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A review by emily_m_green
Billy Summers by Stephen King
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Billy Summers is a gun for hire who has taken his last job, and then will exit quietly from his current associates and life of crime. That’s the plan, anyway, though Billy is aware that the last job of a hitman never goes as planned. For Billy, this is certainly true.
The job is strange from the start, as Billy is asked to embed himself into a suburb and wait for another hitman to be extradited. Then he is to kill him outside of the courthouse. As Billy settles into his temporary life, he makes friends with the neighbors and relishes his cover story that he is an author who has been ordered to hole up and write. Billy has a taste for high literature, and he begins to enjoy writing and having barbecues with his neighbors. But as Billy knows, the life does not belong to him, and it cannot last forever.
Billy Summers is Stephen King’s ode to writing. Through Billy, King shows the satisfaction of writing, the way that a story can make our experiences more meaningful as they become works of art. For Billy, the desire to write becomes a drive that stays with him even as his life gets harry. Writing, dare he imagine, may bring him a kind of redemption.
I enjoyed the beginning of Billy Summers very much. As the story went on, I did not love it quite as much, but I still enjoyed it. The book is neither horror nor supernatural, but crime fiction that is self-aware, almost jubilantly self-aware. While it is not my favorite King novel, it is certainly up there--better than many. Of course, my love of Stephen King is well-known, and I will almost always give his work the benefit of the doubt--though there are no such doubts for Billy Summers.
Would I teach this book? Certainly not to middle schoolers or high schoolers, but I could envision its place in a workshop or literature class on crime fiction. Possibly in a dream college course in which I taught Stephen King’s oeuvre. Wouldn’t that be a class? A lady can dream, can’t she?
The job is strange from the start, as Billy is asked to embed himself into a suburb and wait for another hitman to be extradited. Then he is to kill him outside of the courthouse. As Billy settles into his temporary life, he makes friends with the neighbors and relishes his cover story that he is an author who has been ordered to hole up and write. Billy has a taste for high literature, and he begins to enjoy writing and having barbecues with his neighbors. But as Billy knows, the life does not belong to him, and it cannot last forever.
Billy Summers is Stephen King’s ode to writing. Through Billy, King shows the satisfaction of writing, the way that a story can make our experiences more meaningful as they become works of art. For Billy, the desire to write becomes a drive that stays with him even as his life gets harry. Writing, dare he imagine, may bring him a kind of redemption.
I enjoyed the beginning of Billy Summers very much. As the story went on, I did not love it quite as much, but I still enjoyed it. The book is neither horror nor supernatural, but crime fiction that is self-aware, almost jubilantly self-aware. While it is not my favorite King novel, it is certainly up there--better than many. Of course, my love of Stephen King is well-known, and I will almost always give his work the benefit of the doubt--though there are no such doubts for Billy Summers.
Would I teach this book? Certainly not to middle schoolers or high schoolers, but I could envision its place in a workshop or literature class on crime fiction. Possibly in a dream college course in which I taught Stephen King’s oeuvre. Wouldn’t that be a class? A lady can dream, can’t she?