Last month, I spend quite a lot of time in bed with Christine. The book, that is. I know, bad joke. Sorry.
One would suspect that Christine is one of King’s more well known works . A quick, non-representative poll (name tree books and/or movies by Stephen King
) didn’t support that theory. It, Carrie, The Green Mile, and, inexplicably, Children of the Corn got mentioned most.
Before I get to the book, there’s one thing you should know. I don’t give a damn about cars, or any motorized vehicle for that matter. Whenever a conversation drifts into car-territory, I’ll throw in my Later, when I’m a big boy, I want a Mini,
one-liner, and I’ll zone out. I just can’t be bothered. To me, a car is a box with four wheels and a steering wheel. If it works and gets you where you need to go, fine, if it doesn’t, it’s just a crapdamned piece of junk. That.
Having said that, for a book that’s basically about an evilly possessed car, Christine is a pretty damned good read. If you’d ask me, I don’t think this book is about that car at all. It helps the story move along, but to me, it’s mostly about friendship. The first time that thought crossed my mind, was on page 35, when I read the narrator’s definition of friendship:
As he said, we were friends, and that meant keeping the bullshit to a bare minimum.
I like that. If you boil the story down to a what if situation, you’d probably end up with something like What if a boy buys a car that’s after his soul?
Well, he’d probably end up losing a lot. So while the book indulges in the possessed car business and killings and all that, I got a healthy dose of what I really like about King’s work: observations of people and their stories.
- Book read
- Stephen King — Christine
- First line
- This is the story of a lover’s triangle, I suppose you’d say — Arnie Cunningham, Leigh Cabot, and, of course, Christine.