Christine by Stephen King (Audiobook Review)

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Title: Christine
Author: Stephen King
Narrator: Holter Graham
Copyright: 2010, Blackstone Audio
Duration: 19 hours, 32 minutes
Genres: horror, paranormal, suspense
Filed in: Audiobook Reviews
Review copy provided by Blackstone Audio.

THE GIST: Every high school in America has at least one kid like Arnold Cunningham. Arnie is your typical nerd: He’s scrawny, brainy, wears thick-framed glasses, has a bad complexion, and is a member of the Libertyville High chess club. The only thing you might say is unusual about Arnie, is that he has an uncanny knack for fixing cars. Rather than gaining him acceptance, this ability only serves to throw him directly into the path of the motorheads in the auto shop, the kind of kids who feel it is their sworn duty to make sure the Arnold Cunningham’s of the world remain in their proper place. But during the summer before Arnold’s senior year at Libertyville High, he fell in love, and everything began to change.
No, it wasn’t a girl that caught Arnie’s attention, he knew no girl would want to be seen with him, Arnold fell in love with a car, a 1958 Plymouth Fury that looked like it would be more at home in a scrap yard than on the road. Going against the advice, and pleadings, of his best friend, Dennis Guilder, Arnie dips into his college fund and buys the old heap, affectionately referred to as Christine by her owner, for the sum of $250, not a small sum in 1978. Arnie saw a lot of potential in Christine, and perhaps a kindred spirit. It never occurred to him, however, that maybe he was only seeing what Christine wanted him to see.
For Arnie, it was pretty much downhill from there. Christine gradually consumed more and more of Arnie, not just his time and his college fund, but he himself. His grades began to suffer, and Arnie began working for Will Darnell, the crooked owner of the shop where Arnie worked on Christine. Within just a few months, his best friend Dennis, and even his own parents, barely recognized him.
Dennis Guilder has known Arnie since they were little, and he was with Arnie the first day he saw Christine. Dennis, more than anyone, is aware of the unhealthy hold the car has on his friend, and has witnessed first-hand the changes Arnie has undergone. But Dennis knows a few things that even Arnie doesn’t. He knows, for instance, how much Christine’s first owner loved her, how he poured his heart and soul into the car, and how Christine was still the most important thing to him, even after his wife and daughter died in her. Dennis doesn’t understand how, but he is convinced that the malign spirit of Roland D LeBay still inhabits Christine, and that now, that spirit is beginning to take hold of Arnie. When the people that get in Arnie’s, or christine’s, way begin to die, Dennis knows the car must be destroyed. He can only hope that it is not too late for his friend.
Christine is one of my favorite Stephen King novels. Lots of authors have written about haunted houses, but I can think of only one story about a haunted car. I love the way King personifies Christine: the snarling mouth of her grill, the slender curves of her body, the furious scream of her engine, and especially the glowing dashboard dials, like two eyes that watch whoever is inside. It becomes entirely too easy to think of Christine as Arnie’s girl, his protector and his jealous lover.
The thing I really appreciate the most about King’s writing, is the way he can create characters and make you care about them. I don’t know any other writer who can do it so well. Dennis and Arnie are two good examples of that. Their friendship was a very special one. As Arnie and Dennis grew up together, Arnie became a nerd, and Dennis became a star athlete, but they always stuck together. And it wasn’t a one-sided friendship either. Dennis always stuck up for Arnie, sure, but Dennis always felt like he got just as much out of the relationship. It was always Arnie, after all, who could think of fun things to do on a rainy day; Arnie who could always make Dennis laugh. It is the special nature of that friendship that makes Christine such a tragedy, and further serves to illustrate the almost human nature of the car. What else could come between such close friends besides a girl?
Holter Graham did an excellent job in his narration of Christine. His reading and characterizations were good, but I especially like how he handled Arnie. Graham started out with a voice that sounded like a nerdy kid who hadn’t even reached puberty yet, but as LeBay gradually gained control, Graham’s voice gradually became deeper and rougher. There was one scene in particular where Arnie and LeBay are fighting each other for control, and Holter’s voice slips back and forth from one to the other, seemingly with ease. It was a nice piece of narrating.
Good narrator, great story, what more can I say? You won’t be disappointed with this audiobook.

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FILM ADAPTATION: Christine was adapted to film by the capable hands of John Carpenter in December of 1983, just eight months after the book was published. True, the movie didn’t follow the book very closely, but I still enjoy watching it from time to time. It just has that cheesy kind of cheap-thrill horror quality that is fun to watch sometimes. Christine starred Keith Gordon as Dennis Guilder, John Stockwell as Arnold Cunningham, and Alexandra Paul as Leigh Cabot. Nothing special in the cast, and I can’t think of any other movies these three were in, if indeed they were in any more, but they played their parts reasonably well.

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This audiobook review is based on the unabridged audiobook.
Audiobook review by Steven Brandt
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