From a Buick 8

By: Stephen King

Narrated by: James Rebhorn, Bruce Davison, Becky Ann Baker

Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

Curt's avid curiosity took the lead, and 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. 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...

From a Buick 8 is an audiobook 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.

©2002 Stephen King, All Rights Reserved (P)2002 Simon & Schuster Inc., All Rights Reserved

Critic reviews

"Nearly flawless and one terrific entertainment." (Publishers Weekly)
"A wonderful example of how much King's plotting skills and literary finesse have matured over his long career. And, most of all, it's a darn creepy book." (Amazon.com)

Excellent

Been curious about this one for a long time and finally went at it. very well read and done.

absolutely wonderful performance

absolutely LOVED the narrator in this, the main Male voice was absolutely brilliant! the female voices toward the end (around chapter 9 I think) are a little bland in my opinion and are hard to follow along with but after that one brief part is over with the rest of the book was fantastic! like I said the narrator was phenomenal. solid 9/10!

Perfect! Even Stephen King would be happy!

I have the hardcover of this...The audio was just as good. Done perfectly. Thank you.

Favorite

I am a huge Stephen King fan, from a Buick eight for reasons I cannot explain is my absolutely favorite Stephen King novel. Something about the fellowship of the Pennsylvania State trooper barracks dad is portrayed in the novel inspires me, I want to be in that family

Great Listen.

Great narration. The multiple authors for the multiple characters really worked for this book.

Essence of Stephen King

Like all of King's books, this one is about memory and the psychology of the subconscious. It's about getting inside the heads of the characters and seeing what rattles around. This is about a boy who losses his father and finds a new family in the men who had shared a secret with his dad. The decision to use multiple actors fits the style of the book perfectly, and makes the structure of the book easy to follow, even though it has multiple narrators and spans 25 years. To specifically address the complaint that the book doesn't go anywhere, maybe those folks missed one of the main points of the book; the repudiation of the "childish insistence that the story must have an ending, and that the ending must hold some kind of answer." As for lack of action, I disagree strongly. Most of the "action" in any Stephen King book is actually the tension around some event that he's already told you is coming, and he does a masterful job in this, as usual. He does an amazing job of keeping the tension building for long stretches of time, without any break or chance for release. The only reason that I can come up with for why some people didn't like this book is the fact that there are parts that made me truly uncomfortable. And this wasn't the supernatural "horror" stuff, it was some of the harsh realities of police work and life.

A surprisingly enjoyable King novel

I never write reviews of books, but I had to after seeing that only negative reviews have been posted on Buick 8 so far. I guess I can understand why some people found this boring, but I am appalled to see that no one has disagreed yet.

I found Buick 8 to be a very human, very engrossing and unique tale. Yet again King takes a premise that cannot even be described (without sounding stupid) and makes it utterly believable, and at times terrifying. I respectfully disagree with the other reviewers, if you are a Stephen King fan, give Buick 8 a chance.

different, has some good ideas

This book is a slower-paced meditation on some interesting ideas about how people deal with the past, with horror, with the basic, essential mystery of how and why bad things happen to people and how we try to rationalize or understand these things. Also frankly, its got a few things to say about how a younger generation deals with these things as they're handed down from the older one. Its not a pulse-pounding narrative, but it does get you thinking and has some unique threads in it.

I love old SK but...

I bought a physical copy of this book years ago but couldn't get through the slow plodding pace. I picked the audio book hoping it would grab at some point. Unfortunately it did get my attention until the last 1/4 of the story. If you are a dark tower fan this has the slow pacing of Wizard in Glass and a pretty good connection to both the dark tower cycle and the Mist.

Not a Christine style book

I went into this story thinking that it would be a Christine esque book but it wasn’t. Its more along the lines of Close encounters of the 3rd kind. Great voice acting with Multi person cast .