Happy Halloween, one and all! For this special review, I’m revisiting a true horror classic — Misery by Stephen King. This was the book that first made me fall in love with the genre, and even now, it remains one of the most gripping and terrifying stories I’ve ever read.
In the spirit of spooky season, I thought that this article should be a classic review. This book is among my favourites of all time, and not only that, but I’d say it is the book that really got me into the horror genre. It’s the book that opened a real can of worms, and although I could never have realised it at the time, it really did determine my road of travel for the rest of my life.
I’ve briefly touched on Misery in my Never Flinch review. To add more context, I am a child of divorce. My mum remarried and we all moved into a new house. The man who became my stepdad brought a small collection of Stephen King books with him. Or, as I referred to them at the time, Step Hen King. I learnt new words by sounding out the letters.
Simultaneously, I was on a reading journey of my own. I’m quite fortunate in the sense that it’s a skill I picked up very quickly. From early reading lessons at primary school, once I’d learnt the basics I was off to the races. I borrowed whatever I could from the school library and just gradually challenged myself to thicker and longer books. I devoured my way through Roald Dahl and then the Goosebumps series. And then came Harry Potter.
I am now one of those older people who finished a Harry Potter book and had to wait for the next one to be published. When I say this, some of the younger people I work with don’t believe me. Because they were born into a world where all the Harry Potter books and films already existed. Not for me. I had to wait.
So, I imagined it was during one of those periods of downtime where I was waiting for the next Harry Potter book, when my stepdad put a copy of Misery into my hand. “I think you might enjoy this,” he said to me. I think I was about thirteen, so it was quite irresponsible parenting, but he was surprisingly liberal on that front. This is the same man who would let me and my brother watch Arnold Schwarzenegger films, but if he ever heard us “using any of the language we heard in one of those films”, then we’d be in some deep shit.
Anyway, I borrowed his copy of Misery, and it became my bedtime reading over the next week or so. Some books take a bit of time to get into, but this was a book that just hooked me from the very first sentence. As I worked my way through this book, I realised that my time reading Goosebumps had been like an apprenticeship in training for books like this one. It opened the way for the majority of the books I read these days, along with the films I go to see and the stories I write.
Misery tells the story of Paul Sheldon. Author of a best-selling series of historical romance novels focusing on the titular character of Misery Chastain. Truth be told, the novels have become the bane of Sheldon’s life, and he thinks he’s finally free of them when he kills her off so he can write something different. While driving through a blizzard and under the influence, he crashes his car.
When Paul is rescued by a nurse called Annie Wilkes, he considers it to be a lucky escape. Annie takes him back to her home and looks after him. Initially, she says she’s only keeping him there while he recovers from his injuries and the weather clears. She also claims to be his number one fan, especially of the Misery Chastain novels. So you can imagine her horror when she gets her hands on the latest book to discover her beloved character dies.
Annie decides this won’t do, and that’s when her real motive comes to the forefront. Because she has no intention of letting Paul go. She intends to keep him prisoner, and she makes him write another book just for her: Misery’s Return. With an old typewriter and dosed up to his eyeballs on codeine, Paul begins work on his toughest book yet. And he has to get it right. His life depends on it.
It’s hard to put my finger on what exactly I love about this book. Because there is so much. There’s a nuance that I always enjoy, and chunks of the book are pages from Sheldon’s book in progress. But as he writes, certain keys on the typewriter start breaking. This is reflected in the font of the book, where certain letters look like they’ve been filled in by hand. There even comes a point where Paul gives up on the typewriter completely and decides to write the rest of the manuscript by hand. The font in these chapters looks like it’s been handwritten. That’s just attention to detail, but it’s something I remember loving from the very first time I read this book.
I’d argue that this is also a horror novel in its purest form. There are no supernatural creatures or haunted houses. There’s nothing ghostly or things that go bump in the night. Annie Wilkes is the source of all the terror, and I think that’s what makes this a scary book because people are real. We know there are bad people out there doing things we don’t want to think about. Then there’s the setting of the book. The isolation. The fact that there are only two characters for the majority of this book, and no easy way of escape for Paul Sheldon.
I have read this book three or four times, and I intend to read it again and again before I die. It’s a book I’ve also bought multiple times because I often buy it as a gift for other people. I’ve bought it for people’s birthdays and weddings. And I often feel jealous of them because they’ll get to experience this book for the first. Which is something I’ll never be able to do again. Although I do often leave long enough gaps between readings that I tend to forget parts of it.
I’ve also happened upon videos of Stephen King talking about the writing of this book. He tells a story of when he and his wife were flying to England for some reason or another. He had this dream on the flight where this woman said to him, “I’m your number one fan.” Right there and then, he knew he had the idea for a new book. He and his wife were staying at the Brown’s hotel in London, where he couldn’t sleep because of the jetlag. So, King left his room and went downstairs to the lobby and spoke to the night concierge. He asked if there was any place in the hotel where he could do some writing. He was informed of a desk out on one of the floors.
King sat at that desk where he claims to have written some sixteen pages, longhand, which turned out to be the start of the first draft of this incredible book. Afterwards, he returned to the lobby where he thanked the concierge for letting him work at such a beautiful desk.
“Yes,” said the concierge. “It is a beautiful desk, isn’t it. It used to belong to Rudyard Kipling. He died from a brain aneurysm while sitting writing at that desk.”
Happy Halloween. I hope you’re all reading something spooky tonight.
My Goodreads rating: ★★★★★ (5 stars)
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