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Ron Charles - The
Washington Post
With Lisey's Story, King has
crashed the exclusive party of literary fiction, and he'll
be no easier to ignore than Carrie at the prom. His new
novel is an audacious meditation on the creative process and
a remarkable intersection of the different strains of his
talent: the sensitivity of his autobiographical essays, the
insight of his critical commentary, the suspense of his
short stories and the psychological terror of his novels.
(And yes, a few hairy monsters.) They're all evoked here in
this moving story about the widow of a famous writer trying
to lay her grief to rest.
Janet Maslin - The New York Times
Here is a tender, intimate book that
makes an epic interior journey without covering much
physical terrain. It can move great distances while
traveling no further than from a house (home to lonely Lisey
Landon, the widow of a Writer á la King) to its neighboring
barn (the late writer’s "mostly benign one-boy clubhouse").
The scope sounds modest, yet this book is haunting even by
Mr. King’s standards. And he knows a thing or two about
haunting.
The New Yorker
In
his intricate new novel, King explores two hidden worlds—the
private life of a recently deceased best-selling writer, as
seen from the perspective of his widow, and the imaginative
landscape that formed the foundation of his work. As the
novel opens, Lisey, Scott Landon’s widow, is a sardonic
observer of toadying academics, dangerously obsessive fans,
and fame-struck bystanders. As she sorts through papers that
Landon has left behind, she also becomes a traveller in a
fantastical parallel world called Boo’ya Moon, to which he
retreated during a horrific childhood and on which he drew
throughout his creative life. It takes some time for these
narrative strands to converge, but when they do Lisey moves
between worlds at an exhilarating pace. Along the way, King
also reveals, with subtle precision, the profound
strangeness of widowhood, when someone who was present for
so much of a shared life is gone.
Kirkus Reviews
The widow of a bestselling novelist
reveals that the wellspring for his ideas is a very dark
place, indeed. First and last, this is a powerful love
story-and love causes people to do strange and remarkable
things. It has been two years since legendary novelist Scott
Landon died. His widow, Lisey, has finally summoned the
strength to begin clearing and cataloguing his workspace. It
is a significant metaphor that Scott and Lisey never had
children. Instead, their coupling allowed him to produce
numerous novels that thrilled readers. His bestselling works
are filled with raw emotion. Academic vultures circle the
widow, desperate for access to Scott's massive archive of
unpublished works, notes and secrets. And some of those
secrets are worth killing for. Only Lisey knows the source
of Scott's magic, the place where imagination runs wild, the
place called Boo'Ya Moon. Scott and Lisey shared a life full
of passion, but his death has left a void in her life. She
is adrift, confused and stalked by supernatural forces.
Incunks prowl, while Lisey chases bools and ducks blood-bools.
Sometimes it is unclear where her reality stops and her
imagination takes over. Battling against Scott's legacy,
Lisey also comes face to face with her own demons at the
edge of Boo'Ya Moon. King is surprisingly introspective and
mature here. He showcases the agony and the ecstasy of the
writing process. Where Misery (1987) looked at the
relationship between writer and fan, this time it is that of
the writer and his one true love. There seems to be much of
King in the character of Scott (although Scott is both a
Pulitzer- and National Book Award-winner). Pain and
suffering are Scott'sliterary trademarks. The Buddha taught
that the end of suffering is supreme happiness. When King
finally reveals Lisey's fate, we all reach the same
destination in Boo'Ya Moon. One of King's finest works.
Publishers Weekly
King's latest bid for literary
respectability is read by acclaimed actress Winningham, best
known for her Oscar-nominated performance in Georgia.
Winningham glazes King's novel in multiple coats of Southern
honey, her voice shimmering with an old-fashioned glow for
the tale of Lisey Landon, wife of acclaimed novelist Scott
Landon, and her effort to discover the source of her
husband's inspiration after his death. Winningham is a good
fit for King in a less terror-filled mood, capturing the
book's blend of the sentimental and the comic. The narrative
is ushered in and out by the strains of Ryan Adams's "When
the Stars Go Blue," and King reads his own afterword, where
he details the sources of his own inspiration, carefully
distancing himself and his loved ones from the characters in
his book while making it clear that, like Scott Landon, he
must dive deep into his subconscious and into the pool of
literary history, to find inspiration. |
