What gives?

[Coog]

I both liked and disliked this book. What I didn’t like is the story. It’s about a car that from now and then spews out some disgusting stuff from another dimension. People scream and react to it, and then it repeats untill the car for some reason ”cools” of. What I did like was the thick and wonderfull ”Kingish” atmosphere in the book, the touch of nostalgia of days passed, warm afternoons on the porch when no one speaks of whats in the garage, even though everyone knows. Stephen King is one of few writers that can actually intrigue me with his writing alone – even if the story don’t hold up.

So more positive than negative then? Yes, by a broad margin.

[Homer403]

Cooqi have to agree with you! I thought that there was some 'lazy' story telling going on there!SK could have come up with something better than a "thing" in the trunk.I mean come -on! At least in Dreamcatcher he described and sort of named the "monster".To me ,it seemed that might of been under pressure to meet a deadline! Funny though, others think it is a great story!

[Alexandra19]

Hi,

Happy to read this thread because From a Buick 8 is the SK book I dislike to most, at a point that I was almost angry when I finished it (and I had to force myself).
I understand that Stephen didn't want to let us know where the car comes from, how it has been moved from its where to ours, etc, but I still think there is a gap between avoiding useless explainations and not saying anything at all.
I just couldn't get into it. I read a few pages and realised that I didn't care either what kind of a car this one exactly was because it just bored me.
I had no empathy for any of the characters, and if the Buick has swallowed them all, I wouldn't have mind - neither would I have care if the Buick was destroyed : I understand that things don't necesseraly need an explaination for the reason they are here, but then what's the point writing so many pages about them ?

[Andrés A. S.]

Imagine this happens in real life....you find a car which is a portal between realms or a big f... UFO, or a monster..it's highly unlikely that you will ever know where it came from. That's it. You don't always need an omniscient character telling you "ohhh, this is the reincarnation of Ramses" or whatever.
To me this books is realistic...and the ending is SUPERB, one of Sk's best.

[JohnDalglish]

I both liked and disliked this book.

Hi,

I know exactly what you mean.

Initially I was very disappointed with it, bur it REALLY improved to me on subsequent re-reading.

Long days and pleasant nights

[xkittyx]

I re-read it in March. The only other time I had read this book was when it was first published, back in 2002. So, needless to say, I didn't remember much aside from the basic premise of the story: the car and the things it does. So it was nice sinking into this story all over again, getting to know the characters, the "Troop D Family". Stephen King does such a good job of creating and fleshing out characters, I feel like I know them, this whole story felt like I was there at the barracks, sitting on the smoking bench with the group while they told their story. They had a good bond, which made the story even better, they were people who knew each other well, and even though the parts were told from different characters' points of view, it all flowed so well together. A sucker for animals, I even loved Mister Dillon, the barracks dog, and got a little teary eyed for him. But of course the best part was the car. The car was what made me keep flying through the pages, desperately clinging to the hope that I would get some answers, just like Curt and Ned, even though I knew I wouldn't get the answers I wanted. I know what it was that drove the car to the gas station, but why did he disappear? What other world did the car belong to, I wanted more than the tiny glimpse Sandy Dearborn got into that world towards the end. I wanted more information! But, I do get greedy like that sometimes, and have to learn to deal with leaving things up to my own imagination... All in all, I thought it was a great story, held together by great characters, with a tiny sprinkling of another world tossed in.

[Daniel Lee Severn]

I always thought that it was a portal into the todash spaces, I knew the characters wouldn't know what that was but having read DT, it seemed to me that the ending was very fitting. Just like others have said on here before, it was very realistic considering what we would go through if the Buick 8 landed in our back yard, we wouldn't have many answers as to why it was there or where it came from.

[Shadow0475]

I too enjoyed From a Buick 8, probably more than I did Christine. This novel, along with Hearts in Atlantis and Cell, are my favorites from Kings more recent ventures. I did not enjoy Duma Key, Liseys Story, or Bag of Bones (as well as the three final Dark Towers books) as much as most people on the SKMB seemed to have.

That being said, I can't wait for Under the Dome.

This is just my take (so take it for what it is worth), but 'From A Buick 8' is only incidentally a 'horror' novel. At its heart, the story is about a boy's search for answers--why did my father die? how do I deal with it and go on? what is my place in life?--and the final realization that some questions, some mysteries, simply have no answers. Sometimes all we can do is protect ourselves and others from the unknown as best we can (as Troop D did), and outwait the danger.
Check out Sandy's Instruction to Ned after the Buick nearly gets them at the end--"You don't know where YOU came from, or where you're going, either, do you?...Don't spend more than an hour a day shaking your fist at God...THERE ARE BUICKS EVERYWHERE" To me, this doesn't mean that there are 'alien transporters' all over--only that life is a series of unanawerable questions.
This is NOT Christine--the only similarity is that a car figures in both. The REAL 'companion piece' to From a Buick 8 is The Colorado Kid, which also deals with the need to accept and move on from unanswerable mysteries.
This is maybe the best Audio adaptation of a Stephen King book I've ever heard; everyone, but especially Bruce Davison and James Rebhorn, captures the tone of the novel perfectly.
Just my 2 cents

[Daniel Lee Severn]

I suggest you do a re-read, trust me, this book will make your skin crawl. IMO it is better than Christine, the writing is is more crisp, the characters are more fleshed out, and it has an other worldliness that many of King's earlier books don't have. And for all of those people that say they didn't like it because it didn't have any resolution, re-read it, it definitely has resolution.