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 terrible curse that causes him to quickly lose a great amount of weight. Billy doesn't seem to mind the initial shedding of some pounds, even though he can't figure out how he's losing weight since his eating habits have not changed. He remembers being cursed by the Gypsy, but initially he doesn't accept that that's why he's becoming thinner. The curse continues to eat away at him until he's nothing more than skin and bones. He finally has to make a decision: give up and wait for the curse to eventually kill him or try to track down the Gypsy and persuade him to distill the curse's power.

I really enjoyed this novel. It isn't my favorite King novel, but it held it's own just the same. There wasn't a lot of gore, but there was plenty of suspense. I was really interested in how Billy's ever-worsening condition was effecting his personal and professional relationships, as well as his physical and mental well-being. King also throws in some social commentary on the enmity that most people have towards outsiders, like Gypsies.

Some of my favorite scenes included a nightmare that Billy had depicting his daughter being eaten alive by a vulture, what Billy discovers in a car after his final confrontation with the Gypsy, and the shocking twist at the end of the novel.