STEPHEN KING - LISEY'S STORY
Publisher:
Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 0340898933
October 24th, 2006
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REVIEW: LISEY'S STORY -
STEPHEN KING
Unlike many prolific authors, Stephen King rarely disappoints
and with his latest offering, Lisey’s Story,
the tradition continues.
Lisey Landon lost her husband Scott two years ago, after
a twenty-five-year marriage of profound, sometimes frightening, intimacy.
Scott was a celebrated, award-winning, novelist and a complex man.
Lisey knew there was a dark place where her husband ventured to face
his demons. Boo'ya Moon is what Scott called it; a realm that both terrified
and healed him, that could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed
to write and live.
Now it's Lisey's turn to face her husband's
demons and what begins as a widow's effort to sort through her husband's
effects, becomes a perilous journey into the heart of darkness.
From the outset of the novel, King instils
an image of Lisey that is unshakeable. The faithful wife who dotes on
her husband as he bathes in the spotlight created by his own success.
To so effectively write about such a character is an undoubted skill,
practiced by many but perfected by only a few. So personable is the
charcterisation, in fact, one has to wonder how much of King’s
wife, Tabitha – a highly acclaimed novelist in her own right and
reputedly responsible for King’s career as it was she who fished
an unfinished Carrie from the bin – is built into Lisey.
This is a journey into the soul of the
author, where everything has a sinister side that merges light with
dark to discernible levels and begs questions to be answered at each
turn of the page.
It can also be taken as Stephen King
taking a swipe at those who deride popular fiction simply because of
its popularity, as Lisey attempts to exorcise what ever is lurking in
the shadows, ready to pounce.
For “Things That Go Bump In The
Night” read “The Critics”.
It is the creation and sustenance of
atmosphere, however, which remains the author’s strongest card.
Often in King’s work, it is the man or woman fighting alone who
comes to the fore and, here, this ability to make the reader reach for
a stronger light by which to read while they do so, is never more prepossessing.
Not since The Girl Who Loved Tom
Gordon, perhaps, has King’s audience been so deeply on the
side of the hero in her fight for escape whilst all the while realising
that each creak of the floorboard or scratch at the window may not be
the house settling or the wind blowing through the trees.
Quite simply, this is Stephen King writing
at his very, very best and anybody who enjoys a roller coaster
ride capable of twisting the blood should avail themselves of a copy
forthwith.
9/10
Order this book online - Linghams Booksellers
break the rules as I see fit.” - Chris High 2003.