From a Buick 8

In a nutshell: I disliked it because it felt like the author wasn't sure of himself, like he wasn't fully committed to story.

Minor (?) spoilers follow.

First, the story involves a tragedy in which a police officer was killed on the job. The death was, not surprisingly, violent and gruesome. That's not the problem. The problem was that the repetition serves no worthwhile purpose. It's as if the author thinks we might've missed just how painful and brutal it was. Like when a kid tells you the same story three or four times because they're not getting the reaction they want out of you. "Yes, okay, I get it! It was awful, move on!" I felt like he was working way too hard to let us know just how "bad" it was.More significantly, the ending was at odds with the rest of the story. So much of the book seems to be saying, "Sometimes, bad things happen. You don't get to know why. You just have to move on, somehow." That makes sense considering what was going on in Stephen King's life when he wrote this.I liked that theme. I expected King would bring it home in the ending, that the story would land on some deeper, genuinely unsettling mystery. Instead, the window is thrown wide (even if only for a moment) and we get a view into the "other place" that's the source of all the weird creatures. I imagine some people wanted that view, but for me it was a let-down.The other world, full of savage, terrifying creatures is a cheap idea on its own. It's not bad, it just has no depth, no use beyond a source of graphic violence (which, for some folks, is enough on its own; to each their own).But the car...? Where in the hell did the car come from? Or the guy who left it at the station, who sounded "like he was talking through a mouthful of jelly"? These signs of sentience in the midst of that otherwise animalistic, violent world are what added interest. And I feel like they were neglected, abandoned.

In the end, I loved a lot of the ideas in the book. I felt it just wandered too far off the most interesting paths.

If you want to be told when to be scared rather than to actually be scared, this is the King book for you! A sparkly/glowing Buick-that-isn't-a-Buick eating some people (and a few local fauna) “off-screen” doesn't make for a scary read. When you combine that with the reactions of the cops, which were almost comical in their absurdity, it makes the Buick seem less of a threat and more just a gimmick. King is ASTOUNDING at terrifying me, conjuring imagery in my imagination that haunts me for YEARS. None of that was in this. A lot of the time, he falls back on “oh, it's just too terrible for the human brain to conceive of such horrors” in an almost lazy ode to Lovecraft.

Oh, and the filing cabinet...don't even get me started. How long was that thing just rotting in that bag before they pulled it out to do an investigative autopsy?!?

has fit for ten minutes

ahem

Despite the negatives, King's uncanny ability to make ANYTHING “fun” to read pulled me through. I did feel unnecessarily called out by Sandy in his view of Ned “feeling entitled to a story” because that's how I felt through much of this. I think, that really might have been the moral for me. “Let it go. You can't and certainly WON'T always get the answers to everything.” The characters weren't nearly as fleshed out for me as other King characters, but it's also one of the shortest King books I've read, soooo...

In an ironic twist, considering what most people tell Mr. King, I truly liked the ending. I'm happy to know that Ned is safe, that the Buick-not-a-Buick is dying, and that Brian Lippy got his swastika-wearing ass eaten up by “something”.

This gets to stay home on my shelves by JUST a margin, and I truly blame my King bias for that.