Customer Reviews

From a Buick 8

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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.

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

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.

Stephen King has been announcing his exit from writing for a while now; he says that "From a Buick 8" will be his last book (the final unpublished volumes of "The Dark Tower" don't count, he says), so it would have been nice if he went out with a bang. Alas, this book is more like a banglet; it's not a whimper, but not nearly the pyrotechnics he's shown us he's capable of.

The book starts off very well indeed; a mysterious stranger pulls up to a gas station in a Buick, gets out, and disappears; the Buick turns out to be portal into another dimension that sounds like a very King-ian hell. Occasionally, weird, loathsome, obnoxious critters come out of that hell via the Buick, and humans have been drawn into it via the same route.

What makes this book a disappointment is that King has developed an annoying habit of pulling his punches. He gives us a tantalizing glimpse of that netherworld, but glimpses is all we get; the old Stephen King would have dragged us into it kicking and screaming and showed it to us in all its unspeakable horror. King used to write real horror novels; "Buick 8" is much more frustrating than frightening. I think I'll re-read a few of his early books such as "Salem's Lot", "Needful Things", and most especially "Pet Sematary", to remember what King was like when he was really at his best.

Judy Lind

Where did this weird replica of a Buick come from? Was the portal made by the same characters in "Hearts of Atlantis"? If it was, why didn't they have a problem breathing our atmosphere? Will King eventually tie it all together like he did with the entire "The Gunslinger" series? The whole point of the book is, sometimes you have to accept the fact that you aren't going to find an answer.

The troopers of Troop D, Pennsylvania State Patrol, have picked up a strange car. At first glance it looks like a Buick, except it won't run, and tests soon prove it's anything but a normal car. Then it starts chucking things out its doors and trunk, flashing brilliant lights, changing the temperature in its shed, and committing a variety of other Stephen King shinanigans. Rumor has it, it's even eaten a man. Add to this mix a teenager obsessed with his father's death in the line of duty, and thus obsessed with this car.

After dabbling through portions of THE STAND and THE DARK HALF, FROM A BUICK 8 felt like stepping off an airplane in Florida -- warm and pleasant and safe. Yes, icky things materialize from this car and the poor dog doesn't have a fighting chance, but King spent so much time detailing life as a trooper that he seemed to have forgetten he was supposed to be writing horror. What I found here was only strange.

If you love King, FROM A BUICK 8 may be one of his last freestanding novels, so by all means grab it. The writing is good, the details impeccable, the boy's hero worship touching. But the horror? Well, suffice to say, dear reader, you can curl up in bed with this one. It won't bite.

It used to be fun for Stephen King. Many of his books contained a spirit of mischief, glee and a lot of "gotchas!" "Buick 8" is a mature work, sadder and wiser, nostalgic and uncertain of the certainties. The big answer is: there is no answer.

Pennsylvania State Police, Troop D towed an abandoned car to their headquarters in 1979. Its driver had stopped for gas and disappeared. The squad discovered the car repelled dirt and self-repaired scratches, and its tire treads would not even hold a pebble. Sgt. Sandy Dearborn decides the "car" ("because you have to call it something") merits further investigation and stores it in the barracks unused Shed B---and there it remains for the next thirty years, with only Troop D aware of just how strange this thing is.

In the present, a grieving son of Trooper Wilcox (who had brought the car in) is trying to get closure on his father's sudden death by vehicular homicide. Ned helps out around the barracks and is given temporary duty during his summer before college. He wants to know the story of the Buick. The sergeant and troopers decide to tell him---of the "lightquakes" (a Stephen King word if I ever heard one!), the strange and disgusting creatures the car would bring forth, the disappearing of Trooper Ennis and the glimpses of alternate universes. Different troopers tell the story, Sandy taking the lead. Sandy emphasizes that the "goings-on" were intermittent, not a daily thing, and weeks and months would go by with nothing happening at all. Troop D would almost forget the Buick. Ned is an impatient listener and his interest in the car becomes compulsive.

The 1979 references were so nostalgic and ephemeral, I felt we were talking about 100 years ago rather than thirty. I had a slight aggravation with the esprit de corps of Troop D. Not just Sandy, but all of them seemed to have no life outside of the State Troopers. Their loyalty was first and foremost to the Troop, then the State Police, and way down on the list: family, friends and outside interests. When they were off-duty, they gathered at the barracks; they even slept and ate there.

King's emphasis that day-to-day life frequently transcends the wonder of the supernatural in Shed B was hard on the pace of the story. If Troop D can forget for months at a time, so can the reader. It is true that we cannot constantly and obsessively be aware of our own mortality and where we fit in the universe, but we do need the focus for King's story to have maximum impact. "Buick 8" was not meant to be presented as a leisurely told tale spread over many years. I think it would have worked better as a novella.

I would call "From a Buick 8" medium-King. A race to the bookstore for all diehard Kings fans (me); others might want to wait for the paperback.
-sweetmolly- Amazon Reviewer

I recently bought 'From a Buick 8' and after finishing it, surprisingly, in two days, I decided to write and read some other reviews of it. I can't help but think that some of the other reviewers may have missed the point of this book. Yes, the plot does bear certain (very) superficial resemblances to 'Christine,' but really, the only resemblance is that both books are about strange cars. Now, keep in mind that I am not a idolatrous King fan, I am more than willing to call a book bad if it is bad *cough- Dreamcatcher- cough* but the fact is that this book is far from bad, in fact, it is very well written and entertaining. The point of this story is that some questions simply have no answers, and perhaps it is better that way. Just what was that Buick (or whatever it was)? We will never know, just as the troopers in the story never really know. I suppose that if you go into this book expecting gratuitous bloodfests and a titanic confrontation between good and evil at the end to wrap everything up in a nice little package, then you will probably be disappointed. However, if you start with an open mind and no preconceptions, I think you will be pleased. I certainly was. Just don't expect all of your questions to be answered at the end. At the end of it all, it is a work about unanswered questions, and the author even hammers this point home several times during the narrative. The mystery of the car is the truly terrifying thing about this story. The Buick is an object that we truly cannot explain away, that does not disappear when the lights are turned on, that really HAS no explanation. Overall, I highly recommend this work, although it is far from King's best (that award goes to 'Desperation' or maybe 'It.') King fans couldn't go wrong with this one, but you probably should wait for the paperback, unless you can get it in an inexpensive book club deal like I did.

A sad boy, a bad car and the twists of fate... Sounds like a rehash of "Christine", right? Wrong. "Buick 8" is nothing like "Christine". The Buick is from another world, maybe even another dimesion. Christine was definitely from hell. Ned Wilcox is grieving but he's no high school loser, like Arnie Cunnigham. Christine deliberately destroyed anyone who messed with her or Arnie. The Buick occasionally eats people who just happen to be around. So enough about Christine.

"Buick 8" is quite different from Steven King's other works. 90% of the novel is told in flash backs and by several different people, living and dead. The book gets off to a slow start, (this is deliberate, I think),smacks the reader with great big gobs of horror and then pulls up to an abrupt end.

As usual King takes ordinary folks, puts them in a hideous situation and makes the reader care about them. The good, the bad and the pathetic are all lovingly portrayed. I loved Curtis Wilcox, I liked Sandy and pitied George and Eddie and Mr.Dillon (especially Mr. Dillon). My major complaints were about young Ned and Arky, both of whom seemed a bit overdrawn to me. My only other real complaint has to do with logic. In all the years that the monstrous Buick sits in Shed B and after witnessing all the ghastly things it could do why didn't any of the troopers try to destroy it?

I enjoyed Buick 8 but it didn't thrill me or keep me up all night. It's a very good book full of great characters and incredible scenses but it doesn't have the same power or magic that King's earlier books had. Still, it does entertain and I'm sure it will be appreciated by Stephen King fans both old and new.

Like a burlesque sketch that is funny for a minute or two but gets boring when nothing new happens for another half hour, King gives us an interesting premise that goes almost nowhere for the rest of the book. An old Buick is left at a gas station by a mysterious person who disappears, as does one of the investigating State Police of Troop D in Western PA; thereafter, the car is stored at the barracks and occasionally puts on laser light shows, emits strange creatures from its trunk, and similar horrible stuff. The story is told through the voices of the many troopers who have watched it over a period of twenty years or so. Other than drawing out the characters of that diverse group, as well as that of the young dead trooper's son, Ned, sort of the central listener, we're not treated to much other action or plot development. Sure, signs of King's effective rendering of scary events sparked our interest from time to time, but overall the whole book was like a one line gag repeated ad nausea. As far as we're concerned, this tale would have fit nicely into one of Kings many short story compilations; but we didn't feel the story and events were meaty enough to warrant some 350 pages, culminating in a fairly lackluster ending.

This was by no means one of King's scary, suspenseful, gripping novels of the bizarre and terrible -- it was just one small idea that burned brightly for a few minutes then went out. For our money, we'd skip it.