First car. First love. What happens when love, obsession and a decades old evil coincide? 

 

Who is the bad guy in this story? A haunted car? A boyfriend who can’t take no for an answer from the first girl he’s ever loved? The angry man who’s anger and appetite for revenge predates his ownership of the apparently haunted car? Parents who refuse to accept their only son is growing up and want to control him? 

 

The answer - as always with King - is a mixture of all of these. There’s very rarely a good guy and a bad guy in his writing, but lots of shades of grey. And Christine is no different. 

 

I enjoy most of these characters, although I do find it quite difficult to like Arnie, the boy who buys and falls in thrall to Christine. His moments of humanity are largely built around quite juvenile humour shared with the main character Dennis. These are shortcuts to their sense of bonding that I don’t have a strong frame of reference for, so Arnie to me is more defined by his selfishness and aggression which emerges as soon a she sees Christine. 

 

Whether Arnie is haunted by the original owner of the car LeBay, or by a demon possessing the car who has moved on as its first bond partner loses their usefulness, is a question that’s never really answered, but it doesn’t need to be. The overall impact is no different, of an implacable enemy who will keep coming no matter how fast you try to outrun them.