Krishna
It is sheer coincidence that we got to review two of the same author’s work back to back. As we just said, we have reviewed several books by this gifted author earlier. Please refer to Christine, Carrie or Desperation.
Unlike the last book reviewed, this is one of the best known works of Stephen King. I would have said that this is up there with the best, mentioned above in the list, but for a few caveats. Read on.
In addition, this book also has other links to Stephen King’s other books as well.
The book mentions the characters from The Dead Zone, and mentions the monstrous cop Frank Dodd, who killed himself as he was about to be caught. Did his spirit die too?
In 1980, a small boy Tad Trenton, four years old, sees a monster in his closet.
When Tad’s dad’s car had trouble, they had gone to a garage on the way where Tad met the friendly but huge St Barnard called Cujo and they both struck up an instant friendship. Cujo is large but is the gentlest of the creatures.
When Cujo goes chasing a rabbit into a hole full of bats, he upsets them and then gets bitten by one – it bites him on the head and thereby transfers rabies into his bloodstream.
The book is populated by Vic Tranton, Tad’s dad who created an ad agency with his partner Roget Breakstone and trying to save a client account after a fiasco involving a red coloured cereal for which they wrote the ads. Vic’s wife Donna had an affair with another friend of Vic’s called Steve Kemp who had an unpredictable temper and is now trying to extricate herself before it is too late.
Gary Pervier, an old man who lives alone not caring about the seedy house and his seedy yard, likes Cujo but is mildly surprised when unexpectedly it growled at him. Cujo was not feeling very well but in a flash, he became his old self, so Gary decided to ignore the single bout of unnatural behaviour.
Steve Kemp rats her out in an anonymous letter to Vic in anger when Donna throws him out of the house.
Meanwhile Vic is thinking of how to save the main account. The story wanders over in multiple strands before the main theme takes over. So far Cujo has been behaving – with the disease not yet showing signs of taking over except for the brief spell with Gary.
There is a sinister scene where Cujo growls at two men who came to deliver an equipment and they barely escaped. Cujo finds that sunlight and noise start to annoy him.
Meanwhile, Charity stands up to her bullying husband Joe Camper and forces him to allow her to take her son Brett with her to see her sisters; previously Joe never allowed her to go, nor did he want to go himself.
He says yes and they are about to leave. Brett sees Cujo being sick but does not warn his dad since Joe with any excuse will demand that Brett and his mom cancel the trip.
Gary is peeing in the garden when he is ambushed by Cujo who is now fully feral and beyond anyone’s reach to bring him back to sanity. Cujo manages to pounce and kill Gary when he had almost escaped into his house, in a brutal and chilling scene.
When Joe Comber sees a big pile of shit in his garage, he is puzzled because Cujo was always a well behaved dog. Cujo was bought as a present to Brett by Joe. When Joe goes over to Gary’s house, he is shocked to see Gary killed by what he assumes are assailants. But when he sees another line of big doo in the kitchen he suddenly intuits that Cujo has gone rabid and locks himself in the kitchen and wants to dial the emergency services. Unfortunately for him, Cujo was there too, sleeping inside a cupboard and when he is woken by the noise Joe made, the brutality continues – Cujo’s brain is now so far gone that he does not resemble the old, friendly, puppylike dog at all.
Meanwhile Vic and Roger go off to their conference, leaving Donna in despair. Both of them struggle to put the past behind them and Vic is torn by the disloyalty of Donna and cannot forget her betrayal.
When Pinto – the car – gives trouble again, Donna decides to take the car to Joe’s garage and Tad manages to persuade her to take him. The iconic scene comes now, where the car fully fails right in the driveway of Joe’s house and they come face to face with a fully rabid Cujo. They are (for the moment) safe in the car and have no way of escaping with Cujo wandering all around the car and they cannot move because the car has stalled completely. She tries various stratagems (run into the house to get to the telephone or the gun) and discards each as unviable or too risky.
Kemp comes back to the house of Donna and not finding anyone, trashes the house. Vic, not getting through to Donna, is getting increasingly worried and hurries back, leaving Rogers to fight the good fight to save the company from losing the biggest client.
When she finally makes a move, Cujo is cunningly lying in wait and there is a horribly fascinating battle between an unarmed woman and a two hundred pound, murderously mad St Barnard. Even though she manages to foil him, she realizes with horror that he has managed to bite her multiple times – and he is rabid!
She regains her car just in time but then faces Tad choking and removes his tongue from where it was choking him.
Andy, who is pompous and self centred, asks Bannerman, the police chief to check Joe Camber’s house – ‘knowing’ that it is a red herring and wanting Bannerman out of the way so that he would not steal the limelight from himself – ‘where it rightfully belongs’. Bannerman reaches the house and is completely surprised and overwhelmed by a sudden attack from Cujo.
The rest of the book ratchets up the tension even more until almost the final few pages and the ending of the book is both heartrending and memorable.
A great read mostly, with only the multiple threads that seem to exist independently, and the slow build to the central climax as the only drawbacks.
7/10
= = Krishna