The Last Station of The Bool (Lisey's Story - Stephen King)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Lisey's Story - Stephen King
Date:	18/03/07 (329 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Die hard King fans may like

Disadvantages: Very dull indeed

“I have seen the future of horror and its name is Clive Barker” or it was something like that that the disingenuous Stephen King once complimented his fellow horror/fantasy writer. As I’ve traversed the years with my reading in the horror genre, one of the constants spanning those decades has been the phenomenon that is Stephen King. So when I read a recent article that his son - pen name: Joe (Joseph) Hill - was about to break into the big league with his first major novel, I got a sense of dynasty about to move into a new era. In many ways, recent events have tied in with my own feelings that SK had long since gone past his sell by date and, indeed, the only reason I read “Lisey’s Story” at all was because my good lady mistakenly assumed that I was still in the habit of reading every single tome to be published by the most famous, populist, literary son of Maine, U.S.A. and bought me the book as a present.

Lisey Landon is the recent widow of the famous writer, Scott Landon. Following his death, she has the problem of dealing with his unpublished works as well as an increasingly regular encounter with his spirit. Stalked by the crazy Jim Doolan who wants carte blanche regarding the rights to her dead husband’s work (allegedly, although it appears that he may simply want to maim her for his own ker-azee reasons) and battling with her unstable sister’s self harm, Lisey is a woman in an emotional flux faced with real danger as well as the metaphysical story of Scott’s tragic past unfolding through her ephemeral experiences with Scott’s thoughts and feelings.

“Lisey’s Story” is an honorable project. Intended to reflect on a writer’s metaphorical well of inspiration depicted in the book by the fictional refuge “Boo’ya Moon“, Stephen King paints a reflective picture of the post apocalyptic output following an important writer’s death and mashes it into a tale of angst and family friction. Anyone that’s read any of King’s previous work will recognise his pre-occupation with spinning a tale about a writer’s experiences and, in this sense, this latest effort seems as self-referential as ever “The Dark Half” or any of his other author driven tales were. King delivers in the expected imaginatively gory episodes around both Lisey’s encounters with the crazed Jim Doolan and the surreal landscape of the Boo’ya Moon and its yum yum trees that hide a dark secret that sits on the borderline of reality and imagination. This is King at his best; suspenseful, imaginative and foreboding especially with the sub-plot about “bad gunky” and the macabre skeletons in the Landon family closet. To be fair, the story gathers momentum over the last 100 pages or so and the melodrama of the Landon family madness takes the story to its highest peak. Maybe the inclusion of a post war syndrome resulting in a deranged father and an inherited madness reads something like a cross between “Platoon” and something from the depths of one of Edgar Allan Poe’s nightmare scapes but the Landon family dramas do provide what interest there is in the book.

Where “Lisey’s Story” fails is in its attempt to capture the reader’s imagination. It took me a good 150 pages to get into the story in a ponderous opening that would make Charles Dickens look like someone that cut to the chase. Written in the third person but predominantly from Lisey’s point of view, the first two thirds of the book simply fails to catch fire. Like a kindling that’s just been rained on, the story threatens to grip the reader but gets lost in that trademark meandering that King so often gets caught up in these days and whilst the reader will sympathise with Lisey’s character, there simply isn’t enough development around the other figures in the book to make you care albeit the Landons may be crazy enough to keep the reader‘s interest through episodes reminiscent of “The Shining“ in their lunacy. The book almost reads like an epitaph for King himself, what with a grieving widow, unpublished catalogue of material worth millions potentially and an imaginary villain that flits in and out of reality who may even follow King to the other side; assuming that there is one of course.

There is no shortage of soap opera in the book. With Lisey’s ongoing battle to keep her sister - Amanda - sane, the retrospective sexual privation of the Landons’ time in Germany and the all-American feel of the Maine backdrop, much of “Lisey’s Story” will feel familiar to fans of the author’s work. In fact, those familiar facets of American collective guilt post Vietnam/Iraq, the dysfunctional aspect of American middle class families and a collective past that nearly always hides a family monster under the bed are all present and correct as the author strays into a work that looks and feels for all the world like a tangential stream-of-consciousness piece that will leave most readers cold and uninspired. At 562 pages, “Lisey’s Story” is a long, challenging read that will appeal to die hard Stephen King fans only. For everyone else, to be honest, I’d avoid this one. It’s slow to catch fire, convoluted and downright boring at times. Perhaps the future has arrived and its name is Joe Hill but only if he writes more exciting books than this one by his father!

Thanks for the read

Mara

ISBN: 0-340-89893-3
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
RRP: £17.99 for the hardback. Available at Amazon from £8.99

Summary: Overview of "Lisey's Story"