Arnie Cunnigham and his new/old car named Christine are the main characters of the book, along with Arnie's best friend Dennis. Dennis was with Arnie the day that he bought Christine form Roland D. Leby. From that day, Dennis knew that buying that car was the worst thing Arnie had ever done.

Arnie changed in many ways after he bought the car. He started getting in fights whit hes parent; he even got in a fight at school, getting the kid expelled. He had a really bad complexion before he bought the car. Dennis noticed that Arnie's axne was starting to go away, so he complemented him on it by saying a joke. Arnie didn't like the joke very much at all. Arnie even got his first girl friend. All the guys at school couldn't believe she would go out with a dork like him. Her name was Leigh Cabot.

The book takes place mostly at Will's Garage. That is where Arnie spent most of his time fixing up Christine. Leigh gets really mad because he spends almost all of his time with the stupid car and almost no time at all with her.

People who got on Arnie's bad sied start dying. All the police know is that all the murders involve a red car, and that the victims did something really bad to Arnie. Arnie is usually out of town when the murderstake place, and his car is red. But there are about twenty other cars in town that are red too.

If you want to dind out what happens to Arnie and Christine his 1958 Plymouth Fury, read this book.

I really liked the book; ist's probably the best book I've ever read. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. It's only my opinion, but I think that Steven King is a pretty gook author.

Having seen the feature film, made later the same year and starring Keith Gordon as the nerdy, much-picked-upon Arnie Cunningham, I can say that this book certainly places the terrifying screen images I remember into a whole new context---indeed, into a whole new dimension. You see, in the film, the car itself was just plain evil---as illustrated by the song "Bad To The Bone" by George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers being played at both the beginning and the ending. In the book, it's a lot less simple than that: It's not just that Arnie becomes obsessed with Christine, who influences him to become evil; the focus is more on Christine's evil previous owner, Roland D. LeBay. Over time, Arnie gradually metamorphoses into LeBay, who's described as being "always angry" and refers to his enemies as "sh*tters." (In the movie, Arnie comes up with that word himself.) There are subplots involving the delving into LeBay's past, as well as dealing with Arnie's parents. In the movie, Roland D. LeBay still sells Arnie the car, but he is no more consequential than that. Interestingly enough, in the book, it is Arnie's father who is the sympathetic parent, with the mother being a harridan; in the movie, it is the other way around.

Typically for a Stephen King book versus the movie, the body count is higher in the book. Will Darnell, the fat, coarse body-shop owner (and Arnie's boss) meets an especially prolonged end in the written version. [SPOILER ALERT: The only majorly disappointing thing to me about the book was Arnie's rather anti-climactic end. In the movie, he is killed while in Christine; in the book, he is killed in a car accident along with his mother on the snowbound Pennsylvania Turnpike.]

I liked the unique narrative structure of CHRISTINE. The book is divided into three sections: The first is narrated in the first person by Arnie's best friend Dennis Guilder, the mid-section changes to a God's-eye third-person point of view, and the final section goes back to Dennis' first-person narration. It's a very interesting technique, perhaps odd, but I think it works for this novel. Of course, there are plenty of King witticisms that us fans have come to love about his writing---CHRISTINE is chock-full of them! It's because of this that I forced myself to read slower---and believe me, I had to read a lot slower than usual, because CHRISTINE is a real page-turner! I really didn't want to miss the sarcastic observations, ironic musings and other King witticisms than have become a trademark. I definitely recommend reading CHRISTINE; it is quite enjoyable, no matter if you saw the film version first or not.

RECOMMENDED; AGES 16 & UP
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR STEPHEN KING FANS