A Month of Literary Gratitude, Day 12 - Misery, by Stephen King

Saturday, November 12, 2016

I'm not a huge fan of Stephen King. I'm not particularly drawn to horror stories, and while I've read a decent portion of his catalogue, Misery is the only one on my "best of" list.






This is a story - one of the very few - that kept me up until three in the morning on a work night because I just couldn't put it down. It is, quite simply, one of the most compelling books I've ever read. The antagonist is a woman named Annie, and boy-howdy, does SHE need a whole team of psychiatrists. She's completely unpredictable, and I was gnashing my teeth the whole time, wondering what was going to happen next. Paul, the protagonist, is basically caught up in a Black Swan event, where he has no control whatsoever over his fate or his life.

One of the things that made this such a good read was the way in which King made both characters nuanced. In spite of Annie's obvious psychopathy, you kind of feel bad for her. In spite of the horrible things happening to Paul, you kind of think he may be a jerk.

This is the book that convinced me that Stephen King wasn't overrated. Yikes.

1 comments:

Joe Lattone said...

The movie version was worth watching also - Kathy Bates was perfect for this roll