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Title: Lisey's Story
ISBN: 0743556003
Author:
Stephen King
Publicate Date: 2006-10-24
Publish: 2006-10-24
List Price: $49.95
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Audio CD
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $2.98
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.75
Amazon Merchant Price: $36.46
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Tedious fiction -- from a great writer
I am really amazed at the level of maturity King's writing has taken. A lot of people credit the hit and run accident, but I think it was inevitable. While The Shining will always be my favorite, I have loved a number of his books written in the last 10-12 years. But Lisey's Story is not one of them.
If you want a mature novel with a woman searching for meaning with a twinge of the supernatural, read Bag of Bones. I could not stop reading that book. His writing style was so fascinating. Lisey's Story is something that you have to slog through. His writing style is very annoying (I agree with the other reviewer) with all the childish (not "child-like") phrases and the story structure (searching for meaning with a subtext of how an writer creates something) he has done many times before.
King is the king of the "big structural elements" (remember when everything was centered on an Indian burial mound?) and the "writer doing his craft" subtext is done better in other books (The Dark Half, etc.). The appeal of King is that he can have that "writing 101" approach to structure but still pull it off with interesting characters, great prose, and wonderful twists. Lisey's Story has none of these just a woman mostly talking to herself about crap like "bools" (HINT: the book is a big "bool"). I have owned this book for over a year and am still not halfway done with it. I have put it down and picked it up a dozen times. I can only make it through 60-70 pages before I toss it down and pick up something else.
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2: Smucking Awesome!
Ok...in the beginning of this book, I had a difficult time comprehending the writing...the thoughts going back and forth were a bit difficult to grasp. It was well worth holding on. The book was amazing.
I couldn't get enough of the book, and when I had to put it down to get in the car and run someplace I found myself in withdrawal. So I went to the library and grabbed the audio version. While in the house I'd read, while in the car I listened.
I love Stephen King and a couple of his recent books seemed a bit 'off' to me and left me disappointed. I feared he was running out of ideas...that the pool had gone dry. Lisey's Story is the old King...back fully, complete with diarrhea of the word processor and a story that can horrify you yet touch on the most intimate and personal human emotions at the same time.
BRAVO MR KING!
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3: We enjoy your books! Particularly the early, scary ones.
Woody Allen had a great true moment of self-criticism in his film "Stardust Memories" (1980) where he comes upon a couple of aliens who tell him:
"We enjoy your films! Particularly the early, funny ones."
The same is with Stephen King who got lost in himself somewhere in the early 1990s.
Lisey's Story is neither Christine nor The Shining. It's neither Pet Sematary nor Salem's Lot. Bluntly, it's more like a lot of blah blah blah tucked into 600 pages. Sometimes, you may get the creepy feeling that King let his comupter do most of the job by itself.
It won't hurt King to take a long break, relax and search for the roots of good writing. I think he can afford that.
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4: No smucking good!
As a long time reader of Stephen King's books, it took me two tries to get into this book. The story takes too long to get into the subplots and too much of the book occurs in Lisey's eccentric ramblings and memories. It should have been called "Lisey's Labyrinth".
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5: Another solid Stephen King, good reading from Mare Winningham
Lisey's Story is a worthy addition to Stephen King canon. It's refreshingly unique very simply because the protagonist is a middle-aged woman, and the story is almost entirely told from Lisey's perspective. It's a bit odd hearing King narrate in a female voice, but he pulls it off, and it sounds honest and authentic.
I enjoyed the plot, which I found an interesting amalgam of King's "From a Buick 8" and "Insomnia", and Clive Barker's "Coldheart Canyon". Like some other reviewers, I found Lisey's and Scott's coded talk a bit overworked at times, but palatable.
I listened to Lisey's Story unabridged on CD narrated by Mare Winningham. Ms. Winningham gives a solid performance, well-suited for Lisey's earnestness and resiliency, and reasonably dynamic giving life to Scott Landon and the supporting characters.
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