Thinner

Thinner by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Overweight lawyer William Halleck strikes and kills a gypsy woman who is crossing the street. He is acquitted but a relative of the woman touches Halleck's cheek and curses him. Now he's losing three pounds a day with no end in sight. Can he track down the gypsy man and get him to remove the curse or will he waste away to nothing?

What's so scary about a fat guy losing weight? A lot, it turns out. Never has getting a tug job in the car from your wife gotten someone into so much trouble. I felt for old William Halleck and his curse. I also shared his anger toward his wife because of her reaction to the whole thing.

As with most King/Bachman books from this era, the story is shorter than his later works, more killer and less filler. Bachman references Stephen King a couple times, weird since now everyone and their senile grandma knows the two are one and the same.

The more King I read, the more I realize he returns to the same concepts repeatedly, be it unprepared people going up against staggering odds, preaching against over-reliance on technology, or fascination with drifter/carnie culture and people getting shot in the hand with slingshots. Different parts of this book seemed like dry runs for parts of Wizard and Glass, Joyland, and Doctor Sleep.

If I had to pick out something to gripe about, it would be the involvement of Ginelli. It seemed like Halleck just stepped aside and let Ginelli do all the heavy lifting near the end. The ending more than made up for that, though.

Four out of five stars. I'm going to go eat something.

View all my reviews