Title: Lisey’s Story
Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Scribner
Year Published: 2006

I’ve mentioned before that I am a big fan of Stephen King. I don’t know what it is about the guy, but when he gets it just right, the man just manages to push my buttons, and more than a couple of his books have ended up on my all-time favorites list. That said, there have been times when he has stepped up, swung with all his might, and missed in grand fashion. When you are as prolific as he has been, not everything is going to be everybody’s favorite.

But still I return to a few of his books time and again. I have roamed the halls of the Overlook Hotel on several occasions. More than once have I journeyed across the nation with a rag-tag group of survivors fleeing the devastation of Captain Trips and in search of some kind of hope in a Nebraska cornfield. And I owe it to myself to once more join Roland in his pursuit across the desert of the Man in Black. And I can tell already that the time will come when, once again, I yearn for Lisey to breathe the waters of The Pool into me and take me back to Boo’ya Moon.

Lisey’s Story has a feeling of familiarity to it from the very beginning. The kind of familiarity that King has spent his entire career building and perfecting. His fictional town of Castle Rock is his Yoknapatawpha County, where his characters live and breathe and wave at each other as their stories pass along the sidewalks on Sunday strolls. The sense of community and trust he has established is infectious to long-time readers. We know where we are… it’s familiar ground.

But Lisey’s Story is, I think, a different kind of “familiar” we usually get from King. It’s softer, more sensuous than I remember, more introspective, more personal. Maybe it’s because our protagonist, Lisey Landon, is female, and it’s my own perception of her that somehow skews King’s usual voice. Or perhaps its because the story has so much to do with truth and memory, things in which I am particularly interested in at the moment, that this particular story rings true on a much deeper level for me than most of his stories.

Whatever the reason, it sucked me in and swallowed me whole. Lisey’s Storey is a wonderful trip through life, death, sibling devotion, and parallel dimensions. King’s work with flashback and point of view is simply masterful as he blends stunning character history and depth into a story just aching to drag the reader forward. With the exception of the multi-novel Dark Tower series, the plotting done here is King at his best. Not a beat is missed, not a moment spared.

I find Lisey’s Story to be King’s finest work to date. Though fantastical, it is filled truth and discovery for character, reader, and, I suspect, writer alike. It is a story, I think, that eclipses even his Dark Tower series (my personal favorite) in many ways, including sheer complexity. It may not be representative of his entire bibliography, but it is easily his only book that I can, and will, recommend to everyone, regardless of whether they think they are fans of King or not. It simply is that good.