Book Review: Lisey's Story by Stephen King

10 days to read 500 pages? How is that possible? Simply put, this is not your mother's Stephen King novel. Lisey's Story is challenging, heartbreaking, it tackles the randomness of memory with the precision of Ishiguro. Oh, don't get me wrong, monsters lurk in these pages, vast endless monsters, like the laughers or the title character's dead husband Scott's "long boy, with the never-ending piebald side."

I had some initial difficulty ingratiating myself into the words. It starts like a foreign language immersion class, with so many new words that they undulate around you like asphalt haze. These are the words of the interior of a long marriage, the language created from intimacy and rarely spoken outside. It is quite engrossing.

As the novel begins, Lisey Landon's husband, Scott, a famous award winning author (King insists is not based on him), has died, but that part of the story is detailed later, besides, he's very much alive in her memory. The author has left behind manuscripts and letters that are in high demand and frame the impetus for a violent showdown between Lisey and a threatening stalker. But it's about so much more: "bools and blood-bools", the "booya moon", a silver spade, a pool, catatonia, and love, above all, love.

A brilliant and unexpected work from a prolific mind, Lisey's Story is enthralling and magical, page after page.

Next Book: Chasing the Dead: A Novel