Cujo
Stephen King, 1981
Mystery, thriller & crime HorrorContemporary fictionYoung adult
A good dog, a heatwave, and a small Maine town: King's most domestic nightmare, where the monster is something you already love.
Feels like dread and tenderness. About family and freedom.
A page from the book
The case a good dog would make for himself, if anyone asked.
It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor. Stephen King.King has said he remembers almost nothing of writing Cujo — it came out of the years when his drinking was at its worst.
Books that feel like this
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The Stand
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A flu escapes a lab and empties America; survivors choose between a saintly old woman and a smiling dark man. King's big, bleak, compulsive plague epic.
Pet Sematary
Stephen King, 1983
A doctor moves his family to a Maine town where the local pet cemetery sits beside something older, and grief becomes a door that should stay shut.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- What is Cujo like?
- Feels like dread and tenderness. About family and freedom.
- What should I read after Cujo?
- If you liked Cujo, try The Great Alone (Kristin Hannah), The Road (Cormac McCarthy) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson).
A taste of the feed
The child who keeps the whole family from tipping over, and knows it.
Leni was afraid to stay and afraid to leave. It was strange—stupid, even—but she often felt like the only adult in her family, as if she were the ballast that kept the creaky Allbright boat on an even keel. Mama was engaged in a continual quest to “find” herself. In the past few years, she’d tried EST and the human potential movement, spiritual training, Unitarianism. Even Buddhism. She’d cycled through them all, cherry-picked pieces and bits. Mostly, Leni thought, Mama had come away with T-shirts and sayings. Things like, What is, is, and what isn’t, isn’t. None of it seemed to amount to much.
The Great Alone · Kristin Hannah
A self-portrait in dislikes, lucky fingers, and one very flat sentence.
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle · Shirley Jackson
The love a child gives before she knows it can be withheld.
I loved my mother because I didn’t know I had a choice. I had to love her.
If You Tell · Gregg Olsen
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