5 out of 5 stars
Have you ever resisted reading a book because you couldn’t get the premise? Even when people told you it was a great book you thought, there is no way a book about a rabid dog is as good as people say it is. How much story is in this book that makes it a classic of an authors entire catalog? I resisted for my entire life and I am sorry I did. Maybe this would not have been as high on my list 20 years ago. Or I would not have understood the nuance of some of the non-Cujo parts of the book.
It started all because of the Loser’s Club podcast and their episode about Cujo. I listened and they all had great things to say about it. They knocked the scenes about the advertising agency and spoiled the ending but I was intrigued by their analysis. I then joined a book club and their book of the month earlier in the year had been Cujo and they all seemed to have enjoyed it. Then Stephen King announced his new short story collection being released this summer and in that collection was a sequel story to Cujo. So I was off to find a copy of this book. I tried used, I tried the library, and finally I found one hidden away on a shelf at Barnes & Noble.
At first it seemed like any other Stephen King book but something happened 138 pages in. The owner of Cujo, Brett, is saying goodbye to his father before he leaves on a trip with his mother. He says he loves his abusive father, but less and less every day, then he describes the love. “It was a love that had nothing to do with Joe Camber’s day-to-day behavior toward him or his mother; it was a brute, biological thing that he would never be free of, a phenomenon with many illusory referents of the sort which haunt for a lifetime: the smell of cigarette smoke, the look of a double-edged razor reflected in a mirror, pants hung over a chair, certain curse words.” I highlighted that, I never highlight things in books.
Suddenly this book was about more than a rabid dog and more about the relationships between mothers and sons. While the moments we follow Brett Camber and his mother to their vacation are moments that could potentially be lost there is a purpose to the whole thing. Brett saw Cujo not looking good before they left and is worried about him. So they spend a large portion of the trip trying to get a hold of Joe Camber, Brett’s father, but he had planned to leave with their neighbor on a trip to Boston but was mauled by Cujo at the neighbor’s house.
We could re-hash the whole story but coincidence is the key player in this story. Joe planned to leave so he had the post office hold his mail, he was in the garage when Donna tried to call to see if he can fix the faulting valve in her gas line so she was never aware that he was going to be out of town. Donna has a weird premonition and write a message on their message board before they leave saying where they are going but Steve Kemp, her former paramour, arrives at her house and proceeds to wreck the house and erase the message on the board. yet that is not even the best parts, those are classic King coincidences. It is the last 100-80 pages that make this a beautiful book.
As Donna is making her decision to finally make a run for the front door of the house, we shift to the perspective of Cujo. We learn that earlier in the story when Donna was unsure of if she could have made it to the house or not because she was afraid Cujo was hiding just inside the barn, Cujo had gone out a back entrance to the barn and had left them alone in the dooryard. She could have made it but now he was sure that he couldn’t leave. Heartbreak #1.
Then the police chief shows up and fails to radio in what he has found before Cujo mauls him to death. So now Donna has to make a decision and she is torn to shreds and suffering dehydration. Tad starts to convulse a second time so she runs to the baseball bat she noticed in the grass the day before. As she is beating the s**t out of Cujo Vic, her husband, shows up. She directs him to the car and as he pulls out Tad from the back of the car he utters the phrase, “how long has he been dead?” Heartbreak #2.
Donna struggled and suffered to protect her son and get them help so he could survive. She was willing to be mauled if she could only make it to the phone inside the house. When Vic utters that phrase he then sets Tad’s body down in the shade. Donna runs to her son and starts trying to resuscitate him, even in her very weakened state. When Vic tries pull her away she screams and growls at him as if she is the rabid animal. It takes 4 grown men to give her a sedative and pull her away. Her pain and grief are palpable in these moments. She only wanted to save her son and she couldn’t do that. As a mother, a wife, and a person she feels like a failure and King captured that. He makes you feel this pain and that is why this is one of his greatest works. Heartbreak #3
Stephen King is considered a prolific and great author because he is. He has many good books, and even some great books. I can understand after reading this book why he regrets being so high during the writing of this book he doesn’t remember doing it. This book is the kind of book that seems silly when you hear the concept but the ability of King to create a story that is both thrilling and heartbreaking at the same time is truly magnificent. The funny thing is I knew the ending before I started reading it. I had been spoiled so I was also hesitant to pick it up. That made the thrills greater because I wasn’t thinking, “how is this going to end?” I was able to immerse myself in the story and feel the emotions.
Overall is this King’s best work? Maybe, maybe not. This is not a timeless story, nowadays Donna would have a cell phone, or Tad would have a GPS bracelet. Donna is also driving a very 1980’s car, a Pinto, which are not on the roads anymore and anything made after 2000 has so much electric work in it you wouldn’t go to some guy in his garage to get it fixed you would have to go to a more advanced shop. The Cambers might have had a Ring cam or even security cameras on their property they could monitor from anywhere. Hell even highway cameras would have been able to track their movements to the Camber place. Or even if Donna didn’t have a cell phone Vic for sure would have if he was constantly going on trips and running an ad agency. So she would have called his phone before they left and left a voicemail or even talked directly to Vic and been able to tell him they were on their way to the Camber’s place and would be back in a few hours.
Although the premise is not timeless the heart of the story is about fathers and son, mothers and sons, and the undying love sons have for their fathers that mothers get jealous of and sometimes don’t understand. Fathers are heroes to their sons and while Brett was starting to realize that his love for his father was more an animalistic feeling and not always about who he was as a man but what he represented. While Donna and Charity struggle to be the heroes of their sons lives their fathers just are. Donna struggles early on with the monster words that Vic writes for Tad, she does not see the need for them. Tad sees Vic as the authority and the strong figure that can actually harness monster words to ward off monsters.
I am probably reading a lot into this book and King doesn’t remember what he was writing so it is hard to learn from the source. That being said the story allows for these themes to bleed out and tell the story in a beautiful way. The constant fight between mothers and fathers to be seen as the hero in their sons lives is real. The fight is even present for Charity and Joe Camber, even though Joe doesn’t really know how hard Charity is fighting him for the heart and soul of their son. For Vic and Donna they do not worry about their sons heart and soul so much but struggle with the wavering affection Tad has for each parent in regards to events in their lives.
I have rambled on enough for this one enough to say that this is by far a top 5 Stephen King book if not top 3. It is a solid 5 out of 5 stars. I found myself engaged the whole story waiting to see how everything would play out.
The Fresh Persepctive 