A review by trevorjameszaple
Christine, by Stephen King
3.0
Christine is a few different things. If you've ever taken the time to read King's Danse Macabre (an overview of the horror genre) you'll recognize Christine first and foremost as a tribute to those old horror films of the 1950s, where teenagers have to fend off some evil creature while the adults of the town bumble about in ineffectual ways. At the same time it's a metaphor for the obsessive nature of car-worship that took over adolescence in the 1950s - getting a car as a rite of passage from early adolescence to late. Deeper than that, it's a metaphor for the trials that adolescence puts you through: the hormonal changes, the clashes with your parents, the balancing of lusts, the tricky paths of friendship that can see old friends growing apart. The haunted car simply serves to exaggerate this theme; Christine could just as easily been a flesh-and-blood woman and the effect on Arnie Cunningham would have been the same. The change of Arnie is the real meat of the story; he becomes a stranger to his parents and his best friend, regardless of his being haunted, and it's an apt metaphor for the dark paths your average teenager wanders down as they change from being a child into an adult.
Of course, at the same time the book ends up on about the same level as a slasher flick, although with its setting of 1978 and the bite with which Christine dispatches characters it's more on the same plane as Halloween, as opposed to Friday The 13th Part V. Still, the ending comes off a bit cheesy, especially with the "well, not everything ended up totally happy" epilogue and the last few lines, which seem as though he lifted them directly out of one of the straight-horror pieces in Night Shift.
Of course, at the same time the book ends up on about the same level as a slasher flick, although with its setting of 1978 and the bite with which Christine dispatches characters it's more on the same plane as Halloween, as opposed to Friday The 13th Part V. Still, the ending comes off a bit cheesy, especially with the "well, not everything ended up totally happy" epilogue and the last few lines, which seem as though he lifted them directly out of one of the straight-horror pieces in Night Shift.