REVIEW: THINNER

Cover photo by Ilona Wellmann/Arcangel Images

THINNER

BY

STEPHEN KING

WRITING AS

RICHARD BACHMAN

ISBN: 978-1-444-72355-7

Pages: 340

Publisher: Hodder

First published: November 1984

This edition published: 20 December 2012

On the cover:

'Thinner' - the old gypsy man barely whispers the word. Billy feels the touch of a withered hand on his cheek.

Billy Halleck, prosperous if overweight citizen, happily married, shuddered then turned angrily away. The old woman's death had been none of his fault. The courts had cleared him. She'd just stumbled in front of his car. Now he simply wanted to forget the whole messy business.

Later, when the scales told him he was losing weight, it was what the doctor ordered. His wife was pleased - as she should have been. But . . .

'Thinner' - the word, the old man's curse, has lodged in Billy's mind like a fattening worm, eating at his flesh, at his reason. And with his despair, comes violence.

   When reading any of King's Bachman books I'm struck by two things. The first is how easy it is to see that King wrote this, and how strange it is that it wasn't discovered at once. Of course that is pretty much hindsight, and it does take a coincidence (or a tweet) for someone who is in a position to recognize a big name author's style to even be reading a no-name author's books.

   The second thing, and very much in connection to the first, is how many people have tried to copy King over the years. It's really not strange that anyone failed to notice Richard Bachman in the myriad of novels that have been published in the hopes of copying King's success.

    Of course there's a third thing... There was no internet when Bachman was publishing. No social media making it tempting for those that knew something to spill the beans.

   No internet would also have made it harder to discover an obvious huge flaw in this novel, "Gypsy" language. The language used in the book is actually Swedish. Not only that, it is atrociously bad Swedish. As someone who can remember when the number of TV channels available was tripled by the addition of two Swedish channels, I'm very familiar with Swedish.

   It goes without saying that seeing a familiar language being mangled on the page of a book is going to bring you out of it to some extent, but that is actually something I could live with. What I actually find worse is that the "Gypsies" do have their own language, Romani,  and it is substituted for a different one here.

   I completely understand that back in 1984, or perhaps a bit earlier, when this was written, King did not have access to the information he needed to use Romani in his book. And you know what, I have absolutely no problem with that. But being bi-lingual I do not like the idea of substitute languages. It's kind of offensive, it is in a way telling people that what their language is is not important. The only thing that matters is that it is "foreign".

   And it really is not hard to make it clear in the text that what is spoken is not English, even if you write it in English. Not that I think King should go back and change his book. As I started with, this was written in different times, and it should remain as it is as an artifact of that time.

   Thinner is a strange book, or not really considering it is King. It's pretty normal for King to write things that can be hard to classify neatly into a definitive genre category. Not that you'd notice that from all the people who state that King is a Horror writer.

   This is certainly leaning much more towards the Thriller side of the fence. While there certainly is a very central supernatural element making this Horror, that element almost exist as a separate state besides what else is going on in the story. And the other element of the story is absolutely a good one.

   As already mentioned this story has two different strands. The supernatural element is the one that we first get to hear about. Presenting it so quickly, without any build up at all, means that you very quickly get dragged into the story. It's very well done too, King hooks you right away and then he lets you simmer for a bit. And that is really my polite way of saying that after a very interesting opening the novel slows down quite a bit.

   This slow period is used for a bit of character development, especially of the main character William Halleck. Usually this is where King excels, in that he creates characters that you really care about, and that you really want to spend time with. There's nothing wrong with the "getting to know you" portion of this build-up period in this novel, it's just that the main character at first is not a very sympathetic person.

   You shouldn't actually take that as a complaint, it is an important part of Halleck's development. And in many ways it does strengthens the novel that the MC has more than one note to him.

   When the novel starts going again after the brief quiet period, it really gets going. This is where the Thriller part comes in to full effect. The structure gets very familiar to Thriller readers, as the story goes into a search mode. Familiar as this structure is, it is kept very interesting. There is some real tension to the narrative at this point. And this is ratched up quite a bit when a previously introduced character steps up to join a strong supporting role.

   There's a final confrontation that is really tense, and at times seems to be on the verge of dragging the novel into Action Thriller territory. It does get a nice resolution, although perhaps not a conventional one.

   The ultimate ending left me really ambivalent. Although there's a while since I read the novel I am still not wholly sure how I feel about it. It's certainly one I can see divide opinion.

   With relatively few characters, and a somewhat limited time frame, this almost has the feel of a shorter work. It feels pretty intimate, perhaps so than most of King's work.

   It's a good story that is executed very well, and it is certainly worth reading. Being pretty light on Horror this is a good place to start for those that have been scared off reading King by the impression of him belonging solely to that genre.

   For King fans this will of course be a must read, it is a good example of how King can write quality when he focuses on other plot points than the horror ones.

REVIEWS: Stephen King Review Index

LINKS: Stephen King  Hodder

REVIEW: THE REGULATORS

THE REGULATORS

BY

STEPHEN KING

WRITING AS

RICHARD BACHMAN

ISBN: 978-0-45119-101-4

Pages: 489

Publisher: Signet/Penguin USA

First published: 1996

This edition published: 1 September 1997

On the cover:

(Taken from King's website)

It's a summer afternoon in Wentworth, Ohio, and on Poplar Street everything's normal. The paper boy is making his rounds; the Carver kids are bickering at the corner convenience store; a Frisbee is flying on the Reeds' lawn; Gary Soderson is firing up the backyard barbecue. The only thing that doesn't quite fit is the red van idling just up the hill. Soon it will begin to roll, and the killing will begin. A quiet slice of American suburbia is about to turn to toast.

The mayhem rages around a seemingly still point, a darkened house lit fitfully from within by a flickering television screen. Inside, where things haven't been normal for a long time, are Audrey Wyler and the autistic nephew she cares for, eight-year-old Seth Garin. They're fighting their own battle, and its intensity has turned 247 Poplar Street into a prisonhouse.

By the time night falls on Poplar Street, the surviving residents will find themselves in another world, one where anything, no matter how terrible, is possible…and where the regulators are on their way. By what power they have come, how far they will go, and how they can be stopped-these are the desperate questions. The answers are absolutely terrifying.

   This novel is set in (what I assume is) a typical American suburb. The horror aspect of this novel is all about what happens when this idyllic setting gets turned completely on its head.
   As always King is excellent at setting up the ordinary life, and then subverting it by turning up the horror. The reader will quickly get a sense of where we are, and how this little neighbourhood functions. But that feeling of familiarity quickly disappears, and the suburb turns into a place of terror within few pages.

   As is usual with King we get to know the characters pretty well, although this time the novel is set mostly in a very short period of time. We do however get a longer storyline of a couple of the characters, and this works very well. The characters are pretty diverse, and we get to see some very different reactions to the events of the novel, to me this heightened the realism of it.
   
   The action in this novel is pretty much a constant, there's an almost relentless stream of it. This actually works very well, it sets a fast pace for the novel and makes it feel shorter than it actually is. King also writes these action scenes very well, and although there's a lot of them they don't feel repetitive.
   However, there are times when the action is seen from many points of view when it can become a bit difficult to follow. There are many characters involved, and it's not difficult to loose track of who's where. This passes, but can become a bit confusing while it's going on.

   Action isn't the only element of this book, there's a strong supernatural element here. This element is excellently described, and we get intimately connected to it through the point of view characters. We get to follow closely how this develops through the diary of one of the characters, and this is a really interesting story. It shows how it develops and deteriorates.
   This element is also what connects this novel to its companion novel Desperation. The connection becomes clear pretty early on, and we find out more about it as time passes. Some of the characters are shared with Desperation, and there are parallel events in both novels.
   I read this after Desperation, and I would suggest others do the same. I'm not sure there would be the same impact of recognition if you start with The Regulators, and there's some events in this novel that will have no significance if you haven't read Desperation first.

   All in all I think this is a very good novel. There's plenty of action to supplement the supernatural, and as such I'd recommend it as a starting point on King for those that are more into action novels. There's also more than enough of the Horror element to satisfy fans of that.
   That this is a companion volume to Desperation doesn't mean that you have to read both. ( Although as I suggested above, if you plan to, start with Desperation.) I first read this long before its companion, and it works very well on its own.
   This my not be the best of King's novels, but it is more than good enough to deserve to be read by both fans of King and those that have yet to discover his writing.

You can find a review of Desperation here.

OTHER STEPHEN KING REVIEWS: The Shining  IT  The Dark Half  Bag of Bones  11.22.63  Four Past Midnight  Just After Sunset

LINKS: Stephen King  Penguin (USA)