Harriet Klausner's Review Archive
In 2001, a drunk driver kills Trooper Curt Wilco. His son Ned starts hanging around D Troop and Curt's peers take care of him. It's only a matter of time before he sees the 1957 Buick in Shed B. The troopers all take turns telling the high school senior what the car has done over the years including causing one trooper to disappear. It periodically gives off a weird light show and from time to time it regurgitates strange objects and life forms. Ned becomes caught up in the story as deeply as his father was enthralled by the car.
It is always amazing how Stephen king can take an ordinary object like a car and twist it into such a frightening terror that readers will never be able to forget it. The '57 Buick is more than just a car, but what it is become is the subject of reader imagination. The structure of FROM A BUICK 8 is absorbing as each trooper tells Ned about his dealings with "the car" leading the audience to think twice before entering a strange vehicle.