In Progress: Cujo

The combination of some slow-reading non-Stephen King books and school responsibilities on top of full-time work meant an unscheduled October break from the blog, but at long last we've reached Cujo. Here are the usual running thoughts.

November 23 (Page 41): I knew going into this that this was one of the Castle Rock books, but Cujo forms a direct connection to The Dead Zone in the opening pages, referencing the middle section of that book. About 25 pages into the book, I also realized there are no chapters in this book, so all I'll say at this point is thank God for paragraph breaks.

November 26 (Page 124): The nice doggy is starting to turn, no surprise there. The description of poor Cujo losing his mind is totally heartbreaking though, like somebody where all the things that used to give them pleasure now only give pain. The real drive of the story right now is more centered on the other (human) characters, most of them awful, some of them powerless.

November 30 (Page 268): I knew going into this book that there was going to be a dog that kills people. My initial uninformed vision was one of a rabid dog indiscriminately taking out helpless townfolk, but the book hangs more on the suspense than gore. If anything is really gross about this book, it's jilted Steve Kemp the Homewrecker leaving a little "surprise" for Donna. As for Cujo, after killing off Gary and John (no tears there), he's been spending most of the time assaulting the Pinto, the only thing stopping him from eating Tad and Donna.

I pretty much finished the book too quickly for another update!