there were certain scenes that made my skin crawl and compelled me to race through the pages, and I got that "Classic King" feeling. It's truly amazing when that occurs. But then, a few pages later, things would go rather quiet, and I was left hanging. I suppose in reality, a possessed car didn't terrify me as much as I had expected it to.

Strangely enough, I'm not even into cars.

My wife, on the other hand, has a passion for them. She firmly believes that Mustangs are the epitome of sexy muscle cars.

For me, cars have always been nothing more than a means of transportation.

I can't help but think that my wife would have sympathy for the protagonist of Stephen King's "Christine".

He's a nerdy kid who develops an intense love for his car.

But this isn't just any ordinary car. It's sleek, painted a vibrant cherry-red, and it has a rather macabre history.

Apparently, it killed a man on the Detroit assembly line before it even made its way onto the streets.

That's so typical of King.

I remember really liking this book.

In fact, I especially remember enjoying the John Carpenter film adaptation.

It's one of the rare film adaptations of a King story that didn't disappoint.

Just like most of the King books I read (and I read a lot of them in high school), this one definitely deserves a re-read.

Maybe this time around, I'll be able to see it from a different perspective and appreciate it even more.

Arnie Cunningham was born a doormat. His narcissistic mother dictated everything he was allowed to love and do.

The guys at school used him as a punching bag, and the girls laughed at his ugliness. Everyone walked all over him and took advantage of his shy and polite demeanor.

However, everything changed when Arnie met his first love, and that first love was a car named Christine. Christine made a man out of Arnie, bringing out a level of confidence, charisma, and lovability he never knew he was capable of. His life changed for the better. He started dating the prettiest girl in school, became the talk of the town, and finally learned to spread his wings.

Unknown to him, the previous owner of the car was a vile man with a history of violence and death. His spirit lived on in the only thing in the world he ever loved; Christine. After Arnie learned to make friends and charm girls, Christine became jealous of her new boyfriend's growing social circle. Anyone who dared come between her and Arnie was just waiting to be crushed by the cruelty of her metal body.

I've heard a lot of people say this is one of Stephen King's worst books, but I couldn't disagree more. It has everything I loved about his early works. There's a tragic protagonist you can't help but root for, the harsh nature of coming of age, friendships and family being tested to their absolute limits, rock-and-roll music playing a role in the overall nostalgic tone, and the eerie sadness that comes from growing old and understanding how broken people and the world can be.

I saw a bit of my younger self in Arnie, so his story may have impacted my enjoyment of the book more than the average reader. The line between how much Arnie is changing because of the hellish rollercoaster of emotions and events he's constantly going through, and how much he's being influenced by the demonic seductress Christine is heavily blurred. Even when he's pushed into saying and doing terrible things, I couldn't help but feel for him and want the best for him.

Christine is a cautionary tale about obsession with material pleasures as a means of escaping pain and hardship, and the possession those things can hold over your growth and happiness without you even realizing it. Arnie's transformation over the book is heartbreaking, and his constantly spiraling character development is what made it such a chilling and emotional read for me.