Misery, Africa, and Dirty Birds.

"I am your number one fan."

Who knew those words could evoke such terror? Stephen King's Misery tells the tale of one author's horrendous struggle for life against one hell of a psychopathic woman. Annie Wilkes may be crazy, but she also shows us what happens when someone becomes too attached to a fictional character in the most extreme way. The terror Paul Sheldon barely manages to live through is gut-wrenching, but King drops in all these other elements that make the ride of horror a lot of fun along the way...at least for the readers.

Sheldon's torture goes through several phases and we float along through his drug-induced moments just as he does. While I appreciated the images and metaphors of the scenes where Sheldon was lost in the world of the beach with the pylons stacking higher, the moments where he was clear and thinking were my favorite. Then again, those moments would not have stood out as much if the poor man wasn't suffering or retreating to his doped-up coma moments as well. I mean it's Stephen King here, what can I say? Misery is genius with its little tricks-of-the-trade moments for writers, and also the whole concept of Misery's name in Sheldon's novels. I don't think a lot of other writers could pull off something as obvious as the concept of Misery as a character of a book within a book while the emotion of misery is another central idea of the novel. It's a labyrinth of ideas that are executed with impressive smoothness here.

Along with that, Sheldon's descent into madness is something we almost delight in. He starts to adopt Annie's words and thoughts. He becomes a victim in ways that go deeper than the obvious. Insanity becomes infectious here between Annie and Sheldon and we want to keep seeing how far that envelope gets pushed before Sheldon really cracks.

“Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory.”-Stephen King, Misery
But the Funhouse of Annie and all her demented glory are what really stands out here. She is an insane woman with a lot of strength and knowledge of drugs. She does not have time for your

Hmm "Ian" sure has a familiar face ;-)

cockadoodie dirty bird games. But oh does she play her own games. Annie is a phenomenon within herself. She has her own odd vocabulary, ways of punishing herself, even more ways of punishing others, and a murder scrapbook, which was terrifying and brilliant. She was almost clever enough to get away with so much, but blessed be the Royal typewriter for tripping her up. She is astonishing (a goddess even) when it comes to her temper and the ways to get what she wants. She's a psycho with an agenda, but she's also human and Sheldon even sympathies with his captor at times. The framing device of the burning books (even though the last one was fake) works so well because we are all readers identifying with the pain of wanting to know how something ends and then having that being taken away from us...that would be actually painful. But we also delight in Annie's final death because of all of what happened to poor Paul Sheldon.

It's a wild roller coaster, but it's worth it. And this book just feels like King had fun along the way creating this horror. I hope you all enjoyed this book as much as I did.

Africa. Now rinse.