I finished reading Misery yesterday. And all I can say is, "Wow!" It blew my mind!
If you don't know, it's about a writer who's saved from a car wreck by a woman who turns out to be an obsessive fan who's not mentally well, and she's royally pissed that he killed off her favourite character (the eponymous Misery) in his latest book. She keeps him prisoner in her house and forces him to write a sequel that brings Misery back. That's the basic gist; his predicament's actually a lot more complicated than that.
It works spectacularly on so many levels. Firstly, it's just brilliant how it's stripped down almost entirely to just these two characters in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse.
On top of that, it's a fascinating look inside the mind of a writer. I especially love how vividly Stephen King describes this man's thought process. My favourite aspect of his writing is how he sometimes interrupts a paragraph and directly resumes it after a brief, italicised one, which is very similar to how thoughts flash through the mind.
I could probably go on for ages about Misery, so I'd better stop there! It's just incredible. I haven't read many of Stephen King's works yet, but this one will be really hard to top – and I'll certainly be surprised if, even after I get round to reading everything I want to, this isn't still in my top ten all-time favourites!
My rating: 100%.
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