Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #177910 in Books
• Published on: 1988-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Misery, as in The Shining, a writer is trapped in an evil house during a Colorado winter. Each novel bristles with claustrophobia, stinging insects, and the threat of a lethal explosion. Each is about a writer faced with the dominating monster of his unpredictable muse.

Paul Sheldon, the hero of Misery, sees himself as a caged parrot who must return to Africa in order to be free. Thus, in the novel within a novel, the romance novel that his mad captor-nurse, Annie Wilkes, forces him to write, he goes to Africa--a mysterious continent that evokes for him the frightening, implacable solidity of a woman's (Annie's) body. The manuscript fragments he produces tell of a great Bee Goddess, an African queen reminiscent of H. Rider Haggard's She.

He hates her, he fears her, he wants to kill her; but all the same he needs her power. Annie Wilkes literally breathes life into him.

Misery touches on several large themes: the state of possession by an evil being, the idea that art is an act in which the artist willingly becomes captive, the tortured condition of being a writer, and the fears attendant to becoming a "brand-name" best selling author with legions of zealous fans. And yet it's a tight, highly resonant echo chamber of a book--one of King's shortest, and best novels ever. --Fiona Webster

Guardian
‘An incredibly gifted writer'

Frances Fyfield, Express
'Stephen King is one of those natural storytellers...getting hooked is easy'

Customer Reviews

Still my favourite
I first read 'Misery' long after seeing the film, but to this day it remains my favourite novel. Stephen King at his absolute best shows us exactly how to build and maintain suspense throughout with ease.

The movie was a good translation, but it definately failed to show us exactly what Paul Sheldon's No. 1 Fan is really capable of. One word - Awesome!

Horror at its very best!

Loved It!
I have watched the film a few times and finally tried the book. Its far more gruesome, but you get a much better understanding of the characters in the book than the film. I definately had "the gottas" whilst reading this, and actually found it a bit scary in places!!!! Probably my favourite Stephen King book so far!

A definite case of 'the gottas'...
Firstly, let me state that I am not a fan of Stephen King. I have always found him to be rather overrated, especially compared to the similar, often overlooked author Dean Koontz, whose horror novels are truly gripping. That said, Misery was one of the most gripping novels I can ever remember reading.

Having seen the film and of course seen the famous `Sledgehammer scene' on several `Greatest Moments of Horror' compilations, I borrowed the book from a friend...and though it is hard to imagine the terror of the movie being surpassed, in this novel, that is certainly the case.

Annie Wilkes is even more monstrous, with the unpredictability usually reserved for Mother Nature - Paul makes an apt comparison when he reflects on `Hurricane Annie' and his attempts to duck the storms of Annie's irrational rages. With her blank silences in which she `switches off', and 'the demon capering behind her eyes'; not to mention the travails she visits on Paul which for some reason go unmentioned in the movie, King's `Bourka Bee Goddess' is a terrifyingly twisted creation from a brilliant if slightly sick imagination. The violent savagery of her acts of brutality against Paul, coupled with the sick surrealism of her odd bouts of humour (Paul's `special birthday candle', anyone?) add to the off-kilter, emotional rollercoaster effect of the book's narration, until the reader finds himself, like Paul Sheldon, cringing with anticipation of The Dragon Lady's next manoeuvre.

The manner in which King writes Paul's stream of consciousness is an added depth of description that one does not get in the film; his analogies and metaphors are truly poetic; I particularly enjoyed the metaphor of the `splintered pilings' of Paul's shattered legs, appearing as `the tide recedes' following a recent dose of Novril...an evocative and vivid image which helps the reader to understand Paul's relationship to his physical pain, and his growing dependency on painkillers and `The Moon' who makes 'the tide come in' with codeine; his captor, Annie.

I found this book incredibly difficult to put down; I confess to suffering a bad case of `the gottas'. As Paul's terror of Annie grows and he becomes trapped by that terror, aware that with each page he writes he is getting closer to the final chapter of his own life, you just GOTTA find out if Paul escapes the Dragon Lady, and moreover, if he escapes alive, with the remnants of his shattered body and mind in one piece...