The standard King fan will warm up to the gruesome nature of this relationship. With a first and only printing of exactly one. She forces the hapless Sheldon to write a resurrection of Misery. So devoted that she will not counte-nance Misery's literary demise, and through drugs and torture He awakens, legs mangled, rescued - a word one uses gingerly - from death by the insane nurse. In drunken celebration of his new, contemporary book, he runs his car off a road in the midst of a snowstorm. In the last of the series, Sheldon, to his great delight, finally killed her off. Those books have featured a plucky, beautiful, The protagonist, Sheldon, has just completed what he considers a ''literary'' novel - far different from the 19th-century historical potboilers that have made him an immense commercial success. The story takes place within the limited confines of a single house - indeed, almost exclusively in one room - in a rural part of the Colorado mountains. To begin with, it contains only two characters: Paul Sheldon, a best-selling author, and Annie Wilkes, a psychotic, utterlyĭeranged former nurse.
''Misery,'' however, seems to belong to a different genre. His books stem from the traditions of Poe, Lovecraft, King has been justifiably acclaimed as a modern master of the horror story he fills his work with demons, ghosts, vampires, beasts and seemingly ordinary folk who control extraordinary powers. It is easy to lose sight of the realization that ''Misery'' is a novel that would probably demand considerable interest even were it not from the writing phenomenon that is Stephen King. The numbers attached to a book (one million copies first printing, $400,000 promotional budget) gain more attention than the words the bookĬontains. Success has a way of diminishing value and obscuring actual worth. Perform as other Stephen King novels have - cresting to the top of the best-seller lists, splashing heavily with the Book-of-the-Month Club, weighing down the corners of thousands of beach blankets this summer.Īll of which, in an odd way, is unfortunate. THIS is the midyear offering from the prolific bard of Bangor (''Eyes of the Dragon'' was released a few months ago and another novel is scheduled for release a few months hence), and, as such, ''Misery'' will undoubtedly Summer Reading: Sheldon Gets the Ax By JOHN KATZENBACH
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