Review: Cujo by Stephen King (Audiobook)

It's been a very long time since I had last read this book. I was very young and was just plowing through the classic King books. Now that I'm an adult I wanted to re-read some of these classic King books to see if I feel the same about them as I did back then.

This was the longest audiobook I have listened to ever. It topped in at over 14 hours. Now I'll admit I took at least a week to listen to it, and even back up some parts to relisten to some scenes. The version I listened to was narrated by Lorna Raver who is an actress. I think she did a pretty good job of narrating and did a pretty good New England accent.

For those who do not know this book is about a saint bernard that becomes infected with rabies, and murders a few people in the small Maine town of Castle Rock (that almost all of King's stories take place). The meat of the story takes place near the end which I call the siege as it's the stand down between the main character of Donna Trenton, and her 4 yr old son, Tad. A few people have criticized King for the length of this book and felt that it would have been better off as a short story or a novella. I kinda have to agree somewhat.

One of the things I remembered about this and why I enjoyed reading King's work was his way with words. Not many authors can eloquently swear or describe things in such a crude way as King, but yet skillfully. Especially describing a scene about the postman farting while delivering the mail...yeah that was pretty funny. He also has a way of setting up the scene and leaving you the reader hanging on for more. But I do think he branched off into too many side stories with this one. It would have been a much better novel if he had focused primarily on the dog. Instead, King decided to stray off and describe lengthy scenes regarding the marriage of the two main families in the book. And also about Vic Trenton's business being on the brink. In retrospect, I feel that these kinda tied up into the general idea that sometimes things happen that are out of our control much like a force of nature that we can only sit back and suffer through. But some of these scenes really want on a tangent. I later learned that the author was in the grips of alcoholism and didn't even remember writing this book. That kind of made sense after reading this.

I do think that this book made much more sense as an adult than when I was a teenager. I have more life experience and could relate a lot more to the relationship issues that the two couples were going through. I also got the main idea of the book that sometimes "shit happens" such as a good dog getting rabies and going on a killing spree. Sometimes life just isn't fair. I still decided to rate this book with a 3 out of 5-star rating on Goodreads.com. It could have been much shorter and got to the point instead of trailing off on tangents. But it still is one of those classic King stories I would recommend reading.