From a Buick 8 [Hardcover]

Stephen King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 24, 2002

The state police of Troop D in rural Pennsylvania have kept a secret in Shed B out back of the barracks ever since 1979, when Troopers Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox answered a call from a gas station just down the road and came back with an abandoned Buick Roadmaster. Curt Wilcox knew old cars, and he knew immediately that this one was...wrong, just wrong. A few hours later, when Rafferty vanished, Wilcox and his fellow troopers knew the car was worse than dangerous -- and that it would be better if John Q. Public never found out about it.

Curt's avid curiosity taking the lead, they investigated as best they could, as much as they dared. Over the years the troop absorbed the mystery as part of the background to their work, the Buick 8 sitting out there like a still life painting that breathes -- inhaling a little bit of this world, exhaling a little bit of whatever world it came from.

In the fall of 2001, a few months after Curt Wilcox is killed in a gruesome auto accident, his 18-year-old boy Ned starts coming by the barracks, mowing the lawn, washing windows, shoveling snow. Sandy Dearborn, Sergeant Commanding, knows it's the boy's way of holding onto his father, and Ned is allowed to become part of the Troop D family. One day he looks in the window of Shed B and discovers the family secret. Like his father, Ned wants answers, and the secret begins to stir, not only in the minds and hearts of the veteran troopers who surround him, but in Shed B as well....

From a Buick 8 is a novel about our fascination with deadly things, about our insistence on answers when there are none, about terror and courage in the face of the unknowable.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Stephen King, an evil car, and a teenage boy coming to terms with the fragility and randomness of life.... Wait, haven't we read this before? Diehard King fans, worry not. Aside from the titular car playing a main role in the story, From a Buick 8 could not be less like King's 1983 masterpiece, Christine. If anything, this story resembles King's serial novel The Green Mile, with reminiscing police characters flashing back on bizarre events that took place decades earlier.

The book's intriguing plot revolves around the troopers of Pennsylvania State Patrol Troop D, who come into possession of what at first appears to be a vintage automobile. Closer inspection and experimentation conducted by the troopers reveal that this car's doors (and trunk) sometimes open to another dimension populated by gross-out creatures straight out of ... well, a Stephen King novel. As the plot progresses, the veteran troopers' tales of these visits from interdimensional nasties, and the occasional "lightquakes" put on by the car, are passed on to the son of a fallen comrade whose fascination with the car bordered on dangerous obsession.

Unlike earlier King works, there is no active threat here; no monster is stalking the heroes of the story, unless you count the characters' own curiosity. In past books, King has terrorized readers with vampires, werewolves, a killer clown, ghosts, and aliens, but this time around, the bogeyman is a more passive, cerebral threat, and one for which they don't make a ready-to-wear Halloween costume--man's fascination with and fear of the unknown. While some readers may find this tale less exciting than the horror master's earlier works, From a Buick 8 is a wonderful example of how much King's plotting skills and literary finesse have matured over his long career. And, most of all, it's a darn creepy book. --Benjamin Reese

From Publishers Weekly

King, we learn in an author's note, hashed out the plot of this gripper while driving from western Pennsylvania to New York. The first draft took two months to write. That's quick work, and it's reflected in the book's simplicity of plot and theme; unlike King's chewy last novel, Dreamcatcher, this one goes down like a shot of moonshine, hot and clean, much like Cujo, say, or Gerald's Game. In 1979, an odd man drives what at first glance looks like a 1954 mint-quality Buick Roadmaster up to a service station in rural Pennsylvania, then vanishes, leaving behind the car. The state police of Troop D deposit the vehicle in a shed near their barracks, where, up to the present, it remains a secret from all but cop colleagues for the car isn't exactly a car; it may be alive, and it certainly serves as a doorway between our world and... what? Another dimension? Another galaxy? The troopers never find out, despite their amateurish scientific investigations of it and of the weird beings that occasionally emerge from the vehicle's trunk: freaky fish, creepy flowers and more. Moreover, the "car" is dangerous: the day it appears, a state trooper disappears, and experiments over the years with cockroaches, etc., indicate that just as the car can spew things out, it will ingest them. While the book's relative brevity and simplicity does lend comparison to earlier King, and King has relied on a nasty car before (Christine), the author's stylistic maturity manifests in his sophisticated handling of the round robin of narrators (both first and third-person), the sharp portrayal of police ways and mores and the novel's compelling subthemes (loyalty, generational bondings) and primary theme: that life is filled with Buick 8s, phenomena that blindside us and that we can never understand. This novel isn't major King, but it's nearly flawless and one terrific entertainment.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1st edition (September 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743211375
• ISBN-13: 978-0743211376
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (369 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #221,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent are the Dark Tower novels, Cell, From a Buick 8, Everything's Eventual, Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and Bag of Bones. His acclaimed nonfiction book, On Writing, was also a bestseller. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There are Buicks everywhere, December 1, 2002

By 

William D. Bolden "book addict" (Huntsville, AL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: From a Buick 8 (Hardcover)

I have generally heard bad reviews of this book, so I was little worried about picking it up. But I did, and decided to read it the other night whether than put it off. Now, there are many things to say about it:

For starters, this is NOT Christine 2. This is not a sequel to the story. This is not a retelling. There are similarities, but the focus of this story is nothing like Christine.

Secondly, this story is rarely in the details. Often, the details are the weak spot. It is when King gets nervous and decides to go back and fill in a few of the blanks that the narrative decreases.

Thirdly, this book has a lot more personal philosophy to impart rather than horror. This is about growing old. This is about mysteries in life. This is about sticking to duty. This is about the chains that we can feel but rarely know.

Finally (for now), what horror IS in this book tends to be strictly the real life stuff: a cop hitting an old woman, a suicide, genitalia ripped off by the force of impact, young children decapitated, abusive relationships, the way that people think you are nuts when you are telling the truth. That sort of thing. The real life horror of the PSP is felt more than the Dunsanian/Lovecraftian terror of the Buick...which tends to be more a catalyst to facing lifes greatest, most beautiful, and extremely disturbing mysteries.

As for the quality of the book: Stephen King's writing has matured quite a bit and he seems to be ready to impart more of himself in the telling. But, on the flipside, like any older person...the maturity they have gained has drawbacks. For one, some aspects seem more tired. There seems to be more repetition. You know all the old tricks, they will not suprise you no matter how much you want them to. The voice telling is more captivating. The story has been polished to a perfect shine...but sometimes you just want a bit of that old Stephen King that would dash out 800 page stories a couple of times a year and not look back.

I will say, though, that the "lack" of narrative that so many complain about is this book's strong point. I mean, when one is faced with questions about "Why would God do such a thing?" or "How could THIS possibly have meaning?", they do not always get back a neat little parable to sum it up. Sometimes, all they get is more life to live and more time to think up answers that might work for them or might not. This story taps really, really well into this...and I recommend it.

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From a Buick 8, July 29, 2004

By 

Teenreads.com (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From a Buick 8 (Hardcover)

I worked in a large office for an extended period during my somewhat checkered employment career. I don't think I had been there but three weeks when a gentleman suddenly took ill and retired on sick leave. He died a few months later of brain cancer. Another man inherited his desk. He, too, was dead within a year from a tumor in his brain. A third gent was given the desk, and within six months, he also was gone, for the same reason. A number of us attended his funeral, and when we returned to the office, four of us, by agreement common and unspoken, took the desk and unceremoniously shoved it into a storage room where it may still remain. I have been convinced since that time that there are some objects in this world that for whatever reason are salted with a wrongness. Maybe it's a storefront where a business can never successfully take hold, or a piece of jewelry that seems to herald domestic problems, or something else. It's as if they're not meant to be here. But they are.

One of these objects is the basis for Stephen King's new novel, FROM A BUICK 8. There have been some nattering nabobs of negativism who were deriding this book as "Christine II" before it ever came out. Nope, this Buick, unlike Christine, does not sell its soul to rock 'n' roll. Sure, you can't read this bad boy without hearing Bob Dylan's "From A Buick 6" floating in the background --- it even makes an appearance in the story. But the vehicle in this book isn't haunted. No. It's worse.

This Buick 8 pulls up to some gas pumps at a full-serve gas station in Western Pennsylvania in 1979. While the pump jockey is gassing her up, the driver walks around to the back of the station and...disappears. The local gendarme, two Pennsylvania State Policemen named Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox from Troop D, show up and almost immediately notice that this car isn't...right. For one thing, the sumbitch can't be driven. And...it hums. You can't really hear it, but it's there. Troop D takes custody of it and they watch it. This is one Buick 8 that bears watching. And guarding. Whatever it is, it's not a car. Worse than that, it breathes. It exhales things out into our world and inhales things in to...who knows where. You don't want to know, and you don't want to go there. You won't come back. The car becomes Troop D's family secret, kept in Shed B and quietly but vigilantly guarded. When Wilcox is killed in a senseless accident in the fall of 2001, Ned, his 18 year old son, begins doing odd jobs around the barracks, trying to hold onto his father's memory. Ned discovers the car and the story behind it and he wants to know more. And the car is ready to give him far, far more than he will ever want...

The first draft of FROM A BUICK 8 was completed shortly before King's infamous injuries at the hands of a careless motorist in 1999; there are a couple of moments in the book that seem to eerily prefigure what happened to King. The inspiration for FROM A BUICK 8 itself arose from another incident that I won't reveal here --- King does a wonderful job of it in his Afterward --- but accounts for the setting of the tale in Western Pennsylvania. King did yeoman's research here, hanging out with Pennsylvania State Patrolmen stationed in the area, and nails the region and the people so well that you'd swear he spent his entire life there. What is perhaps so fascinating about FROM A BUICK 8, however, is the canny manner in which King transports this...this car, which does not belong, into our world. As one of the characters indicates in FROM A BUICK 8, there are a lot of Buicks out there. It's not at all hard to imagine that there are objects like this, objects so strange we can barely imagine them, sitting out there. And waiting. You won't be able to read FROM A BUICK 8 without laying awake after ward and wondering about them.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best for last, September 25, 2002

By 

Chuck Wilson (Los Angeles, California United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: From a Buick 8 (Hardcover)

If this really is King's last real novel (the forthcoming Dark Tower books don't quite count), then he's going out with style and grace. "From A Buick 8" is a wonderfully gripping read, full of the creepy crawlies, but mostly it's a moving, melancholy meditation on time and loss, more "Green Mile" than "Christine". His command of character and flow are wondrous at times. You believe in these people; you can see them, you know them. I've always thought that was his great gift and the real secret to his popularity--his people live in the same world we do. In them, we recognize ourselves (and our landscapes), and somehow that provides solace, as if we're finally being seen and understood. (It's similar to what Springsteen does.) The scary stuff was always secondary. Anyway, this one's awfully fine. It kept me up nights--and there's really nothing better in the world than a book that keeps you up nights. (It's like having a secret power source, and is almost as rare.) There are more subtle writers in the world, but there's not another who's given me more pure pleasure. I always feel wide awake when I'm reading Stephen King, as if I'm reading with my whole self. Being one of his Constant Readers has been one of the best relationships of my life. We sort of grew up together. I think he really means it about not publishing anything else, and that's a loss destined to be as resonant for me as the ones he details so beautifully in this last, best book.