Stephen King has often used authors as characters in his stories and that is what he did in “Lisey’s Story”. Lisey Landon is the wife of Scott Landon, an award-winning author who died two years ago.
King said he was inspired to write this book by his own thoughts of death after his accident when he was hit by a car walking on the side of the road near his home in Maine. The accident was so brutal that it almost killed him, and as you read his account of what happened it seems like a violent story from one of his novels. He said when he returned home from the hospital to find his wife had rearranged his study the thoughts for this story came to him: what becomes of his wife after he dies.
When Scott Landon dies, Lisey is pressed, even threatened, to find any unpublished manuscripts and as she searches and cleans out his writing area, she remembers much about his life that had been buried in her memory.
Scott had come from a family that had a history of mental illness and he often had to find a place where he could go to deal with his demons. He had shared this with Lisey telling her that he transported himself to another world called “Boo’ya Moon” which was a place that terrified and healed him, that it could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed to write and live.
With these memories coming back to her, Lisey’s found her own demons to deal with when she begins to be stalked, terrorized and eventually mutilated by an insane fan of her husband.
The story brings the past and present together for both Lisey and the reader to deal with.
“There was a lot they didn’t tell you about death, she had discovered, and one of the biggies was how long it took the ones you loved most to die in your heart.”
“She nods. You're good for the ones you love. You want to be good for the ones you love, because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.”
“Lying in the bed that had once held two, Lisey thought alone never felt more lonely than when you woke up and discovered you still had the house to yourself. That you and the mice in the walls were the only ones still breathing."
“The harder you had to work to open a package, the less you ended up caring about what was inside.”
“Time apparently did nothing but blunt grief’s sharpest edge so that it hacked rather than sliced.”
“I loved you then and I love you now and I have loved you every second in between.”