Thinner (original 1984; edição 1996)

Achei bem meh. Porém admito que em partes considerei uma nota 3.5. ( )

Ah, Stephen. How I've missed you. Kind of.

Thinner is the final Bachman book, or at least the last one published before Richard Bachman "died". I remember reading something by Stephen King where he explained that his stories tend to have happy endings because life tends to have happy endings. It's just that newspapers don't fill themselves up with "Steve Bobbertson made it home safely from work yesterday, again" when they could instead try to find an alliterative headline for some one-in-a-thousand tragedy.

The Bachman books, he continued, were his chance to express the one-in-a-thousand miserable-as-all-sin endings in life. Bachman's [b:The Stand|9668571|The Stand|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1289334155s/9668571.jpg|1742269] would have ended sans the hand of God; his [b:The Gunslinger|5098|The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1)|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1279804951s/5098.jpg|46575] would have ended with Roland being eaten whole by giant lobsters, and the Dark Tower falling.

Of course, happy or sad endings don't make or break books, but getting into a Bachman book you can't help but suspect things are going to end badly, even when they're looking hunky dory with less than a page to go and then OH, GOD, SHE ATE THE PIE.

Anyway, this is resembling a ramble rather than a review. The book is okay. It shuffles along towards its inevitable conclusion, and ultimately arrives. When Bachman/King did this in [b:The Long Walk|9014|The Long Walk|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165856860s/9014.jpg|522169] I found it fantastic, after all that book is about shuffling along to an inevitable conclusion. Here I was just keen to get to the end. ( )

Ah, Stephen. How I've missed you. Kind of.

Thinner is the final Bachman book, or at least the last one published before Richard Bachman "died". I remember reading something by Stephen King where he explained that his stories tend to have happy endings because life tends to have happy endings. It's just that newspapers don't fill themselves up with "Steve Bobbertson made it home safely from work yesterday, again" when they could instead try to find an alliterative headline for some one-in-a-thousand tragedy.

The Bachman books, he continued, were his chance to express the one-in-a-thousand miserable-as-all-sin endings in life. Bachman's [b:The Stand|9668571|The Stand|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1289334155s/9668571.jpg|1742269] would have ended sans the hand of God; his [b:The Gunslinger|5098|The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1)|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1279804951s/5098.jpg|46575] would have ended with Roland being eaten whole by giant lobsters, and the Dark Tower falling.

Of course, happy or sad endings don't make or break books, but getting into a Bachman book you can't help but suspect things are going to end badly, even when they're looking hunky dory with less than a page to go and then OH, GOD, SHE ATE THE PIE.

Anyway, this is resembling a ramble rather than a review. The book is okay. It shuffles along towards its inevitable conclusion, and ultimately arrives. When Bachman/King did this in [b:The Long Walk|9014|The Long Walk|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165856860s/9014.jpg|522169] I found it fantastic, after all that book is about shuffling along to an inevitable conclusion. Here I was just keen to get to the end. ( )

This is really a 3.5 star read, just rounded up to 4.

It's weird. I think I may have read this book before, but now after finishing it this weekend, I have doubts. I maybe just watched the movie and that's where I was recalling most of my information from. I honestly don't like the Bachman books that much that Stephen King wrote. I recall "The Long Walk" and thought how it made no sense to me and how impossible it would be for teenagers to walk 4 miles an hour. I tried that one day at the gym and had to lightly jog. I also remember reading "The Running Man" and went, eh liked the movie better. So now with "Thinner" I have to say that neither the movie or book impressed me much. You have one man dealing with a curse that is slowly killing him. He blames his wife. A lot. Most of the book slows down in the last 1/3 and I was just bored until the ending.

"Thinner" deals with the after effects of Billy Halleck (Bill or William depending on who is speaking to him) running over and killing a Romani woman. FYI, be prepared for King to refer to them as Gypsies. I have learned since I got older that's a derogatory term for Romani people, so I am not using it here in my review besides the first occurrence. Due to the people he knows and a lot of the towns people hating the Romani people, Billy isn't tried for hit and run, instead the case is dismissed. An older man who is the head of the group of Romani people comes up to Bill and touches his cheek and says "thinner." From there Bill starts to lose weight and struggles to push out of his mind hitting and killing the older woman and the man who touched him.

Most of the book is Billy justifying what happened and saying how it's not really his fault. Instead it's mostly his wife and the older woman's fault. His wife's fault since she started trying to (makes hand motion) while he was driving and the older woman for not looking both ways. What made me laugh and sigh about though was Billy doesn't take any ownership of the fact that the judge and police officer who helped with things would not have done so if not for him. So you have all three of these men being punished, but it seems as if Billy is the one that got off the lightest.

King does take some time developing the characters. You understand Billy's relationship with his wife and daughter a lot. You also get a look at the secrets a town holds that get revealed when Billy starts going after answers with his doctor, the judge's wife, and the police man. Eventually the book goes sideways when King introduces a friend of Billy's who is going to take care of getting the curse off of him, Ginelli.

Ginelli is shown to be a bit off. He goes after the Romani people with a laser eyed focus. However, it made no sense to me. He's supposed to be a pretty big crime boss. So why in the world didn't he send forth some underlings? And if they popped up dead then go after them? I don't know. The motivations of him to go toe to toe with the Romani didn't work for me at all. Most of the book slowed down after he showed up and when he was retelling his story to Billy I just didn't care.

The writing is more crude than King's works. There are a lot of racial slurs used in this one that put me off a bit. The flow as I said earlier got really bad when Ginelli gets introduced. The book just drags it seems until we get to the ending.

The ending leaves us with Billy as a pale shadow of his former self. He manages to justify to himself what he is about to do and I really ended up loathing him. Of course this being a King book the joke's on him and he has a horrified realization about what his actions have wrought. ( )

I don't remember a lot about this one, beyond the fact that I definitely read it as a teenager.
( )