Misery is a decent story, but in some ways it falls short of being an excellent one. Although it has some powerful scenes, and superb tone and mood (not to mention the excellent characterization for which King is noted), it is a blatant ripoff of King from King.
Misery is about a writer (of course), Paul Sheldon, who during a trip during a winter storm, wrecks his car. He's badly hurt, and while unconscious, he's rescued by an adoring fan, Annie Wilkes, who also happens to have been a nurse. However, besides having been a nurse, she's also the Angel Of Death; she had been tried, but not convicted, for killing her patients.
Paul doesn't know that at the time of his rescue or for some time afterwards; he's either unconscious or drugged. When he finally wakes to lucidity, he sees he's a cripple, and completely under the control of a deranged woman in an isolated farmhouse. He can't leave, and no one is going to rescue him. How does he fill his time? Annie decides that for him; he's going to write.
Of course at this point the story "borrows" heavily from the details of Mr. King's personal experience at writing. You get the details on what's the best kind of typing paper, and why, how much you should write a day, the proper frame of mind you need to be in for writing, what it's like to deal with editors, publishers, and agents, what they're like as people, how to write to please your fans, and just about everything else you'd need to know to write and publish a novel.
While some of that would have been interesting, the amount of detail you get makes Misery more like a cookbook at times. In other words, the details force you out of the story, and back into the real world of deadlines, accountants, managers, schedules, and daily obligations. That's exactly what you don't want your readers to experience while reading your book.
I also found the inclusion of the many pages of the novel Paul Sheldon wrote while in Annie Wilkes' care to be more of a distraction than anything else. Simply mentioning Paul's progress at intervals in the story (and it was) was enough to detail the progress of the novel. Still, I guess King couldn't resist being descriptive in a professional writer's way by including the actual pages of the manuscript, complete with handmade corrections for the faulty typewriter being used.
I also thought the various tortures that Annie inflicted on Paul during his stay at her farmhouse to be gratuitous. Stephen King's books normally have a certain "gore quotient", and Misery had to meet the standard. Thus, you get not only a deranged nurse, but an axe-wielding deranged nurse, and some unnecessary events of carnage and disfigurement.
The ultimate purpose or lesson in Misery seems a bit too trite; the writer (especially the professional writer) will triumph, and get the book done on time, no matter what. While I agree that the plot, setting, and characterization in Misery were an imaginative way of showing this, the details almost overwhelmed the story.
After a car crash, writer Paul Sheldon is saved by his number one fan. She brought him home, splinted his mangled legs, and all he had to do in return...More at Alibris
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