IN PRINT: King of Wishful Thinking

The master of horror tries for romance and ends up with the same old scares

Josh Bell












Lisey’s Story

Stephen King


Scribner, $28



In Bag of Bones, it was bestselling novelist Mike Noonan who was grieving over the loss of his longtime wife, coming to terms with his feelings while becoming embroiled in a supernatural mystery generally less horrific than one might expect from King. Lisey's Story reverses the positions, as it's now the wife, title character Lisey Landon, who's grieving over the loss of her husband, bestselling author Scott Landon. And although publicity materials feature glowing quotes from such mainstream purveyors of romantic fiction as Nicholas Sparks and Nora Roberts, Lisey's Story once again comes down to a face-off between its fragile but indomitable protagonist and the dark forces arrayed against her.

Along the way, King strains to paint a portrait of a long, loving marriage, as Lisey recalls in flashback the good and bad times with Scott. But despite all the assurances that this is, at its heart, a love story, Lisey and Scott's relationship comes off as more of a collection of forced moments and contrived in-jokes than an actual living, breathing connection between two people, and that's the book's biggest failing.

King's always been a little too in love with invented words and homey sayings, and Lisey's Story fairly drowns in them. Scott is meant to be both a critical darling and a popular favorite as an author, but his entire rapport with Lisey is based on the exchange of corny turns of phrase that would elicit more groans than admiration. By the third or 13th time Lisey uses "smuck" for "fuck," or talks about a "puffickly huh-yooge" something or other, or reminds herself to "strap on whenever it seems appropriate," you wonder whether she and Scott ever just talked normally.

This is at least the fourth major novel King's written about the perils of being a best-selling author (after Misery, The Dark Half and Bag of Bones), and it's starting to seem like a self-aggrandizing crutch. Scott is clearly the fantasy version of Stephen King—a prolific prodigy, publishing his first novel at 21, respected enough to win both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and successful enough to leave Lisey with a $20 million fortune. But he's never a believable genius, with his platitudes about going to the "language pool" (which turns out to be disappointingly literal) and heightened (but familiar) daddy issues that he channels into his prose.










Mitch Slapped



Okay, yes, that was me in the Borders on Stephanie the other night, skulking up to the new-releases shelf, snatching a book and hiding it in a handful of magazines. I was hoping you didn't notice.

Let me be clear: I have no problem running to the store for girly stuff. Tampons, makeup, nylons ... hell, I'll pick 'em all up, and a six-pack of Tab, too. But when my wife uttered the nine words no self-respecting book dude wants to hear—"Will you get me the new Mitch Albom novel?"—my nerve failed. I shuddered. I made faces indicating severe gastric distress. But I had my orders. In the store, shame encased me. I imagined the book oozing sap all the way to the register, announcing to everyone that I was buying the latest sentimental glopfest from that Tuesdays With Morrie guy. "For the record," I told the young cutie behind the counter, "this is for my wife. I don't want my street cred to suffer from buying For One More Day."

She smiled—quizzically? indulgently? I couldn't tell—but didn't appear to buy into my core premise, as articulated by my 14-year-old son, who is now grounded:

"You have street cred?"

Okay, maybe not. But I do have my pride. Well, did.



Scott Dickensheets





It's not just the plight of the millionaire author that's held over from past novels—there's also the Misery-style homicidal fan (two, actually); and Lisey's strong-woman-coming-into-her-own characterization is cribbed from Rose Madder, Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne, with King still a bit ill-at-ease creating a three-dimensional adult female. Because it's hard to believe in Lisey or her relationship with Scott, it's harder to believe in the urgency of her struggle when she faces down the homicidal fan or the evil lurking in Scott's childhood.

Even when indulging in sloppy characterization and cutesy wordplay, King is still a master storyteller, and Lisey's Story moves quickly and efficiently until its last 60 pages or so, when the loose-end-tying becomes cumbersome and rote. Still, those who go searching too hard for "literary merit" would do well to remember that King already explored this territory more effectively in the past.

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