Lisey's Story

Lisey's Story

First edition cover
Author Stephen King
Country United States
Language English
Genre Horror, Gothic
Publisher Scribner
Publication date
 October 24, 2006
Media type Print (hardcover)
Pages 528
ISBN 978-0-7432-8941-2

Lisey's Story is a novel by Stephen King that combines the elements of psychological horror and romance. It was released on October 24, 2006, and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 2007.[1] An early excerpt from the novel, "Lisey and the Madman", was published in McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories (2004), and was nominated for the 2004 Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction.[2] King himself stated that this is his favorite of the novels he has written.[3]

The genesis for Lisey's Story was an incident in June 1999 in which King was hit by a van in Lovell, Maine, and seriously injured; while he was in the hospital, his wife Tabitha decided to redesign his study. Coming home from the hospital and seeing his books and belongings in boxes, King saw an image of what his study would look like after his death.[4]

Plot

Lisey's Story is the story of Lisey Landon, the widow of a famous and wildly successful novelist, Scott Landon. The book tells two stories—Lisey's story in the present, and the story of her dead husband's life, as remembered by Lisey during the course of the novel.

It has been two years since her husband's death, and Lisey is in the process of cleaning out her dead husband's writing area. A series of events occurs that causes Lisey to begin facing certain realities about her husband that she had repressed and forgotten. As Lisey is stalked, terrorized, and then mutilated by an insane fan of her husband's, Lisey begins recalling her husband's past—how he came from a family with a history of horrible mental illness that manifested as either an uncontrollable homicidal mania or as a deep catatonia, how he had a special gift, an ability to transport himself to another world, which he called "Boo'ya Moon", how Scott Landon's brother was put down by his father when his brother manifested an incurable insanity, and finally how Scott Landon had to put down his own father to save him from the madness that had finally taken him over.

As the novel progresses, we see the complexity of Lisey's marriage to Scott, and their deep and abiding love for each other. The novel takes place over a very short period of time—a matter of days—but the real story is told in Lisey's remembrances of her husband, her ability to harness his special power to save herself (and her sister), and finally to find the gift that her dead husband had left for her in Boo'ya Moon—a story just for Lisey—Lisey's story.

References

  1. ↑ "2007 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-22.
  2. ↑ http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?827096
  3. ↑ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1gqzn2/i_am_stephen_king_novelist_executive_producer_on/camwn7z
  4. ↑ "Origin of Stephen King's novel, LISEY'S STORY". YouTube. December 1, 2006.


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