Misery: King Stephen - Softcover

King, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444720716 ISBN 13: 9781444720716

Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks, 2007

Synopsis

King's Classic bestseller about a famous novelist held hostage by his Number One Fan.

Misery Chastain is dead. Paul Sheldon has just killed her - with relief, with joy. Misery has made him rich; she was the heroine of a string of bestsellers. And now he wants to get on to some real writing.

That's when the car accident happens, and he wakes up in pain in a strange bed. But it isn't hospital. Annie Wilkes has pulled him from the wreck, brought him to her remote mountain home, splinted and set his mangled legs.

The good news is that Annie was a nurse and has pain-killing drugs. The bad news is that she has long been Paul's Number One Fan. And when she finds out what Paul had done to Misery, she doesn't like it. She doesn't like it at all.

Paul Sheldon used to write for a living. Now he's writing to stay alive.

About this title

Review:

In Misery, as in The Shining, a writer is trapped in an evil house during a Colorado winter. Each novel bristles with claustrophobia, stinging insects, and the threat of a lethal explosion. Each is about a writer faced with the dominating monster of his unpredictable muse.

Paul Sheldon, the hero of Misery, sees himself as a caged parrot who must return to Africa in order to be free. Thus, in the novel within a novel, the romance novel that his mad captor-nurse, Annie Wilkes, forces him to write, he goes to Africa--a mysterious continent that evokes for him the frightening, implacable solidity of a woman's (Annie's) body. The manuscript fragments he produces tell of a great Bee Goddess, an African queen reminiscent of H. Rider Haggard's She.

He hates her, he fears her, he wants to kill her; but all the same he needs her power. Annie Wilkes literally breathes life into him.

Misery touches on several large themes: the state of possession by an evil being, the idea that art is an act in which the artist willingly becomes captive, the tortured condition of being a writer, and the fears attendant to becoming a "brand-name" best selling author with legions of zealous fans. And yet it's a tight, highly resonant echo chamber of a book--one of King's shortest, and best novels ever. --Fiona Webster

Review:

This terrifying story of imprisonment by a demented fan is one of the greatest thrillers ever written (James Smythe)

Not since Dickens has a writer had so many readers by the throat (Guardian)

King's new novel, about a writer held hostage by his self-proclaimed "number-one fan,'' is unadulteratedly terrifying. Paul Sheldon, a writer of historical romances, is in a car accident; rescued by nurse Annie Wilkes, he slowly realizes that salvation can be worse than death. Sheldon has killed off Misery Chastain, the popular protagonist of his Misery series and Annie, who has a murderous past, wants her back. Keeping the paralyzed Sheldon prisoner, she forces him to revive the character in a continuation of the series, and she reads each page as it comes out of the typewriter; there is a joyously Dickensian novel within a novel here, and it appears in faded typescript. Studded among the frightening moments are sparkling reflections on the writer and his audience, on the difficulties, joys and responsibilities of being a storyteller, on the nature of the muse, on the differences between "serious'' and "popular'' writing. Sheldon is a revealingly autobiographical figure; Annie is not merely a monster but is subtly and often touchingly portrayed, allowing hostage and keeper a believable, if twisted, relationship. The best parts of this novel demand that we take King seriously as a writer with a deeply felt understanding of human psychology. (Publishers Weekly)

A writer of excellence...King is one of the most fertile storytellers of the modern novel (Sunday Times)

One of the great storytellers of our time (Guardian)

'America's greatest living novelist' (Lee Child)

'[A] genius for storytelling' (Daily Mirror)

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1444720716
• ISBN 13: 9781444720716
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384