#750 in our old book database. Not rated. ( )

Altamente recomendado, una historia impecable del genio Stephen King. Engancha desde el primer momento, aunque debo admitir que en ciertos momentos de la narrativa de "Misery" me resultaba un tanto tedioso. No obstante, es una parte esencial de la novela para comprender la obsesión de Annie. Un clásico del terror muy digno de recomendación. ( )

An absolute chore to get through and quite literally misery inducing. Shame because I've come to like King. ( )

This book is proof that horror is much more effectivewhen you do not have otherworldly monsters roaming around. What human mind can conceive can truly be horrendous.

We follow Paul Sheldon, successful novel writer, as he survives heavy accident in the snowy mountains only to be saved by Annie Wilkes, hermit nurse living in the wilderness. She is Paul's "greatest living fan" and she saves him ..... for a reason.

We follow Paul as he experiences terrifying torture at the hands of Annie as he tries to figure out what is going on. We follow him as he tries to wake from limbo like state, unable to determine what is real or not. His suffering is horrible - from excruciating pain, overdosing with the narcotics [and retrieval symptoms] to body mutilations inflicted by Annie for being bad, bad ... very bad. But all of these physical attacks are nothing compared to the mental breakdown Paul is going through.
We see how Annie systematically destroys his mind that he finally finds himself in the subservient role - forever target of Annie's irrational bursts of anger where she "teaches" Paul one of her depraved life lessons - one that enables him to find a niche to survive this nightmarish situation - writing a dedicated novel to Annie with hope (beyond hope) that he will survive. He gets so terrified of what Annie can do that he decides not to fight back at all, to stop even trying to escape because of that crucial, defeating "what if I fail". Being completely broken Paul will finally strike at Annie but only because he knows everything has come to an end so what actually is there to lose. But even his last act ends in the way it ends due to sheer luck.

And in this systematic breaking of ones spirit, forcing the person to live constantly in fear, never knowing what next day will bring out, under constant duress that forces one to forego will to live normal life lies the true horror of this story. Annie's destruction of Paul is complete, so complete that at the end he can do nothing else but continue writing, hiding in the hole-in-the-paper from where he can observe adventures of his characters. But always in the background Annie lurks, Annie with the punishment for the bad bad Paul.

Both characters are excellently portrayed. Entire book is based on interaction of torturer and her victim but story is constructed in such a great way that you don't get bored for a second.

This psychological violence cannot but bring the parallels with the current situation worldwide. Is it not that media acts as Annie, leaving us for the few days to live normally before screaming at us with horrifying statistics and news ("nothing will ever be normal again", 'people will die in troves", "latest news indicate that in a few years new event will happen, WORSE THAN NOW" etc etc) not unlike Annie wielding the axe and beating the Paul or mutilating him? We live in constant fear (even if not entire populace huge chunk of it unfortunately does) and constantly we are being told "this will not end .... . never will it end .... doomed, doomed, dooomed" in a way unlike Annie's ravings during her bad days. I just hope we as a society will have at least half of mental stamina possessed by Paul (which is actually .... funny and sad at the same time).

True horror novel. Lean and mean, not one excessive chapter in this book. Stephen King at his best. Unfortunately for people living in early 21st century I do not think it will be as shocking as for the readers when book was published (mid-1980's if I am not wrong) because we have Annies terrorizing us through the screens and radio and unfortunately we show no initiative to prevent this from going on but accept to live in constant fear and the dark world of humiliated and deprived humanity. ( )

For my first Stephen King book, it wasn't bad. I liked it, it was a good read. Not the greatest but I found myself intrigued and wondering what was gonna happen. I feel like it could have been about 100 pages shorter, had some of the long descriptions been cut out. I found myself saying "get to the point" a lot, but it wasn't bad. I liked the development of characters in it and the progression and the psychological horror in it. ( )