Day 275 – 52 Books in 52 Weeks

Stephen King’s From a Buick 8 had so much potential, yet fell short (by a lot, actually) of what Stephen could have done with this story.

The story is about a car that’s not a car… it’s more of a teleporter… that gets left at a gas station by a mysterious dark stranger who disappears behind the gas station. The police take the car back to HQ, becomes a pet project of Curtis Wilcox (whose son, Ned, comes to help out at the HQ after his dad is killed by a drunk driver) … and the mysterious things begin. One of their own disappears. The car produces lightning storms. It makes the temperature drop inside of its garage. Another person disappears. Strange animals and plants appear in the garage.

Ned is trying to cope with the death of his father and when he asks about the mint condition classic car out in the garage, Sarge Sandy gathers the troop (Troop D) and tells the tale of how they came across the car twenty years earlier and about all of the weird things that it does.

Lots of potential, but sadly, King rehashes virtually the same weird instance just substituting what comes out of the trunk (or what gets sucked into it). The chapters flash back and forth between present and past, and often switches point of view – Sandy’s telling the story, or Phil, or Arky, or Shirley… which would have been cool if they had different takes on the car, but like I said, it’s just rehashing the previous story with a new monster.

Anyway, if you want to kill a couple of hours, pick a different book. This one really isn’t worth the time. Very disappointing.