Cujo: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Cujo is a 1981 novel by Stephen King.

The novel is set almost entirely in the fictitious town of Castle Rock, Maine. It begins with a reference to Frank Dodd, the Castle Rock deputy sheriff whose murder spree was the central episode in the first half of The Dead Zone.

The most unusual stylistic element of the narrative is that it occasionally switches to the perspective of the title character, Cujo the St. Bernard. Other than that it is a thriller with no real supernatural elements.

Also noteworthy is that, atypically for King's early work, there is an exploration of how marriages work or don't; this is done through the parallelism of the middle-class Trentons and the blue-collar Cambers.

Cujo belongs to the Cambers: his turning rabid and attacking the Cambers' father and neighbor, and then the Trenton mother and child, with fatal consequences, drives the action of the story.

The novel is generally not perceived as King's best work, and at 319 pages (Hardcover Edition by Viking Press) it is one of his shorter ones.

It was adapted by Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier for the screenplay of a 1983 movie of the same name, directed by Lewis Teague.

ISBN numbers

• ISBN 0606028617 (prebound, 1981)
• ISBN 0670451932 (hardcover, 1981)
• ISBN 0451161351 (mass market paperback, 1982, reprint)
• ISBN 9700508889 (hardcover, 1983)
• ISBN 0816156670 (hardcover, 1993, Large Type Edition)