Book Review: From a Buick 8

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

From a Buick 8     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Stephen King
Class/Genre:   Fiction   Horror
Scribner, Sept 2002, 368 pp.

In 1970, a car stops at a gas station in the small western Pennsylvania town of Statler. The driver asks the attendant to fill up before he disappears in the vicinity of the bathroom. When the customer fails to return, the attendant calls the state troopers. Troop D company impounds the vehicle and take it to shed B as they realize that this car is dangerous and not of this world.

In 2001, a drunk driver kills Trooper Curt Wilco. His son Ned starts hanging around D Troop and Curt’s peers take care of him. It’s only a matter of time before he sees the 1957 Buick in Shed B. The troopers all take turns telling the high school senior what the car has done over the years including causing one trooper to disappear. It periodically gives off a weird light show and from time to time it regurgitates strange objects and life forms. Ned becomes caught up in the story as deeply as his father was enthralled by the car.

It is always amazing how Stephen king can take an ordinary object like a car and twist it into such a frightening terror that readers will never be able to forget it. The ‘57 Buick is more than just a car, but what it is become is the subject of reader imagination. The structure of FROM A BUICK 8 is absorbing as each trooper tells Ned about his dealings with "the car" leading the audience to think twice before entering a strange vehicle.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner