Lisey’s Story – Stephen King

  • Posted by Shaun on January 12th, 2007 filed in Books
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I’m sure everybody in my family knows I’m a big King fan. I own and have read just about every book he has written so far. So, it should not be any big surprise to learn that I read Lisey’s Story. Sue gave it to me for a Christmas present.

I finished reading it last week. When I first read the jacket I though hmm, a book about an author who dies and his wife ends up having to pick up the pieces and deal with his stuff afterwards. It sounded like a morbid realization as to what could have happened to King. So, I started off reading the book thinking it was all about King. Now that I’m finished I’m not 100% convinced it is not. I think it is a mixture of fiction and morbid possibility.

The basic plot of the story is that a very famous author dies. You don’t find out what he dies of until later in the story, but suffice to say that he died and his widow is still in morning after two years. She doesn’t get over his death and is being hounded by publishers and professors since she hasn’t released any of his unfinished and unpublished works.

One particular professor meets up with a lunatic who decides to take it upon himself to “convince” her to release the works to the professor. Now, the only really creepy parts of the book revolve around him and the things he does to “convince” her. I won’t say anymore, otherwise, I’ll ruin the ending for you.

I say this about most books I read, but overall it was good. The beginning was just plain confusing to me. Maybe it was me, maybe it was written that way on purpose (possible), but I was a little lost for where the story was headed and what timeframe things were taking place. By 1/3 of the way through I figured out the plot and things started to make sense. The remaining of the book is decent.

Not one of King’s best and most riveting books, but a good read. A good book to satisfy the need to read King. It is a love story between a widow and her husband. It was a little bit of gruesome at times. And it had a bit of fantasy. Her husband could go of to another, fantasy world whenever he wanted. So can she.

Now that I’ve had that itch scratched I’ve moved onto the Three Kingdom books that Amy gave me. Very long books. I read about 50 pages so far and it is fast paced. Lots of stuff happens and not much detail. The tough part is keeping track of names. Many, many names and they’re all Chinese names. Tough to keep track of. It makes reading and retaining a Jordan novel a simple feat.