Cujo (Signet) (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author) "ONCE UPON A TIME, not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine..." (more)
Key Phrases: handsome hubby, Joe Camber, Castle Rock, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Cujo is so well-paced and scary that people tend to read it quickly, so they mostly remember the scene of the mother and son trapped in the hot Pinto and threatened by the rabid Cujo, forgetting the multifaceted story in which that scene is embedded. This is definitely a novel that rewards re-reading. When you read it again, you can pay more attention to the theme of country folk vs. city folk; the parallel marriage conflicts of the Cambers vs. the Trentons; the poignancy of the amiable St. Bernard (yes, the breed choice is just right) infected by a brain-destroying virus that makes it into a monster; and the way the "daylight burial" of the failed ad campaign is reflected in the sunlit Pinto that becomes a coffin. And how significant it is that this horror tale is not supernatural: it's as real as junk food, a failing marriage, a broken-down car, or a fatal virus.

Review

He builds up the suspense, holds back the dynamite until you're screaming for it, and then lets you have it. -- Minneapolis Tribune

It grabs you and holds you and won't let go...excruciating suspense...a genuine page-turner. -- Chattanooga Times

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Signet; First Thus edition (February 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451161351
• ISBN-13: 978-0451161352
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (269 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #30,355 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A dark, unrelenting, unforgiving, brutal masterpiece, September 6, 2005

By	Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Cujo is special. This was my introduction to Stephen King; oh, I'd read that story of his about toy soldiers (in seventh grade English class, no less), but this was my first real Stephen King experience. It was also my first truly adult novel; there's some pretty racy stuff in here, especially when you're an innocent twelve-year-old kid. Steve Kemp, Donna Trenton's jilted lover, is a cretin. That's part of the reason why Cujo has always been my least favorite Stephen King novel - until now, that is. Having finally reread this book, I am quite bowled over by the experience. This is King at his most visceral, his most unrelenting, his most vicious. Dark doesn't begin to describe this novel. The ending was and is controversial (so controversial that it was changed - quite cowardly - in the film adaptation). Speaking of the film, it's important not to judge this novel by that adaptation - in the movie, young Tad is almost impossible to like because Danny Pintauro was just such an annoying child actor, and Cujo himself is little more than a monster because we don't get inside his increasingly disturbed head the way we do in the novel. The real Cujo is a good dog.

King has said he does not remember writing very much of this novel, that it was written in an almost perpetual drunken haze. It's ironic because Cujo is an amazingly sober read. Maybe the booze explains the brutality of the story, but I think not - like any great writer, King lets the story tell itself. What happens at the end of this novel just happens; King doesn't make it happen. That ending - actually, the whole book - opens up all kinds of questions about Fate and justice. I have a hard time liking Donna Trenton, and a part of me thinks there is a certain amount of justice in her fate (although the punishment grossly outweighs the crime in this case). How do you explain what happens here, though - all these coincidences that seal our characters' - especially the child's - fates? Why and how does such a horrible tragedy happen? As the reader, you ask these questions, and they echo the questions we sometimes ask in real life. King taps directly in to your worst nightmares with this seemingly simple story.

The basic foundation of this novel is a pretty simple one: man vs. nature. In one corner, you have a mother fighting for the life of her son as well as herself; in the other corner, you have Cujo, a two hundred pound St. Bernard, a gentle, loving dog who has gone rabid - very rabid, insanely murderous rabid. It's essential to realize that there are no villains here, though, only victims. Curiosity killed the cat, but it gave Cujo rabies, and we experience his own canine mental breakdown as the disease lays waste to his central nervous system. Cujo would never dream of hurting anyone; the rabies eventually kills the real Cujo, though, and turns his huge canine body into a horrible killing machine, a very fiend from hell itself, the personification of the terrible monster in the closet that frightens young Tad so much every night in his room. King conjures this malevolent connection in a wonderfully tangible way, going even farther to tie "the monster" in to the murderous deeds of Frank Dodd - King directly cites events chronicled in The Dead Zone, already building the aura of the doom-shrouded town of Castle Rock.

So it's a simple story - yet it's not simple at all. You have marital discord between the Trentons, the result of a stupid affair between Donna and the aforementioned cretin Steve Kemp. Vic is trying to save his business at the same time that he is hammered with the news of his wife's infidelity. You have Tad's fear of the monster in his closet and his trust in his father to keep him safe. You have the wife of country mechanic Joe Camber and her fears that her son will turn out just like his father. You basically have all manner of compelling subplots going on at the same time, somehow coming together to conjure an unimaginably horrible series of events. In other words, this is real life taken to extremes - and there are monsters in real life, oh yes.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The scariest thing? The book's not horror., July 12, 2002

By	cortney (VA, USA) - See all my reviews

I can't think of any words to describe to you, the reader, how this book made me feel, but here goes anyway, because I like to be helpful.

To lump King into the limiting paradigm of "horror writer" is like blasphemy, and if you're going to read Cujo, you might as well toss it if you're going to think of it that way. King is not a horror writer, any more than Fitzgerald is a cheap, 10-cent paperback romance writer.

What King writes about is life--in all its bloody and dank, beautiful and mysterious glory. When I read Cujo I was terrified, and my hands even shook as I put the book down, finally finished at the end of the long night. But what terrified me the most is not the actual carnage, but the fact that this story is so real that the location might as well be Anytown, USA, and You, the Anonymous Reader Reading This Review, as the lead character.

King said himself that, like in Ripley's Believe it or Not, reality and the bizzare (read:horror) coexist at all times, and that the juxtaposition of the two is where terror originates. REAL horror is here in the real world, not in Nasfaratu, not in Freddy Kreuger or Jason, but in your own home, or worse--in your own mind. The story on its own is almost boring: a lovable 200-pound St. Bernard catches rabies. So why was I shaking, and why did I burst into tears after reading the ending? Better yet, why was I so moved that I took the time to write this review to convince you to read it for yourself?

Trust me. Read the book. I don't care if you've never met me. From one terrified reader with her head detached after reading Cujo to another reader contemplating buying it (that's why you're here, isn't it?), take my advice and get it. You won't regret it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I'll eat you alive, I'll be swallowing pieces of you...", March 12, 2001

By	Ryan Costantino (Nowhere, Special) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Cujo is one of Stephen King's most accomplished novels. Devised to evoke true terror in the hearts of readers everywhere, Cujo is a tale of horrible circumstance where the monster isn't a monster at all, but a household pet. A once gentle St. Bernard driven mad by sickness from the bite of a rabid bat. A St. Bernard that once would have been considered harmless in just a few short days turns into a mindless killing machine, and St. Bernard's are BIG! Stephen King pulls no punches with this book and the terrifying encounters the hapless characters have with Cujo are the stuff of Horror novel legend. Cujo is truly one of Stephen King's finest hours as a writer, all the way up to the heart wrenching ending. If you are a Stephen King fan, a Horror fan, or just like really good, involving writing Cujo is a book for you.

"The entire spectrum of the aural world was his. He heard the chimes of heaven and the hoarse screams which uprose from hell. In his madness he heard the real and the unreal." (from Cujo)