Customer Reviews

Misery

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Paul Sheldon finishes a book he's proud of, unlike the bestselling Misery series he's been churning out. On his way home, he crashes and is "saved" by his number one fan. Annie Wilkes turnes out to be horrifyingly insane, torturous, homicidal and more than a bit suicidal.

The book centers on two characters isolated in the Colorado high country. Still the book is deep and gripping. Sheldon struggles mightily to get free and it seems the novel is a bit autobiographical as King reveals the character's ideas about popular fiction and its merits.

A must for writers. It hits home hard and has an engaging, intimate perspective that demands you to connect with Paul Sheldon's plight.

CJ West
Author, Taking Stock

This book is probably better known as a movie but the cinema does not compare with the suspense filled writings of Stephen King.
In this book Paul Sheldon, author of a series of bestselling novels has finally completed work that was past due. He jumps in car and head to the hills in a celebratory fashion.
Unfortunately fate steps in and with an untimely set of circumstances he ends up in the hands of his "number one fan" an ex-nurse Annie Wilkes.
She is willing to nurse him back to health but with one catch... that he changes the outcome of his latest work.
So begins this give and take that ends up in a series of testing of the wills where Annie keeps him hostage until he finishes his work.
A rather disturbing portrayal of what lengths a fan will go to in an attempt to get the right ending.
Check out how Sheldon with a typewriter and a ream of paper rediscovers his inner voice and attempts to break from Annie and his own inner demons.

I loved this book. Writer Paul Sheldon crashes in a blizzard. When he finally awakes, he finds himself in the clutches of his "Number one fan", Annie Wilkes. Wilkes is a psychopathic bird of a different color. She keeps Sheldon doped up and forces him to re-write a book of a character, "Misery Chastain", whom Sheldon has discarded from sheer burnout. It turns out to be his best novel ever, but he realizes that Annie is going to kill him as soon as it is finished.
Annie puts him through about as much torture as any human can bear, uncluding chopping his foot off with an axe. This book is everything I love in a Stephen King novel.
Another thing that I like about Paul Sheldon, is that King uses him briefly in other novels. A must read for any Stephen King fan. The movie follows the book pretty closely, but of course the real meat is in the novel. Very well written story and fantastic characters. This is very deserving of a five star rating.

Misery was actually my first Stephen King book, which I decided to read after seeing the movie at the theater with some friends. After realizing how much more intense, disturbing, and graphic it was compared to the movie, I was hooked on King forever. It's not all just blood and guts, though; Annie and Paul are fascinating characters and the plot is incredibly suspenseful. This novel offers no supernatural elements. The horror comes from seeing the insane depths of psychosis and the extremes of human cruelty, something much scarier than make-believe monsters because it seems so real. All I can say is when I was waiting for Annie to break out her sledgehammer in the infamous hobbling scene, I was shocked, disgusted, and grossly satisfied by what happens instead. I read once that Misery was supposed to be King's next Richard Bachman novel after Thinner, but his cover was blown before it could happen. You have to believe that on the strength of Thinner, this one would have put Bachman at the top of the bestseller lists. As it turned out, it became one of King's most popular and successful "realistic" horror stories.