From a Buick 8

Starred review from June 3, 2002
A tinted review in adult Forecasts indicates a book that's of exceptional importance to our readers, but hasn't received a starred or boxed review. FROM A BUICK 8 Stephen King. Scribner, $28 (368p) ISBN 0-7432-1137-5 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.

December 2, 2002
An assembly of readers performs King's latest, which is told from several different perspectives. This subdued, vaguely creepy tale is about an extraordinary force that infiltrates the lives of the people who work at a police barracks in rural Pennsylvania. King displays his masterful knack for building tension, but this work is more about the effect of events on the central characters' psyches than it is about the events themselves. In that vein, the portrayals of the characters, their inner monologues and their interactions are vital to the success of this audio, and the entire cast does a fine job. Rebhorn serves as an able narrator and provides a brief, chilling portrait of the sallow, mysterious man who brings an otherworldly '54 Buick into the life of Troop D before vanishing. Davidson handles the inner turmoil of Sgt. Sandy Dearborn and the youthful stubbornness of troubled Ned Wilcox. Among the other highlights is Tobolowsky's perfectly inflected Swedish accent for Arky, the troop's janitor. With only a few, appropriately wistful notes of guitar at the beginning and end, the production is kept to a minimum. The approach works well for a quieter book that relies less on shock than much of King's previous work. Simultaneous release with the Scribner hardcover (Forecasts, June 3).