Misery

338 pages. Signet Books. $7.99.
Misery, Stephen King’s gripping novel written from the perspective of a writer, is an understandable tale of the hostage author, the psychotic fan, and literally, the book of life and death. Paul Sheldon, award-winning author and serious alcoholic, having just finished the manuscript of Fast Cars, his first novel written since his completion of the acclaimed Misery saga, Paul makes a fateful, spontaneous decision to go west, “Take nothing but a change of clothes and the only manuscript for Fast Cars and hit the road to Vegas or Reno or maybe even the City of Angels.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t make it to any of those cities. Instead, he makes it to the side of the highway, passed out from pain, with his car totaled and stuck into a snow bank, with both legs shattered beyond recognition, right outside the little town of Sidewinder, Colorado. Incredibly, all of this happens before page 5. This book is an amazing read, but not for the faint of heart. King excellently describes every gory detail from Paul realizing his legs are unrecognizable, to a young sheriff being run over by an industrial lawnmower, to Paul’s own leg being amputated with an axe and having the bleeding stopped with a flamethrower. Overall, this book might make you lose your lunch, it might make you have nightmares, but no matter what, it will keep you on the edge of your seat. However, every story needs an antagonist, and this story’s is the middle-aged, bi-polar, self-proclaimed “Number One Fan” of Paul’s, Annie Wilkes. Paul and the reader learn information about her past at the same time, because, although this book has plenty of foreshadowing, mood-wise, there is only one instance of foreshadowing related to plot. This creates an interesting bond between Paul and the reader. The reader simply does not know what will happen to Paul in even the next paragraph. This connection makes Misery stand out amongst other King novels. One of the main reasons people respect King as a writer is his versatility: he can write from the perspective of an angry, rustic, gunslinger from a parallel world’s desert, or a schizophrenic middle-aged woman in the 1950’s, or an older man just waking from a coma. This time King is writing from the perspective of himself, a writer. With his personal bank of knowledge at his disposal, he often talks in the story about things he probably has great experience with, like writer’s block, or (in Sheldon’s case literally) deadlines. This allows for a story that is much easier to read, as King knows what he is writing about like the back of his hand Another reason this book stands out is that the book itself is spliced throughout with chapters of Misery’s Return, the sequel to the Misery series that Sheldon is being forced to write. It is interesting how both King’s and Sheldon’s stories fluctuate similarly in plot and mood throughout Sheldon’s captivity. For instance, Sheldon’s story starts out with a dark scene where a character has been woken in the middle of the night to learn that the main character in the Misery series, Misery Chastain, might have been buried alive. The mood in Misery mimics the mood in Misery’s Return for the beginning starts with Paul realizing he is Annie’s hostage. Similar to several other King books, Misery features a very small number of characters. Misery has only two main human characters, and a few scattered personified items in Annie’s house, like the old Royal typewriter he writes the book with, whose “toothless grin” and crazy, cartoonish voice taunt Paul about his suffering, or the imaginary “TV announcers” who comment on his escapades into the house for more pain medication while Annie is out in town. These inanimate characters play, in a way, a dilapidated version of the ancient Greek chorus, commenting through Paul’s hallucinations from the drugs, fear, and seclusion (often adding some comic relief), and eventually become so personified that they will talk at length to Paul with different opinions and perspectives about Paul’s predicament and his eventual fight against Annie. Overall, this book is a worthy addition to the King collection, and more so the genre of horror in general. At some points, the reader may even feel like saying, “stop describing this violence,” but in the end, the bond Paul has with the reader, his comedic side in intense situations, and the pure insanity of Annie work together to form a complex, grotesque, thought-provoking, and horrifying book about captivity, writing, and murder that is only appropriate for those over 16.