Hello, beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into another Richard Bachman supernatural thriller, Thinner. For those who don’t know, Richard Bachman is a pen name that Stephen King used earlier in his career when he was limited by his publishers around how much he could put out a year. With a large desire to publish more, he created the Richard Bachman author and created a series of supernatural thrillers under the name, eventually exposing to the public that he was behind it all along. I’ve read a few Richard Bachman books before and enjoyed them a lot. I did enjoy Thinner quite a bit, but it’s probably not my top favourite from him. Let’s get into it!
Main Characters:
Billy Halleck: Our main character and a arguably dislikable guy who is generally self-absorbed, after getting off scott free for the accidental death of a woman Billy is cursed by her father and slowly finds himself to be shedding weight like crazy, the question becomes if he can stop the curse before he is nothing more than skin and bones
Heidi Halleck: Billy’s wife, whom he comes to resent as the curse, carries out its plan
Taduz Lemke: The father of the woman Billy kills when he hits her with his car, and an elderly Romani man he curses Billy to slowly lose weight until he has nothing left, a powerful man looking to avenge his family from a rich man with more resources than should be allowed
My Review
As mentioned before, Thinner isn’t the first Richard Bachman book I have had the pleasure of checking out, and while it isn’t my top favourite, it was still a really great read. I often complain in my reviews about my struggle to enjoy stories where all the characters are terrible. This is something that very much shows up in this book, other than the poor old man and his daughter who are affected by Billy’s selfishness everyone else kind of sucks. However, despite this aspect, I really enjoyed the story, maybe because Richard Bachman books often have bad things happening to bad people in them, which I clearly find to be an enjoyable way of handling bad characters. I will say though that Billy does often piss me off in this book, even when he is wasting away to nothing so the man struggles to not be terrible most of the book. Overall, I gave Thinner a 7/10 rating, just because it is kind of slow and repetitive in some parts, but outside of that is a fun and slightly creepy book to check out.
Thinner by Richard Bachman is a dynamic thriller revolving around our main character, Billy Halleck. Billy has it all: a well-paying job, good connections, a great wife, and a loving daughter. Due to his successes, Billy often lives in an ego bubble, surrounded by people who think he is as great as he thinks he is. Things quickly change for Billy, though, when he and his wife are out one day and, due to distractions hits a woman trying to cross the street. While Billy didn’t mean to kill her, he still did it, so he should have some level of consequence, right? Well, in the world of Billy, he can do no wrong, and his connections can clean up messes for him, even at the level of ending another life. When Billy walks away from the incident with no consequences, the woman’s father, an old Romani man, puts a curse on Billy at the courthouse, which, at the moment, he laughs off. In the days to come, Billy, a generally plump man, starts losing weight like crazy. Doctors are uncertain of what’s going on, and Billy struggles to face the fact that the curse may be real. Things soon turn even worse when Billy starts to question those around him and their potential involvement in his new major weight loss. Convinced he can end the curse and save his life, Billy struggles to face why this is happening in the first place and that everything may not be in his control. Will Billy be able to end the curse, or will he wither away into nothing?
I actually really enjoyed the plot of this story. There’s just something so satisfying about watching a man who walks through life like he owns it, untouchable, arrogant, and backed by privilege, get absolutely dismantled by a frail old man with a grudge and a touch of magic. Chef’s kiss.
The moment Billy hits that Romani woman with his car early on, my blood was boiling. His attitude is infuriating. He acts like it’s not his fault at all, blames it on the fact that his wife was giving him a hand job at the time, like that somehow excuses killing someone. Um, no. You didn’t have to accept the distraction, Billy. You could’ve focused on the road like a responsible adult and maybe, just maybe, not ended someone’s life. Watching how smug and dismissive he was in the courtroom made it even worse. It was clear he knew the system would protect him, and it did. He wasn’t interested in justice, only in making it all disappear. He practically coasted through the whole thing with a shrug and a smirk, confident that his connections had cleared the path for him.
So when Taduz Lemke entered the picture? I was thrilled. I thought the curse, Billy losing all his weight, was brilliant. Symbolic, eerie, and exactly what he deserved. He’s a greedy, selfish man, so stripping him down, literally and metaphorically, felt like poetic justice. It was the kind of supernatural punishment that actually meant something. That said, I’ll admit I was disappointed by Billy’s lack of growth early on, pun fully intended. Even as the pounds melted off and death loomed, he sticks to being the same self-centred, arrogant man. Instead of facing any real guilt, he framed himself as the victim. He didn’t evolve, he doubled down. It kind of defeated the purpose of the curse, which made it all the more tragic.
But the ending? So satisfying. Dark, twisted, and completely deserved, really nailing that final punch. It’s a great example of how justice can come in unexpected, and terrifying, forms.
Overall, Thinner is a sharp little horror tale that reminds us money can buy you a lot, power, privilege, and protection, but it can’t buy your way out of everything. Especially not karma.
*** Don’t read any further if you don’t want to see any spoilers ***
As mentioned above, the ending definitely makes up for how the book goes on throughout.
Billy, finally understanding that it’s the curse causing him to lose weight, is desperate to get Taduz to reverse the curse. Instead of going and grovelling to him, or apologizing, or doing anything semi-human like, Billy takes an ugly approach. Taduz lives in a Romani colony, and Billy gets one of his mobster friends to go and wreak havoc on their land. Taduz tells Billy that there is no reversing the curse, but there is passing it on to another.
Taduz gives Billy a pie containing the curse. Billy just has to get someone else to eat it, and the curse will leave him and go to them. Billy decides that, since in his messed-up little head that his wife Heidi is to blame for all of this that she should get the curse. Which, like, come on dude. I mean, I get that giving a hand job while you’re driving isn’t a great idea, but like it takes two to play that game, so you are to blame as well.
Billy brings the pie back to his home and sets it up for his wife to have some. When he comes back into the kitchen, he finds that he and Heidi’s young daughter Linda eating the pie, not her mom. At this point, however, there is really nothing for Billy to do; the curse has officially been passed to her. Billy becomes beside himself because he knows that he has just essentially set up for his daughter to die.
So again, Billy has thought that he has won it all, only to lose everything again to something he can’t fix with money.
I hope you enjoyed this review! Thank you for checking it out! Feel free to subscribe to be one of the first to know when I release a new review!
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