From a Buick 8   by Stephen King

The story is shallow -- a strange car turns up which every now and then erupts in a firework display and occasionally spits strange alien creatures of the boot. More occasionally a human disappears, presumably sucked into the self-same boot.

Despite the fact that the story is told alternatively as an oration in the present, with copious flashbacks to first-person narratives in the past, the story unfolds very linearly, and despite the fact that things happen strange enough to be unpredictable, nothing really comes as much of a surprise. In places there is enough tension for this to be a page-turner, but mostly it is a yarn.

The characters are shallow and not all that well explored, but they are articulated well enough and come across as believable simpletons which, I think, was the intended effect.