Misery (Audiobook Review)

1992 Penguin Highbridge Audio
Written by: Stephen King; Read by: Lindsay Crouse

Author, Paul Sheldon, has finally killed Misery. Misery Chastain, the heroine of Paul's trashy, Victorian-era novels has helped make Paul a financially successful writer, but he has come to hate the character and the series. Now that he's bumped off Misery in the final book in her series, he's written a gritty crime novel he feels is far more artistically viable than anything that featured Misery. However, his joy soon turns to...misery. A drunken Paul has crashed off a snowy Colorado mountain road, and now wakes up in a mysterious bedroom, legs mangled to hell. Turns out the room is in a house owned by Annie Wilkes, a Misery Chastain superfan...and a psychopath. Annie just happened to pull Paul from his totaled vehicle, and now he is crippled, trapped, and at her mercy. After witnessing Annie's erratic and violent behavior, Paul soon finds he has a choice: rewrite a new version of that final Misery Chastain novel...or lose more than just his legs.
I've heard for many years that Misery is one of Stephen King's greatest works, and that Annie Wilkes is among his most terrifying antagonists. However, the subject matter of the book didn't excite me in comparison to books about viral apocalypses, haunted hotels, and killer clowns. I put off Misery to my own detriment. It's one of King's very best, most layered works., and it all starts with that antagonist.
Annie Wilkes stands in for many things. There's of course the obvious. King dealt with many irrational fans to this point, particularly when he tried to deviate from the horror genre. Wilkes' unreasonable expectations are absurd, but the public nature of social media websites like Twitter have only shown that this facet of "fandom" has only grown worse over the years. However, Wilkes is also an apt metaphor for the addictions King had struggled with, demanding and exacting, controlling his life. For me, though, as with many of King's greatest villains, it's the darker, deeper, eternal evil of Wilkes that stands out the most.
I don't know what it is about newspaper clippings in a Stephen King novel, but I've consistently found them to be the most enjoyable and frightening elements in his books. In The Shining, it's old write-ups about the history of the hotel. In It, it's articles about the horrific, historical events that have happened in the town of Derry. Here in Misery, it's the newspaper stories Paul Sheldon reads when he discovers Annie Wilkes' scrapbook. This section reveals Wilkes to not only be a crazed fan, but a form of timeless evil Sheldon has already recognized in the dark empty depths behind her eyes. Yes, perhaps it is a personal bias, but for me the addition of the supernatural to this tale of terror gives the book a more epic and timeless scope.
King writes about as well here as ever, constantly ratcheting up the tension to where a simple rise in Wilkes' voice causes trepidation. The setting of Wilkes' farm and its geography is clear and vivid, as is the horrible bedroom where most of the novel takes place. Sure, Sheldon is the typical flawed male narrator of a 20th Century King novel, but he is still empathetic. As far as the MEN WRITING WOMEN modern microscope on King, he's done far worse than anything found here. Sure, there are some groan-worthy descriptions of Wilkes' unappealing physical appearance early on, but those eventually grow into more surreal and metaphysical descriptions as the true nature of her evil starts to become more apparent to Sheldon. 

The narrator choice for this 1992 Penguin audiobook adaptation also helps, as Lindsay Crouse does a phenomenal job of reading King's story with just the right emotions and inflections. Her performance as Wilkes is absolutely terrifying, particularly in the moments where Wilkes completely loses her already tenuous grip on reality, temper flaring volcanically. Really, the only element of the book that should offend modern sensibilities is the "sambo" speech-pattern given to a character in one of the book's dips into Sheldon's new Misery novel (and this character is read that way, as well).
However, these "book within a book" sections also show King's mastery of his craft, as he shifts from Paul's perspective, to that of the characters in the book Annie is forcing him to write. I also appreciated the ways King subtly weaves elements of Stockholm Syndrome into Misery, as Sheldon not only starts to sympathize with Wilkes in strange ways, but also starts to believe, like Annie, that the book he's being forced to write is a masterpiece, despite its obvious melodramatic, overly pulpy qualities. 

Like all of King's best work, Misery is textured and layered in a way that further depth is revealed upon additional readings. Crouse's performance here makes a second listen an easy proposition.