Tales From the Mid-life
by James Roland
Stephen King is old.
He is rapidly approaching the big Six-O, and it shows.
King’s work was never driven by thrill-a-minute plot points; his stories show a real talent for understanding the inner workings of the quote – human condition – unquote. But as he ages (wine connoisseurs would say ‘matures’) King depends more and more on his realistic characters to tell his horror stories.
Make no mistake, Stephen King is a horror writer. His fascination with the dark side is found in every piece he ever wrote, whether it’s a heartfelt rumination on boyhood like The Body (later made into the film Stand by Me) or a gory basement thriller about giant rats like Graveyard Shift. He has been advertised as the king of schlock for years, and many of the movies made from his work fail to capture his nuances and depend on cheesy 80s gore to maintain an audience.
Recently, though, many of his Constant Readers have fought for his integrity, claiming he is much more than the average airport paperback writer; that King is a master storyteller and writer, regardless of what most of the world thinks of his chosen genre (a genre that he shares with fellow masters H.P. Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury, by the way).
King’s latest novel, Lisey’s Story, is the work of a master – a web of narratives that would become a messy knot in the hands of a younger writer. Like the rest of King’s work, Lisey’s Story is, at times, horrific. Faceless monsters or crazed murderers are not the true horror this time around (although rabid King fans shouldn’t be disappointed; it has all the elements that keep his readers using a night light well into their thirties). The real monster of Lisey’s Story is the one that gets us all: age.
Meet Lisey Landon. This is her story.
It is also the story of her family. In Lisey’s Story, King has created a family history so real, so bitter and sweet that, at times, it’s almost painful to read. Like the memories of summer games with your grade school friends or your girlfriend’s awkward and innocent first kiss, some memories are so beautiful they hurt to remember.
Lisey’s Story is told through the memories of Lisey (pronounced Lee-See) Landon, the wife and woman-behind-the-curtain of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Scott Landon. The novel starts two years after Scott’s death. Lisey is finally cleaning out his office and finds a series of photographs that send her in reverse down memory lane. She relives their most passionate and heart wrenching moments, and the book quickly divides into many different narratives.
In one, thirty-year-old Lisey fights for the life of her husband and the bond of their marriage. Scott is attacked by a crazed fan, their marriage reaches a breaking point during a dark sabbatical in Germany, and Scott nearly loses his mind and soul to the creative forces that spawn his novels.
In another, a college-age Lisey contends with a brooding fiancé and learns about Scott’s sordid past; fighting an abusive father and the supernatural forces that will plague him through life.
A final narrative ties all of these stories together. Fifty-year-old Lisey struggles with Jim Dooley, one of her husband’s deranged fans who appears to claim any unpublished treasures that might be lurking around Scott’s office.
When it seems that Scott had left messages for her long before he died, messages that seem to predict the appearance of Jim Dooley, Lisey is forced to remember things she had willingly forgotten – things what will reveal the truth behind her love for Scott, the painful faith and devotion that goes into a thirty-year marriage, and the dark secret that lies in Scott’s past; a legacy that leads ultimately to the magical world of Boo’ya Moon . . . .
King is fascinated with memories and imagination. The plot structure of Lisey’s Story is reminiscent of his novel, From a Buick 8, where the characters retell countless anecdotes while sitting on a bench and eating sandwiches. In Lisey’s Story the heroine spends most of her time on a dusty attic floor, looking at old photographs and remembering seemingly random events from her marriage.
That may not have Dean Koontz readers bolting to Barnes and Noble (there are even a few nursing home scenes), but fans of the standard action driven plot have often been disappointed in King’s work. Where King lacks in plot he overflows with true story, choosing to dish out his creepiest creations in bite sized portions while keeping the eerie creatures restrained to Lisey’s spotty memory.
Lisey is a woman past her prime. She is too old to start again, to browse the internet for a new lover and start having children, but she is too young to climb under an afghan and start watching Matlock. What Lisey has left is the chance to relive the past and rewrite the wrongs of her life. She has the chance to prove that love doesn’t die of a virus in a hospital bed before you can get there to say your last goodbye. She has the chance to prove that people are great because of the story of their life, that the person you see behind the counter at a drugstore is a hero of someone’s tale.
Lisey’s Story is a fantastic novel that proves there is honor in love and family. The quiet moments in the marriage bed or around the dinner table can be sacred moments of fantasy where men are crowned kings and women are virtuous.
There is magic in the average life, even if your own story doesn’t take you to the shores of Boo’ya Moon.
Book: Lisey’s Story
Publisher: Scribner
Date: October 24th, 2006
Available at: All major book sellers
Price: $28.00
