Grief and Creativity: Lisey's Story by Stephen King

Lisey's Story is a strange Stephen King book in many ways, but I found it as engrossing as most of his other work.

I had read somewhere that King says this is his favorite of his books, and somewhere along the way toward my King fandom in recent years I vaguely decided to try to read all of King's books at some point (a major undertaking given how prolific he is!). Then with the TV adaptation coming to Apple TV, I figured it was time to read Lisey's Story.

As with most of his work, you get some really great characters, one of whom isn't even alive. Lisey's grief at losing her husband is the through line of the novel. And then there's the plot involving an annoying English professor and a deranged man keen on obtaining her husband's unfinished work, intertwined with Lisey's sisters, one of whom is mentally ill. 

This isn't really an autobiographical novel. Scott is not quite Stephen King himself and Lisey is not Tabitha King, but there are enough connections that this really does feel like a deeply personal novel. While King has written about authors numerous times (The Shining, The Dark Half, Salem's Lot, The Body, The Dead Zone, etc.) as well as grief (Pet Sematary, Insomnia, etc.), Lisey's Story feels a bit different than his other work.

The writing style is quite different  

(yet you get some parenthetical statements like this)

than King's usual style-it's often hard to tell exactly when you are reading. This can be a bit disorienting, but that's wholly deliberate. 

While this novel pulled me in as much as King usually does, I admit it took a bit more work to read than typical King fare (although I think King is a headier writer than he gets credit for: check out those last few Dark Tower books if you don't believe me). I see why some Constant Readers don't care for this one, but I, for one, loved it.

The jumps back in time are not just a fun stylistic exercise, they enact Lisey's grief: your loved ones are never quite gone, nor are they ever quite present again. Memories can hit you at random, and-cheesy though it may sound-the bereaved really do carry their loved ones in their hearts. The novel also adds the complexity of a longtime marriage to the mix.

The further brilliance of Lisey's Story is that King dramatizes all this with a story of Scott's trips to a realm called Booya Moon where he drinks from a pool of creativity (among other things). So amidst this tale of grief and dealing with the fallout of a loved one's death (which does get extra dramatic here) and moving on (Lisey's relationships with her sisters dramatize this), King also thinks a bit about the creative process, drawing on themes he explored in the nonfiction work On Writing as well as the Dark Tower series. Creators are conduits or discoverers, excavators rather than architects. There's something deep about this, but also mysterious.

Maybe one message of Lisey's Story is that we are all creators, and our stories intertwine with each other and live on long after we're gone. There's something melancholy and beautiful about that, and this melancholy and beautiful novel encourages readers to explore these issues for themselves.

See also my Goodreads review.