ELEVATION

By Stephen King

146 pp. Scribner. $19.95.

There’s nothing really light about Stephen King. Not the size of his books (hundreds of pages, often) nor what they are about (death and terror, regularly). But as if provoked by the current state of our politics — which he can’t help tweeting about — King has delivered a near-weightless tale. I read “Elevation” in less time than it took to watch last year’s movie adaptation of “It.”

Weight is the preoccupation of this slim novel, which at first feels like a riff on one of King’s earliest works (written under a pseudonym), “Thinner,” about an overweight and callous lawyer who is beset by a curse that has him rapidly dropping pounds. Here, Scott Carey, an average small-town Mainer, is afflicted by a mysterious condition in which he starts to lose weight while outwardly appearing the same.

Scott looks 240 pounds. He shows up to his retired doctor’s office wearing a parka, pockets full of quarters and maxes out at 212. Later that night? 210.8 pounds. Two days later? 207.6 pounds. That size-40 waist remains, though.

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But King also has in mind the weight of close-mindedness and prejudice. A local lesbian couple, Missy and Deirdre, have opened Holy Frijole, a fancy Mexican restaurant. The fact that they are openly married has turned a good part of the town against them and put their restaurant in jeopardy. “The county went for Trump three-to-one in ’16 and they think our stonebrain governor walks on water,” one character says. “If those women had kept it on the down low they would have been fine, but they didn’t. Now there are people who think they’re trying to make some kind of statement.”