Recommended by George Lyon
The moment Arnie Cunningham lays eyes upon her, he wants her. She is Christine, a ’58 Plymouth Fury. Blood-red, fat-finned and twenty years old, all her promise lies in her past.
In the midst of Stephen King’s enormous repertoire, Christine goes woefully underappreciated. It is story of possession; 600 pages of uncanny suspense, punctuated by action sequences that are harrowingly believable.
Written in memoir form, Christine is told by Dennis Guilder, a high school student and life-long friend of Arnie Cunningham. The friendship between Dennis and Arnie is unusual; Dennis is a football jock, Arnie is in the classic sense, a nerd. He has a face riddled with acne and is the subject of bullying at school. Nevertheless, through thick and thin Dennis and Arnie have always stuck together, until they meet Christine. She resides in the garage of Roland D. Lebay, a former US Army Soldier with a dark past. She lies in a state of abysmal disrepair when Arnie first meets her; a cracked windscreen, torn up upholstery, flat tyres and damaged bodywork eaten by rust.
While Arnie falls head over heels in love with her, Dennis is wary from the get-go. He spends much of the first part of the book trying to convince himself that his scepticism about Arnie’s new car is down to its state of utter decrepitude. But there’s a nagging voice at the back of his mind, especially when subtle yet inexplicable things begin to happen to the car, and Arnie. As the book progresses, it becomes clear that the relationship between Arnie and Christine far surpasses that of a man and his car. Things go from uncanny, to bad, to terrifying. To quote Dennis himself, 'It was bad from the start. And it got worse in a hurry.
When Arnie first meets Christine, he does not see the same car his friend does. What Dennis sees is a hulking mass of scrap metal that will never run again. Arnie, on the other hand, sees Christine for what she once was. He is attracted to her because of her past. The past quickly becomes recognisable as a main theme in this book; to be more specific, the dangers of looking back with rose-tinted goggles whilst refusing to acknowledge and learn from mistakes and tribulations. A good example is Arnie’s refusal to recognise the dark past of Christine and Lebay, instead choosing to focus on her beauty and the nostalgia of the era in which she was in her prime, the fifties.
The book consciously pays homage to fifties American culture in its references and layout. Every chapter is preceded by a quote from an American fifties song, mostly pertaining to cars; one of the most fascinating aspects of this book is that each quote eerily predicts the events that unfold in the chapter. The layout also reflects Arnie’s descent into possession by the entity that is Christine. I very much enjoyed reading Christine and I am certain that it is a book that will stay in my mind for a long time. Read this book whilst you are in school as being the same age as the protagonists allows you to lose yourself in their world.
King’s writing is exceptional, he is constantly teetering on the border of the unbelievable; yet the characters are so human in their reactions to the events of the book, you cannot help but empathise with Dennis as he watches all the relationships in his life begin to disintegrate as a result of Arnie’s new car. I would argue Christine is one of King’s best works to date. If I had to summarise the novel in a sentence or two, I cannot do better than quote the novel's tagline: 'She was his, a ’58 Plymouth Fury. But sometimes ownership can become Possession.'
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