Cujo (Stephen King)

Cujo
Stephen King
Viking
Fiction, Horror
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: The Trenton family - Vic, Donna, and young Tad - moved to Castle Rock, Maine from the big city to raise their boy in a better place, but it may be the undoing of their family. Vic's small advertising firm may be losing its biggest client, Donna's frustrations over small town life and being a stay-at-home mother lead to a brief affair with an unstable man, and Tad is convinced that there's a monster in the closet of his new room. When Vic has to head out of town on short notice to try saving his business, he leaves Donna with the boy and the family Pinto, which has been acting up lately. The local repair "shop" is crusty Joe Camber's converted barn at the end of a long, dead-end country lane... a shop space he shares with a gentle giant Saint Bernard named Cujo. The dog has been a solid animal, good and loyal, as well as a best friend to Joe's son Brett - until a fateful encounter with a rabid bat. Now Cujo, in growing pain and confusion and sourceless rage, is a monster on four legs... and Donna and Tad are about to become the targets of an unstoppable madness.

REVIEW: This 1981 horror novel still delivers suspense and chills, though some of the story arcs range a bit far afield and don't always quite pay off for their ranging. From the start, there's a supernatural sheen to the otherwise earthbound terror that's about to be visited upon the Trentons and other residents of Castle Rock, demons that cannot be escaped from once they've chosen their victims. After the opening, the setting and characters are established and set in position for the terrors to come, most of them having complicated inner lives and relationships. As in other King novels, there are other themes that tie them together, in this instance matters of time and age and how every year, every month, every moment narrows choices and all too often moves one further away from the life one wants, further away from the people they used to be and still think of themselves as being even though that version of them slipped away while they were busy with the day-to-day business of living. Yet even when the past is gone, it still shapes and colors the future, a seemingly inescapable pattern. Different characters deal with their frustrations and disappointments over lost times and repeating patterns in their lives in different ways that drive the plot; some look backward and keep trying to recapture a lost era, others try to numb or drown the pain of lost years, still others feed resentments or other distractions. Even Cujo struggles to stay a good and loyal dog even as an alien madness - one, again, with some tinges of the unnatural behind it - drives the animal to murderous rampages.
From a somewhat meandering opening, the story builds toward its violent, tragic climax. At numerous spots along the way are places where things could go differently, where someone else other than Donna and Tad could move into the line of catastrophe (or said catastrophe might have been averted altogether), yet those moments are passed by as tragedy becomes more and more inevitable. As a monster, Cujo becomes downright terrifying, all the moreso because the reader first met him was, indeed, a very good dog. Rabies is a horrific enough disease on its own, but the strain in Castle Rock - of course - is more than a mere virus. Cujo does not just mindlessly hunt and maul; this is a stalking, cunning creature, the tool of an older and darker and more patient evil than any mere canine (or human) mind can understand. (There's also quite a bit of damage done to the troublesome Pinto whose engine malfunction kicks off so many bad things; having driven cars with "issues" myself, I rather suspect there was some personal catharsis involved as King mercilessly and relentlessly ravaged that car.) Toward the end the tale wanders a bit again, though the conclusion is reasonably strong.
On its own, Cujo remains a decent horror story. Compared to some other masterworks by the author, such as It or Pet Sematary, it falls short, but average Stephen King is still fairly good.

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