The fantasy of becoming trimmer--and happier--turns into a nightmare of unrelenting terror for Billy Halleck who is 50 pounds overweight, sideswipe...
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Mar 01, 2009
Ryan
rated it: 
Ahh, the good old Gypsy stereotype, c'mon give me a break.
I devoured Koontz and King back in middle school and part of high school. In retrospect, I could have spent my time on better books, but these chillers were an escape from things I didn't want to think about, especially at night when I couldn't sleep and my mind twisted my perceptions nauseatingly.
I'm not saying you should bother reading these, especially now that Koontz is openly being Christian and Stephen K More...
I devoured Koontz and King back in middle school and part of high school. In retrospect, I could have spent my time on better books, but these chillers were an escape from things I didn't want to think about, especially at night when I couldn't sleep and my mind twisted my perceptions nauseatingly.
I'm not saying you should bother reading these, especially now that Koontz is openly being Christian and Stephen K More...
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Nov 19, 2010
Maciek
rated it: 
'Thinner,' the old Gypsy man with the rotting nose whispers to William Halleck as Halleck and his wife, Heidi, come out of the courthouse. Just that one word, sent on the wafting, cloying sweetness of his breath. 'Thinner.' And before Halleck can jerk away, the old Gypsy reaches out and caresses his cheek with one twisted finger. His lips spread open like a wound, showing a few tombstone stumps poking out of his gums. They are black and green. His tongue squirms between them and then slides o
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6 comments
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(2 people liked it)
Sep 25, 2011
Leo
rated it: 
This one was pretty damn enjoyable. I found it slowed down around the half-way point, then picked up just in time for a really wicked build-up to the gritty, outstanding final few chapters. The real highlight for me was Richard Ginelli, one of King's coldest, coolest and most dangerous characters that I've come across. (Ginelli gets a really brief reference in book two of the Dark Tower series - I got a good kick out of that!)
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Nov 24, 2008
Mrs.
rated it:
This book was written by Richard Bachman, and for years, King denied that he was Bachman. The thing I love about the Bachman Books is that they do have a slightly different tone from the other King novels. It's almost as if "Bachman" feels more cold toward his characters- a character we get to know will lose everything, wheras in a King novel, he may hold on to something.
In "Thinner", the main character is a well-to do lawyer who accidently kills a woman and is le More...
In "Thinner", the main character is a well-to do lawyer who accidently kills a woman and is le More...
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(4 people liked it)
Nov 22, 2011
Steven
rated it: 
Stephen King fans by and large rate this one highly; I have to respectfully disagree. It was the first best-selling Bachman book--but still published under Bachman, not King, which tells you a little about what King himself thought of it. The premise of the curse from a Gypsy is soooo Drag Me to Hell (and a bit of a stereotype); the main character is an Everyman who you don't root for three-quarters of the way through (if at all); and the ending is a downer on so many levels, not the least of
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Apr 07, 2011
Bianka
rated it: 
Thinner
By Stephen King
320 pp. Signet
ISBN: 0-451-19075-0
Thinner is written by the very well known author, Stephen King, and it's about a lawyer named Billy. Billy lived his life as an obese man who took everything for granted. Until one day, when he was driving home, he runs over a very old gypsy woman. Billy has to go to court because of his accident, but gets away with not going to jail by being good friends with the judge. The father of the old gypsy casts a spel More...
By Stephen King
320 pp. Signet
ISBN: 0-451-19075-0
Thinner is written by the very well known author, Stephen King, and it's about a lawyer named Billy. Billy lived his life as an obese man who took everything for granted. Until one day, when he was driving home, he runs over a very old gypsy woman. Billy has to go to court because of his accident, but gets away with not going to jail by being good friends with the judge. The father of the old gypsy casts a spel More...
Feb 23, 2011
Lee
rated it:
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 More...
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 More...
Feb 07, 2010
Becky
rated it:
Thinner is one of Stephen King's Richard Bachman books, the handful of books that he wrote in the late seventies to mid-eighties and published using the Bachman pseudonym. Why did the best selling author in the world publish under a pseudonym? Well, depending on what you read or what you choose to believe, it was either as an outlet for King's creativity, to circumvent the then conventional wisdom that an author publishing more than one book a year would over-saturate the market (Hello! James
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Dec 27, 2009
I've read other Bachman books, but this one stands out as being particularly hilarious. There's a self-referential moment towards the end that made me guffaw in a way that I never have at a horror novel.
That said, King does some pretty annoying stuff when it comes to—what I presume he's illustrating, anyway—internal feedback loops of characters. The protagonist's stream of consciousness spews the phrase "tit-grabber" in reference to another minor character about 80 times, More...
That said, King does some pretty annoying stuff when it comes to—what I presume he's illustrating, anyway—internal feedback loops of characters. The protagonist's stream of consciousness spews the phrase "tit-grabber" in reference to another minor character about 80 times, More...
Dec 27, 2011
IndianaRonaldo
rated it:
All that glitters is not gold. All that is Stephen King is not worth reading, or in this case Richard Bachman. It’s King wielding the pen either way and I am terribly disappointed in him. It was more like a R.L.Stine novella for adults, except for some good-paced writing. The plot in itself is not worth it and the characters are shallow, which is very contrary of King. There was no plot in Misery either, hell it was about a writer trapped with a psycho bitch in a worn down house, but that it did
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Jan 12, 2012
Nicholas
rated it:
A fun read. The Bachman stuff is super bleak, and this novel is no exception. King's usual narrative style is present though and the story unfolds with a taught clip that seems to be missing from his newer more pondering and meditative works, but there's nothing really deep here. In Thinner we have a classic American horror story full of xenophobic themes and interesting issues of guilt and shame. The mystery and magic are well-preserved and the slow downtick of Billy's weightloss creates an anx
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Sep 25, 2011
Zack
rated it:
This review is for the novel Thinner by Richard Bachman, a pseudonym of Stephen King. This was written in the early 1980s and it takes place primarily in Connecticut, but later on in Maine. The main character is a middle-aged man named Billy Halleck. He's a fairly succesful lawyer, married to a woman named Heidi, and the father of a teenage daughter named Linda. Billy is about 40 pounds overweight when the story begins. He does something to provoke the wrath of an old Gypsy man, resulting in a t
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Jul 02, 2009
Martin
rated it:
Another great read from the King of horror: Stephen King. This was the first time I read him under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman & was also my first SK bookclub read. To those that haven`t read the book, the story is about an overweight lawyer by the name of Billy Halleck who accidentally knocks down a gypsy woman & kills her. The case goes to court, but it gets away with it (thanks to his friend the judge!). Outside the courtroom the gypsy`s father puts a curse on Billy by putting his finger
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Dec 20, 2011
Tom
rated it:
If I'm reviewing this with the whole Brautigan experiment in mind, I would say it's a resounding failure. What I mean is, it doesn't feel any different from any of his mainstay (King-branded) work and that was, admittedly, a little disappointing. Here was a golden opportunity to really push the envelope stylistically, but the end result was one of the most Stephen King of all Stephen King's novels.
As a Stephen King novel, though, this one's pretty great. It doesn't flounder around with More...
As a Stephen King novel, though, this one's pretty great. It doesn't flounder around with More...
Nov 06, 2011
Brandi
rated it:
Summary
Billy Halleck makes a mistake by hitting an old gypsy woman who walked out in front of him. The father of the gypsy woman puts a judgment on Billy by whispering "thinner". After that day Billy started to lose weight and kept on losing weight until he was terriably thin. Trying to find a way to uplift the curse the old gypsy man laid on him Billy travels looking for the gypsy man before its too late.
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I really liked the book Thinner by S More...
Billy Halleck makes a mistake by hitting an old gypsy woman who walked out in front of him. The father of the gypsy woman puts a judgment on Billy by whispering "thinner". After that day Billy started to lose weight and kept on losing weight until he was terriably thin. Trying to find a way to uplift the curse the old gypsy man laid on him Billy travels looking for the gypsy man before its too late.
Reactions
I really liked the book Thinner by S More...
Sep 09, 2011
Cherie
rated it:
My ratings system is as follows. One star is GOOD. The book is entertaining, easy to read and you don't want to stop reading because something about the book is compelling you not to. Two stars is GREAT! This time the story is not only entertaining, but highly creative, unique, easy to read and hard to put down. Three stars is EXCELLENT. Here the book has all aspects of one and two stars, but now the book is thought and emotionally provoking. Four is AWESOME. This is the read that is not onl
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Feb 07, 2012
Rai
rated it:
This really wasn't an enjoyable read at all. Billy Halleck, the main character, is the most unsympathetic protagonist, but at the same time is not strange enough to be in even the least bit entertaining. I find myself wanting him to die very quickly so the book will be over. Over the course of the book, I don't think Billy changes at all even though he believes he's learned his lesson.
When this book was written, maybe Gypsies and their supposed curses weren't much of a stereotype, but rea More...
When this book was written, maybe Gypsies and their supposed curses weren't much of a stereotype, but rea More...
Jan 21, 2011
The book Thinner is about a lawyer, who happens to be a husband, father, and more. When he hit a gypsy, it ruined the lives of not only his family, but the family of the gypsy too. When a relative of the gypsy is passing Billy one day on the street he put his hand on Billy’s face and speaks one word: Thinner. Billy didn’t think much of it until he started losing 2 to 3 pounds a day. At first he thought it was just peer luck, put when the weight keeps flying off things turn serious. In the book h
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Mar 01, 2010
Kristen
rated it:
I will start off by saying that I am a huge Stephen King fan. I have read almost every book he has published and love his ability to tell a good, albeit way off center, story.
I have felt that in reading his more recent novels that something was missing from what I used to love so much in his writing. I'm still not sure what that is, but I just happened to be looking for something to read and this book caught my eye. It is actually a very early King novel, that for some reason I never More...
I have felt that in reading his more recent novels that something was missing from what I used to love so much in his writing. I'm still not sure what that is, but I just happened to be looking for something to read and this book caught my eye. It is actually a very early King novel, that for some reason I never More...
Feb 06, 2011
Jack
rated it:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
Jan 22, 2011
Jana
rated it:
Thinner is the precise reason as to why I believe Richard Bachman's career ended too soon.
Set in Massachusetts, Thinner is a fictional-thriller about William Hallecks undying desire to lose weight. He encounters a gypsy, who whispers "Thinner..." into Halleck's ear, and starts the course of an experience that brings down other crucial aspects of William Halleck's life aside from his plunging weight.
There is a creepy cleverness to the story, with unexpected twist More...
Set in Massachusetts, Thinner is a fictional-thriller about William Hallecks undying desire to lose weight. He encounters a gypsy, who whispers "Thinner..." into Halleck's ear, and starts the course of an experience that brings down other crucial aspects of William Halleck's life aside from his plunging weight.
There is a creepy cleverness to the story, with unexpected twist More...
Jan 12, 2011
Eileen
rated it:
I'm not a huge Stehpen King fan, but I do like some of his books and this story about revenge and friendship is one of them. It's creepy, full of suspense and the end is very surprising.
Billy, an overweight lawyer, kills a Gypsy woman by accident. Out of revenge her father curses Billy with one single word: "Thinner". Billy loses weight, a lot of weight and to prevent his death he needs to find the Gypsy father who's the only one who can reverse the spell.
What t More...
Billy, an overweight lawyer, kills a Gypsy woman by accident. Out of revenge her father curses Billy with one single word: "Thinner". Billy loses weight, a lot of weight and to prevent his death he needs to find the Gypsy father who's the only one who can reverse the spell.
What t More...
Oct 06, 2011
Liudas
rated it:
Stephen King
Thinner
New York: New American Library, 1984
318 pp. $15.00
978-0-8085-6564-2
“Thinner”, the old Gypsy man with the rotting nose whispers to William Halleck as Halleck and his wife exit the courthouse. This one word sets the course of Stephen King’s novel Thinner. When William Halleck gets off easy from his charges he has no idea the ride he is in for. Stephen King portrays his struggle with his diminishing weight with acute detail while incorpor More...
Thinner
New York: New American Library, 1984
318 pp. $15.00
978-0-8085-6564-2
“Thinner”, the old Gypsy man with the rotting nose whispers to William Halleck as Halleck and his wife exit the courthouse. This one word sets the course of Stephen King’s novel Thinner. When William Halleck gets off easy from his charges he has no idea the ride he is in for. Stephen King portrays his struggle with his diminishing weight with acute detail while incorpor More...
6 comments
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(1 person liked it)
Jul 30, 2011
Welcome to the twisted world of Stephen King, this book really was not as good as the movie or atleast i remember liking it when i was in the military oin 96. The book starts allright and is really hard to put down but as the plot thickens we get an idea of how demented Stephen really is. His research of languages and geography is well done and plot development is good to, but in King style of fashion the endings lose the plot and go to a twisted style of events that are quite often not clearly
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Aug 14, 2010
Jason
rated it:
This is a very enjoyable read. Dude pisses off a gypsy (which tends to happen when you run over one's daughter with your car, then get off scott free for it), and gypsy puts a curse on him and a couple other people involved in the case. The story involves dude trying to find the gypsy to get him to lift the curse, and that involves getting a mafia-ish tough in on the action. As if that isn't bad enough, dude's wife thinks dude has flipped his lid, and he has to deal with his own family not be
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Feb 02, 2012
Lisa
rated it:
Billy Halbreck is a rather overweight lawyer. Or rather he was, but not for much longer...
After Billy runs down and kills an old Gypsy lady and gets away with it, thanks to his friend the local judge and a white-washing cop, the leader of the lady's family takes justice into his own hands and curses Billy. From that point on no matter how much Billy eats, he starts losing weight...and the weight isn't all he stands to lose.
While there are a few dodgy stereotypes within (those More...
After Billy runs down and kills an old Gypsy lady and gets away with it, thanks to his friend the local judge and a white-washing cop, the leader of the lady's family takes justice into his own hands and curses Billy. From that point on no matter how much Billy eats, he starts losing weight...and the weight isn't all he stands to lose.
While there are a few dodgy stereotypes within (those More...
Apr 27, 2011
Jessica (booneybear)
rated it:
Thinner is a book of 'what comes around, goes around' only with deadly concequences. Billy Halleck is probably not the world's most likable guy, but overall not a bad guy. One horrible accident later, Billy's life is literally stripped away little by little by a gypsy curse. Billy is determined to get the curse lifted before it is too late, but it turns out that maybe getting the curse lifted won't be what Billy really wants in the end.
I loved that "Richard Bachman" re More...
I loved that "Richard Bachman" re More...
Feb 06, 2012
Jeremy
rated it:
This novel makes me fear gypsies. Every time I now walk by someone who may even look like they could be a gypsy, I make a conscious effort to avoid them at all costs.
I will say, King does make a decent horror novel, although by no means is this one of his best.
The story was decent. but what really made me like this novel was the characters.
Now, King doesn't write female characters well, but the other characters you come in contact with in the course you will love and som More...
I will say, King does make a decent horror novel, although by no means is this one of his best.
The story was decent. but what really made me like this novel was the characters.
Now, King doesn't write female characters well, but the other characters you come in contact with in the course you will love and som More...
Mar 13, 2011
Not as scarey as i thought it would be!: When my friend gave me this book to read she told me there was "something" in it that would scare the pants off me! Sadly i dont agree. Yes creepy maybe in parts but not my idea of scarey. The general gyst is of a curse put on Billy Halleck due to a crime he comitted. The story tells of the curse and how it affects him and his family and friends. Disturbing maybe, creepy in a wierd way but not scarey!
The "scarey" parts are simply gore! More...
The "scarey" parts are simply gore! More...
Jan 23, 2010
Brent
rated it:
Guilty pleasures...Hadn't read King in quite some time, or should I say Bachman. Not one of his finest by a longshot, but quite good entertainment with a nice twist at the end...even if it was a bit predictable. Written in the early-mid eighties, so some of it is certainly tasteless and might not fly these days with its portrayal of certain groups of people, but again...guilty pleasures...At the end of the day, even though it does nothing good for the gypsies who play such a huge part of the sto
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