Stephen King
Misery

LA RECENSIONE

Do you know that elderly relative of yours, sitting all alone in the living room, sipping chamomile tea while reading one of those German romance booklets also known as harmony? There you are, a guest in their house, not knowing what to do: the TV isn't showing anything interesting (as usual), you forgot your smartphone at home, the internet doesn't exist, and you can't even attempt to escape from the dreaded wild boar roast with boiled potatoes, something that can make you lose your appetite for a week.

So the only remedy is to read something, but you only see all these harmony books scattered around the house like you do with Mickey Mouse comics, so you gather some courage and try to read one. And behind you, your grandma is there with eyes wild with madness and an axe in hand, but I digress...

The paper violence of Stephen King is perfectly evident in his "misery", a psychological thriller, a critique of extreme fanatism towards material objects. Romance novelist Paul Sheldon will experience the worst days of his life at the mercy of Annie Wilkes, a mentally unstable nutcase in love with the "Misery" saga. The biggest mistake Paul could ever make was to "kill off" his lucky character, which drives Annie mad to the point of forcing him to write another novel to "resurrect" her, but in the meantime, Paul is forced to endure every type of violence, both physical (amputating legs with an axe) and psychological.

Stephen King's style is unmistakable: everything is narrated with precision, with some "mental" interruptions by the protagonist; the topic of drugs and dependency through reading (and not only) is a metaphor of the real experiences King was going through at that time.

It is one of the narrative peaks of the Maine writer, a cold and damnably disturbing book, like your grandma while reading harmony books.