From a Buick 8 [Anglais] [Relié]

Stephen King, an evil car, and a teenage boy coming to terms with the fragility and randomness of life.... Wait, haven't we read this before? Diehard King fans, worry not. Aside from the titular car playing a main role in the story, From a Buick 8 could not be less like King's 1983 masterpiece, Christine. If anything, this story resembles King's serial novel The Green Mile, with reminiscing police characters flashing back on bizarre events that took place decades earlier.

The book's intriguing plot revolves around the troopers of Pennsylvania State Patrol Troop D, who come into possession of what at first appears to be a vintage automobile. Closer inspection and experimentation conducted by the troopers reveal that this car's doors (and trunk) sometimes open to another dimension populated by gross-out creatures straight out of ... well, a Stephen King novel. As the plot progresses, the veteran troopers' tales of these visits from interdimensional nasties, and the occasional "lightquakes" put on by the car, are passed on to the son of a fallen comrade whose fascination with the car bordered on dangerous obsession.

Unlike earlier King works, there is no active threat here; no monster is stalking the heroes of the story, unless you count the characters' own curiosity. In past books, King has terrorized readers with vampires, werewolves, a killer clown, ghosts, and aliens, but this time around, the bogeyman is a more passive, cerebral threat, and one for which they don't make a ready-to-wear Halloween costume--man's fascination with and fear of the unknown. While some readers may find this tale less exciting than the horror master's earlier works, From a Buick 8 is 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. --Benjamin Reese --Ce texte fait référence à lédition Relié .

An assembly of readers performs King's latest, which is told from several different perspectives. This subdued, vaguely creepy tale is about an extraordinary force that infiltrates the lives of the people who work at a police barracks in rural Pennsylvania. King displays his masterful knack for building tension, but this work is more about the effect of events on the central characters' psyches than it is about the events themselves. In that vein, the portrayals of the characters, their inner monologues and their interactions are vital to the success of this audio, and the entire cast does a fine job. Rebhorn serves as an able narrator and provides a brief, chilling portrait of the sallow, mysterious man who brings an otherworldly '54 Buick into the life of Troop D before vanishing. Davidson handles the inner turmoil of Sgt. Sandy Dearborn and the youthful stubbornness of troubled Ned Wilcox. Among the other highlights is Tobolowsky's perfectly inflected Swedish accent for Arky, the troop's janitor. With only a few, appropriately wistful notes of guitar at the beginning and end, the production is kept to a minimum. The approach works well for a quieter book that relies less on shock than much of King's previous work.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

King's villain is one rotten car, a Buick Roadmaster penned up behind the state police barracks that seems to have been responsible for the disappearance of several people. King himself had a near-fatal run-in with an auto shortly after finishing the first draft, an eerie coincidence he addresses in an afterword.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This time it's another crazed car, a Buick Roadmaster with some serious quirks. Its powers come from somewhere other than its V-8. It blasts colored lights of such brightness that ordinary sunglasses are useless. People and small animals disappear into its vortex. D Troop of Pennsylvania's State Police keeps it in Shed B. Young Ned's trooper father died recently, and he wants information. The audio is narrated by six fine readers who explain what happened to Ned's father and their own strange experiences with the car even as they witness Ned's growing obsession with it. Written in chapter monologues, FROM A BUICK 8 is a perfect fit for audio. The performances are as fascinating as the plot. Few do this genre better, and while this is not his strongest work, Stephen King is still king. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition CD .

The book King was writing when he was almost killed by a drunk driver begins with Pennsylvania state trooper Curt Wilcox being killed by a drunk driver. When Curt's son, Ned, starts doing chores and learning everyday procedures at the station, Troop D virtually adopts him, and when he discovers the cherry '54 Buick in out-of-the-way shed B, the troopers feel they must tell him the car's story. Towed to shed B under the aegis of veteran trooper Ennis Rafferty and rookie Curt Wilcox in 1979, it was found to have no workable engine, and it proved capable of making the air in and around it as much as 30 degrees colder than the ambient temperature. When that happened, so did other things. People and animals near it disappeared, its trunk disgorged hideous creatures, and it erupted storms of intense light. It is not-of-this-world, of course, and it utterly entranced Curt, who conducted shot-in-the-dark experiments on it before deciding it cannot be understood by humans. Now it exerts the same fascination on Ned, which leads to the capper of the series of fright events that make up the novel. Plot has seldom been King's strong suit, which is more-than-usually obvious this time because there are nearly no scene changes, and the car's shenanigans lack variety. The voices of the characters as they talk to Ned are what sustains interest and rewards reading the book, but this is no Delores Claiborne. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --Ce texte fait référence à lédition Relié .

USA Today From A Buick 8 is vintage King....[He] knows how to jolt his readers. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Poche .

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 -- and that it would be better if John Q. Public never found out about it.

Curt's avid curiosity taking the lead, 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, mowing the lawn, washing windows, shoveling snow. 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, and the secret begins to stir, not only in the minds and hearts of the veteran troopers who surround him, but in Shed B as well....

From a Buick 8 is a novel 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.

Stephen King's most recent books include Hearts in Atlantis, On Writing, Dreamcatcher, and Everything's Eventual. He is currently at work on the concluding volumes of The Dark Tower. Mr. King divides his time between Maine and Florida, and on the roads between them.