Krishna
Arnie Cunningham, a smart but nerdy kid whom everyone picked on. Very good with autos. His love triangle with Christine and Leigh Cabot (Wait to see who Christine is – if you have never seen the movie or read this book – if you have been on another planet.). Dennis has been his friend since childhood even though Dennis is far different – athletic, popular.
Arnie falls in love with a broken down junk of a car and Dennis could not make him see how crappy that car is, Arnie cannot seem to walk away from it no matter how bad the car is or how expensive it is. Against the wishes of Dennis who suspects the owner DeLay of scalping him, he pays two hundred and fifty and buys it. It’s name? Christine.
He defies his parents aggressively, which is very unlike Arnie that Dennis knew all along. He realizes how ugly he is, and also knows that the car holds an irresistible attraction to him. Dennis understands it a wee bit when he just sits in the car and touches the steering wheel. A strange feeling overcomes him momentarily. He seems to be transported to the past.
When Arnie tries to start it, it gives trouble until he asks it to start and then it miraculously starts.
Arnie is forced to leave it in the garage of the guy Will Darnell whom he hates. Arnie starts to undergo subtle changes. His acne (‘pizza face’) seems to clear up. He manages to beat up a bully who tried to mess with him in the garage.
Roland Del Ray, the man who sold him the car, seems to ‘suddenly’ die and both Dennis and Arnie go to his funeral.
His brother George tells the backstory of how Christine came into his brother’s life. His brother was obsessed about the car and was mulish when someone asked him to part with it, even when his own daughter died literally in it, choking on a piece of meat.
Slowly the story gets creepy, in the familiar way that Stephen King escalates a situation. On the request of Arnie’s dad, when the family with Arnie had gone on a vacation, Dennis goes to see the car and it is slowly becoming new in a haphazard fashion. The bizarre thing is that the cracks on its windshield seem to have shrunk; and it seems to have locked itself when Dennis wanted to look under its hood.
Things go from bad to worse. Arnie develops a back problem for no reason at all – except that Del Ray had a back problem. Arnie appears old and balding when his mom watches him sleep. He picks violent fights with his own parents. Leigh, whom he professes to love, realizes that he is more obsessed with the car than her and she seems to hate the car instinctively, and feels that the car hates her.
Arnie changes so much that he is now assisting Will Darnell in his contraband smuggling activities.and worse.
Since his mom would not let Arnie park the car in the driveway of their home, Arnie’s father convinces him to leave it in the parking lot of the airport since it is far cheaper than the garage of Darnell. The toll collector of the booth is a boy called Stanley, who is a buddy of Budd and he lets Budd know of the fact. One day, Budd and friends drive into the airport and trash the car completely.
When Arnie goes there next with Leigh in tow, he is devastated and takes it to the garage.
Strange things happen even before, during his first restoration. Dennis could have sworn that the cracks that were there on the windscreen had shrunk when he looked at it. Also gradually the car becomes as good as new, even though Arnie admits to himself that he had not repaired many parts of it.
After trashing, Arnie devotes all his time to restoring Christine. But one night, one of the goons, Mooch, is run over (repeatedly) by a driverless Christine and the dents and blood miraculously wash off by themselves, restoring Christine to the fresh state as she was before. A detective is very troubled when he meets Arnie.
The revenge continues. Leigh almost chokes to death on a piece of meat and if a hitchhiker was not there, she would have died. Arnie, who had learnt the Heimlich maneuver, does not seem to be able to help and Leigh leaves him. Her marks suffer and she has lost interest in everything.
Meanwhile Christine kills Buddy and his two friends in a spectacular chase scene. Both them and, before, Arnie see the rotting ghost of Del Ray in the passenger seat from time to time. All good stuff. Exciting in the best narrative tradition of Stephen King.
The story accelerates. I was under the impression that this may not be as tense as his other books but it soon becomes as thrilling as many of his best books. Arnie’s slow transformation is great.
Leigh and Dennis get closer and realize, through research that Arnie is being taken over by Roland Del Ray. Roland’s brother George and also his ex colleague from the army days give Dennis chilling details and he has a surreal experience when he gets Arnie to drop him back in Christine. All excellent stuff and thrilling reading.
When Dennis and Leigh are caught necking by Arnie, all hell breaks loose and Dennis realizes that it is Del Ray is now in control, and he lusts after Leigh. He also realizes that he has to take care of Christine right away or else none of them – Dennis, Leigh, their families, even Arnie’s parents are not safe anymore. He forms a devious plan in his mind and shares with Leigh.
The rest of the story tells how the plan pans out. Along the way, the story takes off and just rockets ahead, with you turning pages as fast as you can read it. The epilog is touching too.
Great story, good book. Stephen King at his best.
8/10
– – Krishna