The Book: Lisey’s Story, by Stephen King
The Story: This is the story of the marriage of Scott Landon, a world famous author, and his wife of 25 years Lisey. When the story begins, Scott has been dead for two years and Lisey is just starting to clean out his study and get stuff in some sort of order. She’s pretty proud of herself that she can finally handle it, but when she starts looking through old stuff, memories start coming at her fast and she kind of flips out. The more memories she unsurfaces, the more gritty back-story we get about her marriage to Scott and Scott’s insane childhood.
There are a few little side stories going on at the same time: Lisey’s sister Amanda has been a little bit unstable their whole life and she starts to really lose control. She chops her hands up then goes catatonic. Also, there’s a guy who calls himself “Zach McCool” who is trying to get his hands on Scott’s papers so he can sell them to some bigwig at a college somewhere. He’s seriously crazy and comes after Lisey in one of the creepiest ways possible.
The guts of this story, though, is the relationship between Scott and Lisey. They are a lot like most married couples in that they have so many connected memories and have a little “secret language.” However, because Scott had this super messed up childhood that he let Lisey in on, they seem to have this extra level, if that makes sense. Reading the story of their marriage through flashbacks that Lisey showed real sacrifice and understanding and really the idea of being a helpmate. They were just a team and they were good together. Knowing that, then seeing the grief of not being together anymore is what gives this book its ‘umph.’
What I Thought: This was actually a re-read for me. I had read it when it first came out and remember kind of enjoying it, but I realized that I couldn’t really remember what it was about. I have a friend who is a big Stephen King fan and this is her least favorite of his. She said she could barely finish it.
While I don’t think it is his best, I really don’t think it is his worst. There were parts (any part, actually that took place in Boo’ya Moon) that I kind of felt went on too long, but overall I enjoyed it. Maybe part of it was that I could just read this as Stephen King thinking about what would have happened if, instead of just messing up his legs, that van would have killed him. He wrote this not long after his accident, and I could just feel him thinking through what it would mean for his wife. There’s just, for me, something beautiful about that.
For me, this rode a fine line. It could have tipped into Saw territory or Nicholas Sparks territory pretty quickly, but I thought that Stephen King found a good balance and stayed there. There was enough “spooky” to remind you that this is Stephen King you’re dealing with and enough “lovey” to actually touch you a little.
I remember when I read this book the first time around all the made-up words annoyed me. As a general rule, that is something that I hate in books. This time through it bothered me less, and I think that it is just because I knew that it was coming.
Conclusion: Good, heartfelt stuff, but maybe not typical Stephen King. If you’ve never read him before, I wouldn’t start here, but this is definitely worth the read.