{"id":906,"date":"2011-02-23T02:36:48","date_gmt":"2011-02-23T02:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=906"},"modified":"2014-06-24T18:17:51","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T17:17:51","slug":"liseys-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=906","title":{"rendered":"LISEY’S STORY"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Stephen King stopped being a \u201cwriter\u201d decades ago. These days Stephen King is a giant, steamrollering, cash-making machine that trawls across the landscape of our ecologically over-burdened planet raking off a vast slice of humanity\u2019s combined wealth before one day \u2013 just as the final sliver of rainforest is gasps its last \u2013 Stephen King will unfurl its true self before us and ascend back to the stars whence it came leaving behind nothing but a fading maniacal cackle.<\/h3>\n

Which is to say: Stephen King is review-proof and faced with his awesome power many reviewers have buckled and decided to side with the alien invader \u2013 these quislings have infiltrated many otherwise reliable journals and claim that King is a master of storytelling and language whose novels transcend their roots in horror and belong in the literary canon.<\/p>\n

King\u2019s habit of flattering the literary establishment (and himself) by making his central characters writers and by making his central theme the importance of storytelling has surely helped his reputation. This habit is again on display in Lisey\u2019s Story<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Lisey is the widow of the late, fantastically-talented, charismatic, endearingly-fragile and, of course, much-lamented author Scott Landon. Scott died two years ago but Lisey is only now coming to terms with her loss and beginning to think of starting life afresh. Suddenly, however, strange things begin to happen. Her sister slips into a coma and starts speaking to Lisey in the voice of Scott. She finds herself threatened by a psychopath. Strange memories begin to surface of a place called Boo\u2019ya Moon, the truth behind Scott\u2019s childhood and the monsters that haunted him.<\/p>\n

The plot, though, doesn\u2019t much interest King. It is moved on by a series of \u201cbools\u201d \u2013 clues left for Lisey by her dead husband \u2013 and improbable coincidences. Despite the formulaic attentions of the book\u2019s psychopath, any sense of tension in the story is built almost entirely on cheap tricks \u2013 convenient amnesia imposed on the characters and evasion on behalf of the author \u2013 making Lisey\u2019s Story <\/em>an infuriating read.<\/p>\n

King\u2019s focus is not, then, on an intricately constructed plot but on the relationship between Scott and Lisey and the nature of a long marriage. But it is precisely at this point that the novel feels the weakest. Scott is, frankly, a smart-aleck prick who prances around the world dispensing homespun (half-baked) wisdom while dragging his wife \u2013 unacknowledged, unheralded \u2013 along as a crutch for his emotional inadequacies. But Lisey is worse, a simpleton or a coward, she doesn\u2019t just suffer Scott\u2019s grandiosity, she revels in her place three steps behind her husband lacking not just personal ambition but any shred of personal dignity.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the writing. Lisey\u2019s Story<\/em> is a fireworks display of writerly tricks \u2013\u00a0 chapters, viewpoints, time periods all change in mid-sentence \u2013 but none are so painfully irritating as the private language between Scott and Lisey. From \u201cpuffickly hoo-yuge\u201d to \u201cManda bunny\u201d being trapped with these two is like being stuck in a lift with one of those couples who wear matching cagoules, carry around Thermos flasks of weak tea and pictures of their cats and who, for years after a single chance meeting in Corfu, send you Christmas cards containing threats of impending visits. They are possessed of both terrifying inanity and mind-boggling insularity.<\/p>\n

With Lisey\u2019s Story<\/em> Stephen King is revealed as an author who both believes his own hype and is unable to live up to it. This book is a misconceived attempt to tie his undisputed talent for telling an engaging story to a form that allows him to stake a claim to greater literary pretensions. But King, whatever his ability as a shifter of books and whatever the claims of fans and critics, is nowhere near as adept at offering emotional or psychological insight as he is at dispensing thrills. Lisey\u2019s Story<\/em> fails to offer the excitement of King\u2019s best work but lacks the sophistication of character and theme of a truly literary novel.<\/p>\n

Stephen King \u2013 Lisey\u2019s Story<\/em>
\nHodder & Stoughton, 2006, 756pp, \u00a317.99, ISBN 0-340-89893-3<\/p>\n

(Originally published in Vector <\/em>250, Nov\/Dec 2006)<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen King stopped being a \u201cwriter\u201d decades ago. These days Stephen King is a giant, steamrollering, cash-making machine that trawls across the landscape of our ecologically over-burdened planet raking off a vast slice of humanity\u2019s combined wealth before one day \u2013 just as the final sliver of rainforest is gasps its last \u2013 Stephen King […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":907,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[8,15,10],"tags":[69,43,46,71],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/liseysstory.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-eC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":909,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions\/909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}