The #1 national bestseller for Stephen King’s rabid fans, Cujo “hits the jugular” (The New York Times) with the story of a friendly Saint Bernard that is bitten by a sick bat. Get ready to meet the most hideous menace ever to savage the flesh and devour the mind. Outside a peaceful town in central Maine, a monster is waiting. Cujo is a two-hundred-pound Saint Bernard, the best friend Brett … the best friend Brett Camber has ever had. One day, Cujo chases a rabbit into a cave inhabited by sick bats and emerges as something new altogether.
Meanwhile, Vic and Donna Trenton, and their young son Tad, move to Maine. They are seeking peace and quiet, but life in this small town is not what it seems. As Tad tries to fend off the terror that comes to him at night from his bedroom closet, and as Vic and Donna face their own nightmare of a marriage on the rocks, there is no way they can know that a monster, infinitely sinister, waits in the daylight.
What happens to Cujo, how he becomes a horrifying vortex inescapably drawing in all the people around him, makes for one of the most heart-stopping novels Stephen King has ever written. “A genuine page-turner that grabs you and holds you and won’t let go” (Chattanooga Times), Cujo will forever change how you view man’s best friend.
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*** Most Sympathetic St. Bernard ***
Cujo is not one of Stephen King’s more celebrated works, but I actually quite liked it. The descent of the Cujo from lovable family pet into conflicted rabies-addled beast into full-blown monster is quite heartbreaking.
Are there any villains or monsters that you’ve sympathized deeply with?
#superlatives #sympatheticmonsters
Old school Stephen King is the best Stephen King. This was a great book. Some people – I think King included – have complained about the ending. I think it’s fine. Is it bleak? Sure is. But this is a bleak story about dissolution and degeneration: a marriage, a business, a mind, and more all begin to come apart at the stitching. We can only read and be helpless to watch it all unfold and come undone. A happy ending here would have felt like a betrayal of the story, in my opinion. As King himself has stated (paraphrasing here): stories already exist, and it is the writer’s job to uncover them and record what they find. Sometimes what is found is not pretty, but it’s what happened, warts and all.
Stephen King writes wonderful scary books that you just can’t put down they are great …. Loved this book it was a scary twisted read that keeps u up all night to find out what going to happen next. Great Writing
If you saw the movie, FORGET YOU SAW IT. How do you portray a dog talking except if it is a cartoon? Big mistake! But the book will WOW you. The savagery, the horror the humans endured is top notch. This is one of TWO books I have on my shelf at home and read every few years. GWTW is the other one!
A (big) dog with rabies. A very intense and scary book.
I love how unique this book is with glimpses from the dog’s perspective.
I have loved all of Steven Kings books.
Is it a dog? Is it a wolf? Is it something devellish?
Just finished the book which I never read and so I decided to watch the movie which I had never seen. And I call myself a Stephen King fan. Oh the shame!
Ok film with great performances by Dee Wallace and Danny Pintauro.
No surprise, but the book was better.
Stephen King writes horror stories wrapped neatly around human saga. The monster in this one, a friendly St. Bernard, develops rabies when he runs into a bat while innocently chasing a rabbit down its hole.
The man that owns the dog works as a mechanic out of his garage. Because he’s such a controlling husband, his wife dreams of a better life for her and her son. With a little luck, she stumbles on enough money to buy him a lift for his garage in exchange for a once in a lifetime trip to visit her well-to-do sister in Maine.
At the same time, marital bliss erodes for a young couple with a toddler on the other side of town. Their world when he spends too much time with work, forcing her to look for attention from a ne’er-do-well tennis player.
Both women regret their decision to experience something new. Tragedy unfolds when the unfaithful stray wife and her son get trapped in their Pinto by Cujo.
King masterfully paints a picture of life in a small town. Drama builds slowly as he sometimes spends too much time on character backstory. But if you’re patient, that makes the ending all that much exhilarating. Written in 1981, this book still hangs around Amazon bestseller lists almost 40 years later.
Excellent.
You’ll never look at a St Bernard dog the same way for the rest of your life. Perfectly captures the terror of being stalked and attacked by a huge dog.
It seems so real.
Creepy scary. Awesome! Thanks King!
I loved the suspense and nature of this book written only as Steven King can write.
I actually saw this as a movie when I was a pre-teen & it taught me a lot about animals & the respect you give them. It taught me to not approach big dogs alone & to have an adult with u any time a strange animal behaves out of the ordinary. I also felt sorry for Cugo, he was treated so wrong even before he got sick from an animal bite that gave him rabies. All living creatures deserve kindness, respect & love. No, I don’t mean I wanna walk up to wild animals & pet them but I do respect them & think they deserve the life God intended for them n their natural habitat
Scary to the bitter end…what happens when your best friend gets bitten by a rabid critter? Amazingly told by my favorite author, Mr King .
My first Stephen King book ever- made me a fan for life. Scary because it is so real. Don’t miss this very original, scary novel.
Must read!
Oldie but a goodie