Stephen King has written a love story.
It’s also a story of sadness, loss and remembrance.
I started out not wanting to read the book alone and I finished wishing I was alone, instead of crying my eyes out on a plane full of people. But life is Ralph. I had the whole row to myself, every other seat was full yet none of the middles came to take my aisle seat. Such is the nonplausible reality of life, like when Ralph the dog returns home three years after he disappeared. Life is Ralph.
Ralph is only one of the little tidbits I’ve adopted from Lisey’s Story. It’s ripe with Landon-isms, maybe these are King-isms, I don’t know. But what I do know is that the narrative structure of Lisey’s Story is engaging. King switches between past and present so that you’re left all of a sudden wondering what world you are in. He makes you unease about shadows in the mirror, eating fruit after dark and basically taps into the darkest of superstitions.
Scott and Lisey Landon’s world is so well crafted in this book that it’s hard not to turn it into your own. To adopt Scott’s phrases, the same way Lisey has done. To feel like you as a reader are on a great bool hunt, you’re not just following the bool Scott has left for Lisey, you’re looking for the stations of the bool left for you by Stephen King.
You must be thinking what the smuck am I talking about?
A bool is a treasure hunt, a good joke, something fun, that ends in an RC, or a candy bar, or a story.
But Scott was a bit of a nutter himself. There are good bools, like the one he’s left for Lisey, and there are blood bools, like the ones his father introduced to him. Blood bools are bloodletting, when you cut to release the bad-gunky.
Lisey’s Story is about bools: blood bools and good bools.
But Lisey’s Story itself is a mothersmucking good bool.
And I have a bool for you, but you’ll have to wait until I set it up. Then we’ll play it. Hopefully later today or tomorrow.