Book Review: “Misery” by Stephen King

It’s time.
It’s time to review a Stephen King story.
And not only that, but this is the first SK novel I’ve ever read.

Before I picked this one up (on my Kindle) I’d read his collection Six Stories. Those were really the first stories of his that I had ever touched.
(I was devastated that one of them didn’t load properly for some reason, so it was more like Five Stories. But I digress.)

Aside from that, my Stephen King exposure was no more than the first 10 pages of his renowned book On Writing. I started that one during a flight and Let Me Tell You—I was having to hold back a guffawing type of laughter so as to not disrupt other passengers’ sleep. It was hilarious.

Having that impression of him (and knowing a bit about his childhood) in my mind, I was curious to delve into the deeper, darker side of Stephen. (If you’ve read the first bit of On Writing, you’ll also feel like you’re on a first-name basis with him.)

So, of course, I looked up the creepiest King novels of all time. Because, well, go big or go home. I wanted to go big.

So I downloaded Misery.

Wow.

I’m actually a little speechless because this book is LOADED. Not only with action, too—the symbolism is so incredibly potent it’s scary. But a different kind of scary than what you’ll find on every single freakin’ page of this book.

Let’s look at the official description on Misery’s Goodreads page:

“Novelist Paul Sheldon has plans to make the difficult transition from writing historical romances featuring heroine Misery Chastain to publishing literary fiction. Annie Wilkes, Sheldon’s number one fan, rescues the author from the scene of a car accident. The former nurse takes care of him in her remote house, but becomes irate when she discovers that the author has killed Misery off in his latest book. Annie keeps Sheldon prisoner while forcing him to write a book that brings Misery back to life.”

To be honest, it doesn’t sound that intimidating, especially if you haven’t read the book yet. Definitely got the creep factor for sure. But I wouldn’t read this synopsis and feel a chill in my bones.
(In retrospect, though, I’m still scared of Annie Wilkes, expecting her to pop out of Goodreads at any second.)

Let’s start a new mantra: never judge a book by its synopsis. I wonder if he made the blurb this way because it packs more of a shocking punch once the reader is inside the book.

Also, I’d like to take this moment to say: I had no idea what this book was about when I turned the first page. I’d never really heard of it, I didn’t look anything up about it—I just started it.

Misery: Psychological Thriller. For sure. That label definitely fits. The struggle in this book absolutely has a physical element, but the real battle takes place in a mental war of sorts. The title is very aptly named.

Paul Sheldon has written a series of books that have been eaten up by women around the world, all of them featuring the same (Mary-Sue-esque, perhaps?) character, whose name is Misery Chastain. Paul’s sick of this character and it’s high time the series ends, much to the dismay of said masses of women. In the last book, he kills off Misery, and that’s the end.

So Paul, overjoyed that he can move on to publishing his very “masculine” novel Fast Cars which is laden with shallow sex and cursing, takes a booze-filled ride in his car during a blizzard. Obviously, that didn’t go well.

He wakes up in a strange house, hooked up to an IV, and with his shattered leg held together by rods and bolts (or something equally horrific). This is only the beginning.

Enter Annie Wilkes, a truly terrifying antagonist. We come to find out she was formerly a nurse, and whereas from the first page we know something’s off about her, we don’t question why she’s a former nurse…yet. What we do know from Page 01 is that she is his (self-proclaimed) Number One Fan.

A heavy theme in this book is addiction. Annie mysteriously has years’ worth of drugs in her house and has been steadily feeding Paul one called Novril (it’s fictional), which is apparently similar to codeine. His pain is so great from getting in a huge wreck and having his legs shattered that he’s instantly hooked—he has been since before he woke up, but now that he’s got some conscious periods of time, he realizes it.

Annie Wilkes has every book in Paul’s Misery series and has read them many times. She explains to him the extent of her love for Misery and the world he’s created. At first, she does seem like a kiss-up, but if she really was, it makes no sense why she wouldn’t have taken her favorite author to a hospital and…just sit with him, I guess.

Possessive, much?

This book was made into a film in 1990. Kathy Bates is the per.fect. Annie Wilkes. Of course.

Put shortly, Paul isn’t able to leave the bed because of his legs and being incapacitated by Novril as much as Annie will allow. Their relationship, for a good portion of the book, is tough to figure out.

Back to the addiction themes, Paul really has a love/hate relationship with Annie because she’s his savior, the one who gives him drugs that help him sleep, his only escape from the hell she’s trapped him in: literally speaking, he’s trapped in her house, and figuratively, his physical agony.

As Paul’s body gets stronger, we also see a cringeworthy power struggle. Paul is doing his best to figure out how she operates—her violent mood swings drive her to do unspeakable things to him in order to “teach” him that she’s only operating with his best in mind—but for most of the book, he can’t figure it out either.

Also as he gets stronger, Annie discovers that her beloved Misery Chastain has been killed off and goes into an irate frenzy about it.
Misery can’t be dead, right?!
Annie believes that Paul hasn’t done enough to “thank” her for “saving” his life, using her truck to pull him out of his totaled car in the middle of a blizzard, so what else could he do except…write another full book, bringing Misery back to life. But it has to be in a believable way. And he has to type it on an old-fashioned typewriter that crushes his legs when he puts it on his lap.

She’s such an obsessed Misery fan and, although Paul initially assumes she’s an air-headed lover of period romance books, finds that she’s incredibly sharp and hard to please.
He gives her the beginning of the book. It’s not realistic. He tries again. And again.
Annie becomes his editor. It’s like a forced symbiotic relationship and makes a question mark appear above our heads as we read. At times they even seem to get along. What’s happening?

Through all of this, Paul is still struggling to control his Novril consumption. He needs to be at least semi-sober to write this book and devise a plan to escape from Annie, never mind that his legs are crushed.

While he’s writing and diving deeper into his dark thoughts of how to destroy Annie, the letters are slowly popping out of the typewriter.
That aforementioned addiction theme, anyone? Sprinkle some sanity on top and the ancient typewriter suddenly becomes a damn good metaphor for how his internal state is going.

Now, Paul Sheldon and Annie Wilkes are the only 2 main characters in the story. If you’re a writer or an avid reader, you understand how difficult it is to write a story—especially a full-length novel—with only 2 characters. It can get really monotonous really fast, and SK nailed it.

One advantage, though, was how many personalities Annie had buried inside her. One thing that made her so unpredictable is how we never knew which one would come out at which time. This isn’t a Split situation, although it sometimes brushes that line, especially during her “lapses” where she just spaces out in response to a triggering thought. We wonder who she’ll emerge as once she comes back to.

Another way the plot was kept fresh: Paul continually tries to identify her triggers and how to manipulate her into doing what he wanted. At first, he just wants her to let him go, call the hospital, it’s simple. But not to Annie. He tries to coax her into allowing him small steps of independence. No chance.
And this is what brings out the darkness in Paul Sheldon: it was already in there, but like his efforts with Annie, it needed coaxing out. And, boy, did it come out.

It’s like Stephen King is reading right beside us, trying to figure Annie (and Paul) out. He never feeds the readers any information that would give us a way to predict how Annie ticks. And on every page, our gears are turning so hard we can almost smell smoke.

I’ll be honest: halfway through the book, I thought I was sensing some stagnation in the story and was wondering how in the heck would the second half of the book be as gut-wrenchingly exhilarating as the first?

Then The Scene happened. If you’ve read it, you know what I’m talking about.

As grueling as it was, The Scene did not disappoint. It got the ball rolling real fast and the second half of the story tumbled out, perfectly framing the climax with lots of said power struggles.

For the entirety of this book, I felt like I was being held captive in the room alongside Paul. (Having the story take place in pretty much only one place is arguably just as difficult as only have 2 main characters, and again, SK nailed it.)
I felt Paul’s fear and frustration with him. I was also unable to guess Annie’s next move or reaction. Her unpredictability was written so well and she threw me for a loop so many times.
I kept waiting for a dramatic “Hollywood Moment” where Paul reigned victorious, but that never happened.
It was brilliant.

The only iffy part I have about the book is the very end.

Last but not least, our favorite part:

CHARACTER ZODIACS

Annie Wilkes: I’m torn between Scorpio and Taurus with Annie.
Scorpio because they tend to be on the more macabre, dark side of the spectrum, and when they get fixated on something, they’re really fixated on it. Her drive to get what she wants—power that had so often in the past been ripped away from her, and her beloved Misery Chastain brought back to life—is wild and untamed.
I say Taurus simply because they can be so stubborn in their goals that nothing can get in their way. She wants Misery back? She’ll do anything—literally, anything—to make Paul write it. She’s so obsessed with her goal that she’s blind to everything else.

Paul Sheldon: This one has to be a full Capricorn for me.
The fact that he can’t predict Annie’s moves drives him nuts. The fact that he made a stupid move—driving intoxicated during a blizzard warning—haunts him. He enjoys having a successful career as a bestselling author. He definitely has a darker, dismal side to him already: note his joy at finally killing off Misery. (Punny.) When he realizes that he won’t be able to use any of the manipulation tactics that have worked for him in the past on her—and that she won’t budge in giving him what he wants—he finally relinquishes control (rare for a Cap) and lets his dark side take over. He figures out quickly how to manipulate her back, and he’s so dang good at it that she doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. He’s determined in achieving his goal and, in a similar way to Annie, he will make sure that it happens.

Have you read Misery?
Were you able to make it to the final page?
Did you plow through it, or did you have to take frequent breaks?

If you enjoyed this review and enjoyed reading Misery, please consider sharing some love by sending me a coffee! Click here :)