Billy Summers

 

Billy Summers – by Stephen King

If you lived in this make-believe world that Stephen King created and you knew who Billy Summers was, odds are you wouldn’t like him.  Notice I said “knew who he was”.  If you knew him personally, you would probably like him. You’d like him a lot. You’d cheer for him. You’d feel sorry for him. And you would want Billy Summers to succeed.   Often when we know of someone with a questionable behavior – often immoral or illegal – we immediately pass judgement.  Stephen King knows better. He knows everyone has a story. Everyone has a past, and a lot of what life deals us, we don’t have much control over; especially when we’re very young.

This is a very good Stephen King offering. Those who have read the majority of his 60 or 70 books know that a “good book” by Stephen King is not necessarily a guarantee anymore.  King writes a lot in the horror and/or supernatural vein. That in itself isn’t a bad thing.  Strangely, King often proves that when he just tells a straightforward story without ghosts, demons, or visits to the twilight zone, he can often produce something very special - even better than many of his “weird” tales.  Such is the case here.  Apart from a couple of references to a creepy hotel in Colorado that once stood where Billy Summers happens to travel, this book has a story about as believable as they come.

It also helps when he tames down the “gross” factor.  King can get a bit childish when he writes with his littered profanity and fascination with bodily fluids and functions. One learns that they should not read a King novel while eating a meal or recuperating from a stomach ailment.  This book is rather “clean” thankfully.   Oh sure, there’s lots of R-rated stuff here, but when we encounter adult situations in this story, it always seems quite necessary as opposed to a juvenile distraction.

The book still has minor annoyances that can frequent a Stephen King novel.  I find that he still struggles with believable dialogue between characters.  It’s been my experience that when a person starts a new job and goes out to the food court down the street during the lunch hour, the strangers don’t automatically start conversing, telling stories, and becoming friends overnight.  Maybe the world was once like this.  Or, when someone moves into a new neighborhood, usually all the neighbors don’t start suddenly appearing inviting the new person to cookouts, bringing over pies, or having the new adult neighbor come over and play with their children.  Sure, that happens, but usually not within the first few days after the new person arrives. Again, maybe the world was once such a place.

Stephen King is best when he describes people and what they’re feeling or going through – without the dialogue.  We read a lot about Billy Summers when he’s alone and we discover a lot of things about him.  Summers has been around the block a few times and knows how to look out for himself and be on guard when he knows he’s about to be cheated.  Early in the story, Billy has a job to do, and the reader may initially think that this “job” will be the subject of the entire book.  It probably takes about 1/3 of the story, and the rest of the book takes some twists that I had initially found forced and unnecessary, but as the story went on, I warmed up to Billy and the few other characters that he teams up with during his journey.

We get a lot of flashbacks of Billy’s life.  Some can drag on a bit.  King is such a gifted writer that it times he fails to realize that less can actually mean more.  When Bill plays a game of Monopoly with his neighbors, I found it a bit tedious when King feels it’s necessary to give an entire ¾ of a printed page summarizing all of the events that happen during the particular game.  A couple of sentences will do.  We know Monopoly, and we really don’t need so much detail as to how many hotels a person bought, how many doubles they rolled, why they prefer owning railroads instead of utilities, and on and on and on.

So yes, this 500-page book could have been easily trimmed to 450, but this is a minor transgression.  Overall this is a wonderfully introspective tale and really drew me close to Billy and the characters he aligns with during the story.  You end up feeling really good about Billy and even though the book may not end the way you would want, it’s a rich satisfying tale that tugs at your heartstrings and gives you a little more optimism from what can be a cold gray world.