Cujo

Cujo wanted to be a good dog

Para ser uno de sus inicios es un libro interesante. Empieza aburrido pero mientras más se lee mejor se pone.

Fantastic novel!! Stephen King never disappoints, as usual.

Sin duda alguna la mejor novela de SK. Imprescindible.

Great story

I wanted to read Cujo for a while, having read polarised reviews. I finally got round to it last week and I must say I was pleasantly surprised - Well, if 'pleasantly' can be used to describe a novel about a rabid dog that savages innocent people that is! As usual, King walks a fine line between literary and genre fiction. Whilst he always provides an easy read, I feel what marks his novels out from other popular fiction is how he roots his stories in everyday fears that we can all recognise and uses allegory and ostensibly mundane themes to create a multi-layered narrative. In Cujo, all of these tropes are present to varying degrees. We witness breakdowns in everyday relationships - marriage, family and corporate - parallelled by the eponymous K9's descent into rabid madness. This is done particularly well throughout, despite the novel being unusual for King in that it contains very few - if any - supernatural elements. The novel is very much one of tension and this is where I feel it has been underrated. Whereas IT, Pet Semetary and Salem's Lot rely on the unknown supernatural element to mark them out as horror fiction, Cujo is rooted in real life. As great as those other works are, it takes a real master to keep you on edge for 400 or so pages, with very few gory deaths and traditional horror imagery. The narrative of Cujo moves at just the right pace and builds perfectly to its dramatic conclusion. There is nothing groundbreaking, just a master of the craft demonstrating how to plot a bestseller for maximum emotional impact. A surprising element is how King treats Cujo himself. We read the dog's inner thoughts as he succumbs to his illness - which may sound ridiculous, but I felt it worked very well. It makes the reader emphasise and pity the animal and see it as more than 'the monster', once again demonstrating how King weaves complexity into what is on the surface a very simple, almost cliche, horror motif. In my opinion, it is this anthropomorphising that makes the novel work. As something of a slow-starter, the sympathy we initially feel for Cujo and the impending dread of what we know is going to happen to him gives a feeling of dread before any violence occurs. All in all, this was a thrilling and at times challenging read - challenging in terms of content that is. Whilst some may feel it takes a while to get going, there is enough to keep it interesting until it all kicks off. The lack of the supernatural may turn some off, but there it is suggested enough at several points to scratch that itch. My only quibble - and I don't know if it is just with this edition - is the lack of chapters.