Misery

Horror

First published: 1987
Print length: 338 pagesSignet, 1990

Bram Stoker Award for Novel, 1987

Description

Bestselling romance novelist Paul Sheldon is rescued after a serious car accident by Annie Wilkes, who calls herself his number-one fan. Instead of taking him to a hospital, Annie confines him in her isolated farmhouse despite his badly broken legs. She nurses him with hoarded medical supplies and codeine, contributing to his dependence on the drug. Annie’s devotion becomes violent after she learns that Paul has ended his Misery Chastain series and begun a crime novel. Subjected to her rages and coercion, Paul is forced to abandon the new project and write another Misery book intended to restore its heroine.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Descriptive · Direct

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Dark · Frightening · Tense · Unsettling

Structure

Linear

Focus

Atmosphere · Character · Plot

Emotional intensity

5 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

AddictionArt and creativityObsessionOppressionPowerSurvival

About Stephen King

Stephen King is an American novelist and short-story writer whose work has made horror one of the most expansive forms in modern popular fiction. Maine recurs throughout his books not merely as scenery, but as a social world of families, schools, friendships, grudges, local histories, and private failures. Into these recognizable lives he introduces forces that magnify what is already present: addiction and inherited violence in The Shining, childhood loyalty and buried trauma in It, collective fear and political fracture in The Stand, or the coercive intimacy between writer and reader in Misery. King’s fiction is often driven as much by voice, community, and accumulating consequence as by supernatural threat. His narrators move easily among suspense, black comedy, sentiment, and sudden brutality, while his long novels give minor characters and ordinary routines unusual room to develop. Even when the premise is impossible—a telekinetic teenager, a haunted hotel, a civilization emptied by plague—the emotional pressures remain immediate. What distinguishes King is not simply his ability to invent monsters, but his instinct for locating the fear, longing, cruelty, and decency that allow those monsters to matter.