Book: Cujo
Author: Stephen King
Publication Date: September 8th, 1981
Rating: 4/5
There is a lot of stigma surrounding Stephen King's book Cujo. It is now widely recognized as a product of King's infamous addiction, which is prevalent not only in this book, but in The Shining and The Stand, where vices turn good men bad. According to King, he has almost no memory of writing the book, although he recalls he originally wanted to have the female protagonist contract rabies and suppress her encroaching violence to protect her son (which he discovered wouldn't work with the somewhat lengthy incubation period of rabies). Cujo was the result of a brief sojourn to England with his family, where King hoped the change of scenery would inspire him to write a ghost story. Instead, he wrote Cujo, a book where a good dog (and a few good people) go very, very bad.
Cujo, like so many of King's novels, takes place in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, and revolves around two families: the Trentons and the Cambers. Vic Trenton relocated his housewife Donna and their four-year-old son, Tad, from New York City to Maine in order to work more intimately on a prosperous campaign with his advertising agency. Donna is so wracked with inexplicable loneliness that she begins an affair with local tennis aficionado and furniture repairman Steve Kemp, who becomes vengeful when Donna finally ends it between them. Just as Vic receives a graphic, revealing letter from Kemp, the Cambers family-- a significantly less well-off family on the other side of town-- deals with the five thousand dollars mother Charity won in the lottery. She wants to use the money to visit her estranged sister with her ten-year-old son Brett, but family patriarch Joe--an alcoholic, obliquely abusive tyrant that King no doubt saw a shadow of himself in-- doesn't want to run his home mechanic business without Brett. Charity eventually persuades him to let them go, just as the family Saint Bernard Cujo pokes his head in the wrong hole and gets a bite on the nose from a rabid bat. As Cujo becomes sicker, Vic and Donna must cope with her affair; tensions only mount when Vic is called to New York City to save his failing campaign in the wake of a national cereal scandal (it's just as ridiculous as it sounds). Donna takes Tad to the Cambers house in their antiquated Pinto to have it looked at, but the only one around is Cujo-- and he's got a score to settle with anything that crosses his path.
Cujo is one of King's shorter novels, clocking in at around 319 pages, and sometimes feel like a novella he stretched too thin. King has always excelled in the realm of short fiction (if you've ever read "The Jaunt" or "The Moving Finger", you should agree with this sentiment), which is why some of his books fall apart near the end. While Cujo doesn't suffer from this exact problem, it definitely warrants some page-skimming during the last thirty pages. We get a heaping dose of exposition and character development, even more so than in his longer works, that definitely grounds the novel in reality, but also feels monotonous at times.
These problems aside, Cujo is one of the few King novels to actually unsettle me. I'm, admittedly, quite jaded when it comes to horror, especially horror novels (something about the lack of imagery fails to frighten me); however, Cujo is scary on a different level. The eponymous character acts just like Christine in Christine: he is a killing machine who isn't aware he is a killing machine and appears to be immortal (this trope is, I suppose, modeled after Michael Myers from Halloween, who is the most inhuman of the human serial killers). But what makes the concept so unnerving is its realism, how easily it could happen to any one of us (well, maybe not with today's cell phone technology). Dogs who aren't vaccinated can become rabid and those rabid dogs, however cuddly and beloved they once were, can murder innocent people. Mothers have to watch their children suffer and cope with the guilt that they can't ease their children's suffering. It is all very affecting in the long run, especially the finale, which I won't give away in case someone is just reading this review for kicks. The ending is a kick-in-the-gut that doesn't, as some critics say, feel gimmicky or shocking: it's just a painful, horrible thing. A painful, horrible, real thing.
While a decent portion of the novel's second half is devoted to Cujo's siege on Donna and Vic, it also pauses to follow Charity and Brett on their trip. This is where the book sometimes lags, although I highly appreciate what King was attempting to convey here. In some ways, we're supposed to feel the most remorse for Charity, who feels cornered by her marriage and wants a happy ending for her son. Brett, on the other hand, starts modeling some of the aggressive behavior of his father, which acts like a metaphor for the ever-cycling addiction King grappled with while writing it. Charity feels intimidated by the upper-middle-class lifestyle of her sister and wonders how different her life would be if she could only sever herself from Joe. In the end though, she gets her wish and is presented with the opportunity to reshape her life for the better. Of all the bittersweet endings intimated by King, Charity's feels the most positive.
There is another reason why Cujo has earned such a reputation: it's a painful book. It explores the vast spectrum of human emotions, touching on each with all the force of a windmill kick to the head. Donna's tearful confession about her loneliness is one of the most bruisingly realistic things King has ever written. And, of course, the metaphors for addiction and rage power the emotional core of the story, as well as Donna and Charity's struggles to save their sons from two physically different--yet strikingly similar--forces. Capping it off with that tissue-grabbing ending makes the book feel a little like ripping a scab off. With King though, this agony never feels manipulative or calculated: this is King's story, albeit told in a strange way. This is his pain. We just happened to get caught up in the middle of it.
While Cujo may occasionally drag its paws and spend too much time chasing squirrels of errant character bits, it is a decidedly King-esque effort that still delivers a harsh blow today. The book is written fluidly, forgoing chapter headings and page breaks to deliver the story as quickly and brutally as possible. If you're searching for a fast, entertaining read that doesn't lose its humanness in the midst of the blood, guts, and sex, Cujo is definitely the read for you.
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