Lisey's Story

by Stephen King

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.

• ISBN10: 078628966X
• ISBN13: 9780786289660
• Publish Date: 1 October 2006 (first published 1 January 2006)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 20 April 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Thorndike Press
• Edition: Large type / large print edition
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 825
• Language: English

Reviews

[celinenyx]

Disliked by many, liked by some, Lisey's Story is one of the newer works of King that has baffled readers all over the world.

Two years after the death of her writer husband, Lisey thinks she is finally done grieving. But then it seems as if her husband left her clues, left her a treasure hunt, a bool. Lisey begins a frightening adventure into her own memories, the memories she has repressed for years.

Stephen King has a certain style that's immediately obvious once you have read any of his books. He has a certain way of displaying people's thoughts, of crawling into their heads. Most of his books however, are of an epic scope, following multiple characters over a span of time. Lisey's Story is a much more personal story, it's much closer and more detailed. We spend the entire book in Lisey's head, inside her marriage and their language. On one hand, Lisey's Story is very much King. On the other hand, it's very different from many of his more popular works like It, Salem's Lot or Insomnia.

Lisey's Story is written in a fragmented, helter-skelter style that makes it hard to get into. Readability also isn't helped by all the made-up and pretend words that fill Lisey's head once she remembers more and more of Scott. Words like "smucking" and "bool" are used repeatedly throughout the book, which has annoyed several readers.

To be honest I've ran out of objective things to say about the book, because I thought it was beautiful. The writing swept me away into their world, even though it was a sometimes dysfunctional and often frightening world. Lisey's Story is my favourite Stephen King book in all its ugliness, all its roughness, and I hope to reread it in a year or so.