Misery By Stephen King

 

Misery

By Stephen King

Misery is about Paul Sheldon, a historical romance author who runs his car off the road in the Colorado winter. He is rescued from death by Annie Wilkes, his number one fan. When Annie, a former RN who is nursing Paul back to health, discovers that he killed off her favorite character (Misery Chastain), she makes him write a new novel bringing her back to life. And she will stop at nothing to be sure he does just that.

Annie is off the rails. She has personality disorders and depression, and a lifelong history of causing harm to those around her in both her personal and professional life. To Paul, Annie brings both the comfort and the pain. She gets him addicted to painkillers and uses them to keep him in her debt and dependent on her. When Paul starts getting out of the room he's been locked into, Annie's wrath becomes evident. Not that Paul can escape anyway. The house is locked tight, in the middle of nowhere, and Paul's legs are useless.

Eventually word of Paul being missing gets out and the police come looking for him. Annie will not be deterred from seeing Paul finish the novel. She does what she has to do. Paul, for his part, knows he needs to get out of this in the only possible way, which is to kill Annie Wilkes, and he uses the novel to do so.

This was a riveting and horrific story. King was at the top of his game with Misery. The book jumps right into the meat of the story without any of the minutiae that sometimes bogs down King's novels. Written at the height of his cocaine addiction, Misery is an open letter about King's struggles with the drug, with Annie Wilkes as a stand-in for cocaine and Paul as a stand-in for King. Annie brings the comfort and the pain to the writer who thinks he might never be good enough, or who believes that the literary world takes him and his work for a joke. These are King's fears on the page in the guise of any famous person's worst fear: That of their number one fan having full control over them, and all of the sinister things that could lead to. The story clips along, even without King's trademark ensemble casts and the backstories and side stories those often lead to. It is focused.

One thing I kept thinking about while reading Misery were its parallels to Cujo and the battle with drugs and alcohol that book was exploring through the monster in the closet and the struggle with the beast within. Cujo as a stand-in for the lack of control, the relentlessness of addiction. Both stories used similar metaphors, both were focused and shorter than most of King's books, and both had the ending that shows that an addiction is always ready to rear its head again; in Cujo it came in the form of a new puppy, while at the end of Misery it is Paul's reliance on alcohol.

This book is a 5-star read. It is horrific and tension filled. Annie Wilkes is a phenomenal character, unforgettable. I liked the differences from the film, with the novel being far more horrific. One connection to other King works is a mention of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining.