Name: From a Buick 8
Rating: 3.385714285714286 (35 reviews)
ISBN: 9780743417686

Stephen King

WANT TO GO FOR A RIDE...? In a secret shed behind the barracks of the Pennsylvania State Police, Troop D, there's a cherry Buick Roadmaster no one has touched in years -- because there's more power under the hood than anyone can handle....

From a Buick 8

There is a secret hidden in Shed B in the state police barracks in Statler, Pennsylvania. A secret that has drawn troopers for twenty years - terrified yet irresistibly tempted to look at its chrome fenders, silver grille and exotic exhaust system.

Young Ned Wilcox has started coming by the barracks: mowing the lawn, washing the windows, shovelling snow; it's a boy's way of holding on to his father - recently killed in a strange road accident by another Buick.

And one day Ned peers through the windows of Shed B and discovers the family secret. Like his father, Ned wants answers. He deserves answers. And the secret begins to stir . . .
--back cover

Sian Wadey

I have always been a massive fan of Stephen King but I had read many negative reviews about From a Buick 8. It seems to be a Marmite of a book, people either love it or hate it. The concept intrigued me, but it took me a while to get into it. While reading this I was on placement at a primary school, had lots of friends' birthdays and house sitting a menagerie of animals, so I think tiredness overcame my interest in the book. If I was lucky, I read a chapter a night. 
Eventually once I got started I couldn't wait to read every page. I wanted to know what would come through next and how the police force would react to it.
One thing Stephen King does exceptionally is write characters. The whole team seem to come to life right off the page, from the naive Ned to the eccentric caretaker. Everybody's voice was clear in my head and distinctive. 
I can understand the point that many people make, which is that nothing happens in this book. And to a degree that's true. But this book just demonstrates that it's the story that counts, the reader is on a journey with these characters, feeling their emotions, their sufferings, their joy. I was quite happy with the ending, there was a little twist and some kind of conclusion although everything wasn't wrapped up in a neat bow. I have become used to King's elusive endings.
What I think this book is really about, is grief. Ned needs the members of Troop D to tell him about everything that happened and his Dad's obsession in order for him to move on and put the past behind him. 
As always, Stephen King didn't let me down and I will always read anything he writes. I already have a long list. I would also really enjoy this as a film. But I can't see anything on the horizon.

Celeste Richardson

From a Buick 8 was way more interesting than I expected. Honestly, this is one of the few novels in King’s backlist that I would have had no qualms skipping if it hadn’t been on the suggested expanded Dark Tower reading list I found here. I had no desire to read about a supernatural car. Freaky inanimate objects don’t really do it for me. Most of the time, anyway. I should’ve remembered the topiaries in The Shining. Because this unnatural Buick ended up being pretty darn creepy. I was expecting Christine or James Dean’s Little Bastard. That’s so not what was delivered.

I was wondering what on earth a book about a car could possibly have to do with King’s Dark Tower series. Even before I reached the halfway mark, my wondering had ceased. While I won’t know for certain how it ties in until I’ve read the rest of the main Dark Tower series, I have no trouble seeing how this preternatural car could relate to the bigger story. And some of the things that pop out of it make the lobstrosities of The Drawing of the Three seem cuddly and banal. Seriously, this “car” is hella creepy, y’all.
“It's funny how close the past is, sometimes. Sometimes it seems as if you could almost reach out and touch it. Only who really wants to?”
While I wasn’t that interested in a story about a car, that wasn’t the only part of the jacket copy that gave me pause. I had no real desire to read a story so deeply entrenched in the world of law enforcement. However, I ended up falling in love with Troop D. The ways in which they accepted the son of a fallen officer so easily and completely into the fold warmed my heart. And I loved the way in which they told the boy the story of his father’s tie with the Buick. There was something ancient and almost classical about the way in which the tale was told. It felt like a deconstructed Greek chorus, and something about the tight-knit relationships and the reluctant but determined way in which they imparted this tale and all its oddities won me over completely.
“…the whole idea of curious cats attaining satisfaction seemed slightly absurd. The world rarely finishes its conversations.” 
I felt like the main theme of this story isn’t grief, but instead the dangerous seduction of curiosity, and how closely related it is to obsession. This is a topic King has covered time and again, but this particular story felt more like it danced around the theme instead of meeting head on. And honestly, that worked well here. Something random that I loved about this book was the complete lack of sex. Sex is where King always loses me, and it was refreshing not to have to worry about that in this novel. 

Stephen King can make seriously anything eerie and disturbing, and From a Buick 8 is a prime example. I love it when I go into a book with low expectations and find myself pleasantly surprised. Also, it got me one step closer to reaching the Tower. I’m getting closer and closer, and I am insanely excited to be nearing the end.

You can find  this review and more at Novel Notions.

Carolina Santos

3.5? I need to think about it.
Not what I expected, but I enjoyed it a lot :)

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.

Mahasin S Ameen

** spoiler alert **
           Big Bird is the stuff of nightmares for Stephen King.

Emma Nash

Angela Crow

A. D. Knapp

Colton Ray

Jayme Cochrane

Melissa M.

Erik Wallace

Rhiannon Mansfield

On the heels of his hugely successful "Dreamcatchers" King delivers another classic novel about boys, men, and a terrifying force only they can contain.

From a Buick 8

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