Synopses & Reviews
Lisey Debusher Landon lost her husband, Scott, two years ago, after a twenty-five-year marriage of the most profound and sometimes frightening intimacy. Scott was an award-winning, bestselling novelist and a very complicated man. Early in their relationship, before they married, Lisey had to learn from him about books and blood and bools. Later, she understood that there was a place Scott went a place that both terrified and healed him, that could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed in order to live.
Now it's Lisey's turn to face Scott's demons, Lisey's turn to go to Boo'ya Moon. What begins as a widow's effort to sort through the papers of her celebrated husband becomes a nearly fatal journey into the darkness he inhabited. Perhaps King's most personal and powerful novel, Lisey's Story is about the wellsprings of creativity, the temptations of madness, and the secret language of love.
Review
"King is surprisingly introspective and mature here. He showcases the agony and the ecstasy of the writing process....One of King's finest works." Kirkus Reviews
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"[A] long, often long-feeling, utterly Stephen Kingish novel....The book is also, perhaps, a parable about love and imagination that affirms love as the more salvific of the two." Booklist
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"King, often at his most powerful when exploring grief...takes readers on a roller-coaster ride through the artifacts of a marriage....There is little doubt that, in its monster-strewn, pop culture-laden way, this is also Stevie's Story. An essential addition to all King collections." Library Journal
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"[A] tender, intimate book that makes an epic interior journey without covering much physical terrain....The scope sounds modest, yet this book is haunting even by Mr. King's standards. And he knows a thing or two about haunting." Janet Maslin, The New York Times
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"[A] beautiful, exquisitely told story, a tale of romance and passion so strong that it can outlast even the separation of death. It is also a haunting tale of true madness, the madness that exists in only the most damaged of minds." Chicago Sun-Times
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"This is King at his best. Retired or not, he's at the top of his form. And Lisey's Story proves once again that, as a storyteller, a fantasist and a chronicler of the human condition, he has no match." Rocky Mountain News
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"[P]assionate, often wrenching....This Story might take awhile to draw you in, but once King has you in his grasp, you'll willingly follow him to the end, no matter how scary things get along the way." Dallas-Ft. Worth Star Telegram
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"In Lisey's Story, Stephen King makes bold, brilliant use of his satanic storytelling gift, his angelic ear for language, and, above all, his incomparable ability to find the epic in the ordinary, to present us with the bloody and fabulous tale of an ordinary marriage. In his hands, the long, passionate union of Scott and Lisey Landon of any long-lived marriage, by implication becomes a fantastic kingdom, with its own geography and language, its dark and stirring chronicle of heroes and monsters, its tragedies, griefs, and glories. King has been getting me to look at the world with terror and wonder since I was fifteen years old, and I have never been more persuaded than by this book of his greatness." Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
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"[S]hould serve as definitive notice that Stephen King has evolved from a talented writer of horror into a serious literary artist. But he has yet to abandon the conventions that have made him a household name: a childish fixation on riddles and torture, a tendency to allow plot to trump character, action to overrun drama." Steve Almond, The Los Angeles Times
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"Lisey's Story is a wondrous novel of marriage, a love story steeped in strength and tenderness, and cast with the most vivid, touching, and believable characters in recent literature. I came to adore Lisey Landon and her sisters, I ached for Scott and all he'd been through, and when I finally reached the bittersweet and heartfelt conclusion, my first thought was that I wanted to start over again from the beginning, for it felt as if I were saying good-bye to old friends. This is Stephen King at his finest and most generous, a dazzling novel that you'll thank yourself for reading long after the final page is turned." Nicholas Sparks, author of At First Sight and The Notebook
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"[D]rowned by a boggy narrative he can barely steer through, there's little hope of King's finding a madeleine. In the end, this is not Lisey's story at all. It is the story of an author who should know better." Philadelphia Inquirer
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"Lisey's Story is...a touching exploration of grief, an honest appraisal of marriage, a salute to resolute women and a paean to the collective imagination that links and sustains us. It's also a horrifying tale of child abuse, madness, mutilation and a monster almost too appalling to describe." Hartford Courant
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"It's a powerful, genuinely moving novel: without a doubt one of the finest King has ever written." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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"A taut thriller that is also a remarkable and haunting love story. Several years after he declared he was done with writing, King appears at the top of his game and Lisey's Story unveils yet another aspect of his vast repertoire." Baltimore Sun
Synopsis
Two years after losing her husband of twenty-five years, Lisey looks back at the sometimes frightening intimacy that marked their marriage, her husband's successes as an award-winning novelist, and his secretive nature that established Lisey's supernatural belief systems, on which she eventually comes to depend for survival. 1,250,000 first printing.
Synopsis
Every marriage has two hearts, one light and one dark, and Lisey Landon must confront both. King's most personal and powerful book to date is about the wellsprings of creativity, the temptations of madness, and the secret language of love.
About the Author
Stephen King has written more than forty novels and two hundred short stories. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. King has also received the O. Henry Award for his story "The Man in the Black Suit." Among his most recent worldwide bestsellers are Cell, the Dark Tower series, On Writing, The Green Mile, and Bag of Bones. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.