It must be hard to be Mrs. Stephen King. You have to accompany your husband to boring book signings, deal with reporters who misspell your name, and fend off obsessive stalkers every Halloween.
Stephen King claims that the heroine of his novel "Lisey's Story," was not modeled after his wife Tabitha. However, it's difficult to believe that the events of his life and marriage had no influence on the author's latest novel. It explores the life of Lisey Landon, the widow of successful novelist Scott Landon. Two years after her husband's death, Lisey is beset by both natural and supernatural dangers. In the physical world, she must guard against the academics and fans that want access to her husband's unpublished papers. More ominously, the denizens of Boo'ya Moon, a magical and dangerous place that her husband has known since childhood, also threaten her.
As Lisey remembers the frightening but also magical years before her husband's death, the untruth about their marriage is slowly revealed. The intimacy between Lisey and Scott is richly illustrated and King's description of the secret world and language of a long marriage are easily the strongest elements of the novel.
King's trademark use of interior monologue and parenthetical asides illustrate Lisey's grief and loss of her husband well. However, the author's extensive use of made-up words and names is perhaps less successful. His desire to depict the unique terminology that Scott and Lisey have developed is a good one, yet some readers will surely be turned off by the use of terms like Babyluv, smucking, and Deep Space Cowboys (to name only a few) in a work that is supposed to be frightening.
Nevertheless, the love story at the center of the novel and corresponding lack of the excessive gore that has marred some of his weaker novels will win King readers beyond his established audience of horror fans. Like King's novel "Dolores Claiborne," "Lisey's Story" explores the life of a powerful and determined woman who has insight into the female world that belies the gender of its author.
In the dedication to his novel "It," King wrote, "Fiction is the truth inside the lie." In "Lisey's Story," the lies of King's fiction reveal important truths about intimacy, marriage, and the power of love beyond death.