Why ‘Misery’ is a Stephen King Classic You Need to Read Again
One of my top three favorite Stephen King novels is ‘Misery,’ and here are a few reasons why!
The Story
Misery tells of a famous writer who crashes his car in a snowstorm and gets rescued by, of all people, his mentally deranged number one fan. The book is told in third person limited, past tense, from the protagonist Paul’s perspective.
Paul Sheldon is a best-selling novelist of a series of historical fiction books about heroine Misery Chastain, and after years of writing in Misery’s world, he has finally chosen to kill her off and write a more literary book called Fast Cars. But after Paul suffers his accident and gets taken in by the mentally unstable nurse, Annie Wilkes, he discovers that killing off his most popular character may have not been in the best decision.
Annie goes berserk when she reads the newest, reportedly final Misery novel, and not only does she take her anger out on the bed-ridden Paul, but she forces him to burn his Fast Cars manuscript and start writing a new novel, Misery’s Return, as a thanks for Annie nursing him back to health. At first Paul has no intention of taking on such a dramatic request, but after she screams at him and even punches him hard in the knee, he…
