It’s pretty much a coincidence that there are two Stephen King books in a row, as they were read concurrently rather than consecutively. Anyway, in its bid to prevent me from reading fifty books before the end of the year (well, really it’s more my job and move that have prevented that, but it gave me an opening, so, y’know, whatev), we have Lisey’s Story. It tells… well, I guess it’s kind of obvious what, right? Lisey is Lisa Landon, for two years now the widow of reasonably famous author Scott Landon, late 20th century literary darling who the world never really knew; that was Lisey’s job. It’s her story and his both, because every long marriage is the story of both people. But it’s also the story of how there’s only one of them left, and all the small and large ways in which that is hard, and all the small and large ways in which other people make it harder.

Lisey has a lot to deal with over the course of the hot summer of 2006. There’s the ongoing issue of her husband’s death, made concrete by her gradual attempts to clean out the office where he did his writing. There’s her mentally unstable sister, and the fact that the remainder of her sisters look to her as the solver of all problems, possibly because of the money but also because she’s long been the strongest of them. There’s the latest in a string of literary professors and critics who are salivating at the thought of Scott’s last papers being made public and being donated to this or that university, and there’s the man this latest professor has hired to “convince” her to speed up the process. And although his motives are far more dire than that worthy professor could have guessed, even he may not be as dangerous to Lisey as her recollections of Scott’s childhood and the secret world to which he would escape from time to time in those years and continue to visit throughout his life.

Although most all of King’s novels have some elements of horror to them, this one is not explicitly horror; it’s solidly entrenched in the dark fantasy genre. Everyone will tell you that it reveals the secret languages and shorthands that all long-lived marriages have, and explores the good parts and the bad with an equally objective spotlight. I’ve never been married, much less for a long time, so I couldn’t say whether they’re right. But it feels true.