Lisey’s Story by Stephen King

If you have read anything by me previously, or at least heard me talk about how The Stand is my favorite book ever, you will know that Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. I love how he has many layers to his stories, horror and the unusual, people and how they relate, and places that are normal and yet, in the dark, scary. Lisey's Story is one of those stories, pure Stephen King at his best.

Lisey Landon is the widow of the famous Scott Landon, prize-winning author. Scott died two years before, and Lisey is just now going through his study and sorting through his papers. There are those who want the rumored lost stories that he wrote before he died, and Lisey finds out that some people are willing to do just about anything to get their hands on them. As Lisey sorts through his things, she is haunted by memories of their life together. She remembers a layer to their lives she had buried ”behind the purple.” She remembers this seemingly fantasy of Scott's, and in turn, she ends up traveling once again to Boo’ya Moon, a parallel universe of sorts where Scott would go when he was afraid or hurt, the place where he would go to find inspiration for his unusual stories. She must face Scott’s demons, sort through her past and her future, and come face to face with a crazed fan who won’t take no for an answer. She must have her own “blood bool” to cleanse herself and move forward into her own new future.

Stephen King has written something similar before in Bag of Bones, but this time he tells the story of loss and haunting from the widow’s perspective. The alternate universe and the horrors involved are only half the story. The best part of Lisey’s Story is the people and how they relate. On one hand you have Scott and Lisey Landon and the layers of communication and stories that make the ups and downs of a long, satisfying marriage. Stephen King captures how two people speak without words, how a couple has a private language of their own. Lisey’s relationships with her sisters are also a key part. Each sister is her own personality, and each is bound to the other eventually coming to the big confrontation with the wacko at the end.

You can’t help but feel that this is a deeply personal story for Stephen King, even though he states in the letter to his readers that Scott and Lisey are not Tabitha and himself. The characters are so real and the feelings portrayed so true that you can’t help but feel that he is pulling from real life, if not his own marriage then his own experiences and close observation. Overall it’s an excellent story, and while the scary parts aren’t the whole thing, they are terribly good on their own. The scary bits make the touching parts that much more perfect.

Rating: 5 Purrs, for the piebald thing, the sisters, and the ability to capture how two people in love can speak