Rated “Indifferent" in our old book database. ( )

**1/2

The first half star aknowledges the fact that I felt compelled to finish reading this book.
Another half star, after the only one this novel may deserve, comes from the well devised three-level flashback. It really makes you feel the eternity of feelings.
The last half star keeping this book on this side of total failure is my affection to Stephen King flawed yet hypnotic prose.

The lack of the remaining stars is due to the inconsistency between the way this novel starts an what it becomes after few chapters, to the nauseating sameness of the characters with most of Stephen King's characters in other books, to the lacklustre final, to the eternal repetition of the same explanatory platitudes about families' secret languages, to some interesting narrative threads simply ignored.

Why do people keep writing that Stephen King builds three-dimensional characters? They come in batches: Lisa is Fran is Rachel etc. She does not even have a job, no personality other than the Great Writer's Eternal Wife, she had no dreams, no projects, no aspirations at all before meeting Him.
Scott is every writer Stephen King has ever written about.
And so on.

The plot starts with an interesting idea: the point of view of a VIP's half-invisible partner.

MILD SPOILER AHEAD


Then it (surprise...) twists towards horror/fantastic/supernatural. It's a pity that all is already openly stated in the first third of the narration. If I had known it, I would not have spent a couple of afternoons glued to my armchair, going nowhere.


Finally, and this IS A SERIOUS SPOILER,


if Amanda follows Scott's same behaviours patterns of self-mutilation and refuge in her own world, one would think that something "bad-gunky", or at least some abuse, has to come out from her own family's past too. All in the plot prepares for that revelation, that's what I was waiting for, glued to my smucking armchair, and... nothing. Nothing-nothing. Amanda is simply nuts for her own personal reasons, that's it.
So disappointing. Instead, that mellow final with the Story Tree, safe at night, and the re-statement of the already known through 'Lisey's Story' in the story. ( )

*All reviews are from online reviews*

Lisey Debusher Landon lost her husband, Scott, two years ago, after a twenty-five year marriage of the most profound and sometimes frightening intimacy. Scott was an award-winning, bestselling novelist and a very complicated man. Early in their relationship, before they married, Lisey had to learn from him about books and blood and bools. Later, she understood that there was a place Scott went--a place that both terrified and healed him, that could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed in order to live. Now it's Lisey's turn to face Scott's demons, Lisey's turn to go to Boo'ya Moon. What begins as a widow's efforts to sort through the papers of her celebrated husband becomes a nearly fatal journey into the darkness he inhabited. Perhaps King's most personal and powerful novel, Lisey's Story is about the wellsprings of creativity, the temptations of madness, and the secret language of love.

Spannend, aangrijpend en een heel intiem boek. Ik vind het echt een totaal ander boek van Stephen King, hoewel er weer genoeg wreedheid en pure doodsangst in zit. Mooi! ( )

One of my favorite books by King... ( )