From a Buick 8

Christine For Grown-Ups

Interestingly, the menace in what is said to be King's last novel (minus the final Dark Tower installments), is principally psychological. The Buick 8 in question has been stashed in a storage shed for over twenty years, breathing, alive, sucking the warmth and very life out of the air around it. The son of the recently-killed cop who, in 1979, found the car at a gas station (but where was the driver?) becomes obsessed by it, trying to figure out the answer to the big question: Why does the car make people disappear? From a Buick 8 is a quieter, more oblique, subtler book than King's earlier work, and is, in some essential writerly ways, much better. King has recently shown a greater sensitivity to character (his people here are almost Russell Banksian), detail, and nuance. While the prose style in some of the first-person sections tends to veer into down-home-type hokiness, From a Buick 8 is a rich and richly entertaining book, a grown-up's version of Christine.

Adrienne Miller is Esquire's literary editor.

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