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There are few authors alive today who have had the staying power of Stephen King. That's because few authors have the inate ability to weave a story with the level of intricacy, with such depth of character as King. Perhaps his greatest examples of this come in some of his short stories, but it is as a novelist that King has found the most resounding success. The "'King' of Horror" has published more than 50 novels, most of them rising high on every best seller list around the world. From his early works like Carrie and Salem's Lot, to his monster novels like "The Stand" and "It", it is amazing how, time and again, King manages to conjur up stories with such depth and sheer scope and volume. This is a man who must be passionate about his craft, for the volume of his work is staggering and, amazingly, almost always consistently excellent.

Perhaps because of the sheer volume of King's earlier works, I expected Lisey's Story to stand beside his earlier works as an equal. The novel promised a glimpse into the mind and heart of Stephen King and was praised by one critic as "his most personal work." While the novel was certainly a departure from the usual King offering of monsters and dreamscapes of sheer horror, I thought that the book was hardly a window into the author's soul. Perhaps that's because I found the novel incredibly difficult to relate to.

Lisey's Story is really the story of Scott Landon, a famed author who has passed away and left his grieving wife, Lisey, to sort through their complicated past as she puts his memory to rest. Like many of King's novel, one of the central characters is an author, perhaps lending to the idea that King is putting some part of himself into the story. The entire novel is written as a series of flashbacks interrupted only by a brief narrative in the present day as Lisey deals with a stalker who goes by the name of Jim Dooley. Dooley, who has sought out Scott Landon's widow with his own malicious intents, is a very typical King antagonist and lacks the depth or, for that matter, any real backbone to invoke any real terror in the reader. His appearance becomes the driving catalyst by which Lisey must remember a repressed series of memories that will take her back to the beginning of her marriage and the series of strange events that occurred throughout the course of her 25 year marriage to Scott.

Through the many flashbacks (the entire novel is really a collection of flashbacks taken from key points in Scott's childhood, his

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