PositiveArkansas Democrat Gazette\'Transcription\' suggests the faithful rendering of sound into text. But it also suggests the transfer of experience from one medium to another, with all the distortions and loss of resolution that entails. Memory is a transcription. So is fiction ... Everything that is preserved is also altered ... The novel is aware of its own procedures, occasionally to the point of announcing them ... The risk is that the novel becomes a demonstration rather than a discovery, an illustration of a thesis rather than an exploration ... But this objection, while not trivial, does not stick. What rescues the book is its attention to the ordinary ... Whether one finds this convincing will depend on one\'s tolerance for Lerner\'s manner.
Stephen King
PositiveArkansas Democrat Gazette... a very good story, told economically with an ear for rhythm ... Much of the book is Billy\'s story told in his own words, and the book-within-a-book structure reminds me of the collage technique King used in Carrie. There\'s nothing supernatural in this book, which feels rooted in the recognizable reality of pre-pandemic 2019. Billy is super-competent, but not a superhero, and while there are plenty of action sequences, the heart of the novel lies in its quietest moments. Billy Summers is about the masks we wear and how we know who we are—if we ever really do.
