Lisey's Story (Stephen King)

[***] ISBN: 9780743289412

It's hard for me to give this book three stars - 'well worth reading'. But it ultimately deserves it, as long as I can qualify the rating. This book is worth reading if you enjoy this sort of thing, or if you want to experience some unique storytelling (and haven't read much by this author, apparently). I fall in the latter camp.

The author truly took some chances here. And he largely pulled it off. Much of the story takes place inside the titular Lisey's mind as she remembers, or is forced to remember, bits of her life with her deceased husband of 25 years, the author Scott Landon. In order to do this, the story needs to jump between the present, Lisey's past with Scott, and Scott's childhood. The mechanism that King uses to do this seemed unique and mostly worked for me. The story also has to jump back and forth between the real world and an alternate world that isn't quite imaginary, but is made of the stuff of dreams and nightmares. This also worked somewhat. The widow's state of mind, along with that of other characters, is often reflected by the language used. As a whole, this worked, too. As an inspiration for how to tell stories, I found this to be a pretty rich experience. It's not your typical novel.

On the other hand, some other reviews I've seen of the book say that many of these elements, and others, are typical King. I'll have to take their word on that. My problem with the book was not that he'd done this all before, but that he did so much of it. This book did not need to be 600 pages long. I got very close to putting it down at several points. We were spending so much time with Lisey's internal monologue that I was convinced she was simply insane, would not get sane, and that the entire story was ultimately just her own fantasy. When it became clear that this was not entirely the case, that real, albeit unbelievable, events were unfolding, I was able to hang in there. But because the story turned out to be so simple, I wish the author would have stripped away about a third of the words.

This might be the sort of thing you'd like, if you like this sort of thing.