Mr. King is writing just to write with this one. There is nothing appealing about this novel. He should have left well enough alone. ( )

Like "The Colorado Kid," "From A Buick 8" uses the narrative device of having old codgers tell a young person about something that happened in the past. The story begins in 1979 when the mysterious Buick is abandoned at a gas station in western Pennsylvania. Most of the book consists of the now-middle-aged state troopers who impounded the car relating the events over the past 20 years that convinced them the Buick is actually a portal to another world.

This book is far more philosophical than typical early King novels – not a lot of action and not much resolution. The Buick becomes a symbol of the mysteries of life and the nature of obsession. Those who prefer classic King might not appreciate this book, but I enjoyed it. Stephen King has become so adept at character voice that I can hear each one of them speaking. And occasionally there are bits that sound more like poetry than prose.

Another King novel with something of the same flavor is "Lisey's Story" -- a lot of mysterious and unexplained happenings, with the reader left to draw his own conclusions. ( )

Some of his best writing, period; definitely one of his best books post-accident. I read this once or twice a year. Where some of his later books insert his accident midstream, interrupting a story that was otherwise about something else, this one integrates it smoothly and binds it to the story inextricably. It's a book about sons and fathers, about growing up, about questions that don't have answers, about the strangeness of worlds unseen. And it's also a book about this REALLY creepy car that turns up one day...

It's told to a boy just about to graduate from high school, by people who knew and worked with his father, all of whom were tied up in the mystery/horror of the car in some way; the voices are strong and distinct, and the stories themselves were highly disturbing. I kind of loved this one! ( )

While From a Buick 8 is neither as strong nor as compelling as King’s best books, it’s eerie that the central theme so closely paralleled my own thoughts in recent months. On the surface, this book is about a strange car that looks like a Buick, but only if you don’t examine it too closely, because then you’ll see that it is like no other car ever imagined. Abandoned at a western Pennsylvania gas station by its equally weird driver, the Buick is impounded by the State Police and kept out back of the barracks in Shed B, where it occasionally shows signs of life. Sometimes things come out of its trunk, and sometimes people go in.

That’s the plot in a nutshell – your basic horror yarn. But this book is not about a Buick from another dimension, not really. It’s about the senselessness of death. It’s about how we, as human beings, try to impose some sort of pattern and meaning on our lives, when everything really is just chains of random events linked together. There are no easy answers to all these questions what we all ask, but which really come down to one thing: Why? We can’t even hope to understand death, no matter how much science we apply to it, no matter how many frustrated emotions we throw at it, not matter what we do.

So, while FaB8 is not the intricate, suspenseful epic story that characterizes my favorite King books, there is a lot going on here – a lot more than in many of King’s more ordinary horror tales. Perhaps that’s why it feels so unsatisfying at the end – because that’s the point. The reader – like the character of young Ned, who lost his father in a traffic stop gone horrifically wrong – will never get any satisfying answers, and in the end, the reader – like Sandy Dearborn, the cop who has lived with the weird Buick for two decades – will just have to accept that. ( )

I love this book, but it was not one of King's best works. A mysterious car that is a portal to another world spews out monsters that die immediately (because they can't breathe in our atmosphere) and also sucks people into the other world. Creepy, yes. Could it have been creepier? And improve the story? I'm not sure. It is still good enough to recommend. ( )