Reviews tagging 'Medical trauma'

Misery by Stephen King

87 reviews

booksaremysoulmates's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This is my first novel by Stephen King. Of course I watched some of the movie adaptions like the original „It“ and the new one as well as a view more but never read any of his novels, so I didn‘t really know what to expect, when it comes to his writing style. I am pleasantly surprised because his writing was better than I expected. I enjoyed all the metaphors he uses that makes the book feel more complex but still easy enough to follow. Misery was a book that I couldn’t put down, only when I really had to. I just wanted to know how it continues and ends. The story is about an author who finds himself captured by his biggest fan. That‘s all I am going to tell you about the book, even though most of you probably already know this one, since it‘s quite an old one BUT still the less you know about it going in, the better. I am honestly at a loss of words, the only thing I can say is that if you are a thriller fan, you‘re going to enjoy this just as much as I did. Please make sure that you can stomach gruesome stuff like murder in detail since this has a lot of bloody and gruesome scenarios in it. It‘s probably still one of the more tamer books by Stephen King but it‘s still gruesome, so please make sure that you can handle any of the topics like murder, selfharm, disfigurement, torture and much more. I highly recommend this to anyone that enjoys a good thriller, horror (even though personally I wouldn’t consider this horror) and any of the other Stephen King books.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Medical trauma, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Addiction, Death, Drug abuse, Murder, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Animal cruelty, Car accident, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Animal death, Confinement, Drug use, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Vomit, Blood, Gun violence, and Kidnapping

lc_books's review against another edition

challenging dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

One of the best Stephen King books. If not the best. 
Gripping, very disturbing and truly horrifying. And I loved it!

It's such a simple story of kidnap and confinement but King did something unique with it. I hope I forget the ending in a few years, just so I can read it all over again. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Confinement, and Torture

Moderate: Drug use

isabelahuerta's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

The book was slow at parts but I felt like it complimented the intense fast paced parts very well. I didn’t feel bored during the slow parts which was good. My biggest complaint was the parts that were a story within a story. Like the main character is an author and there are chapters which just consisted of a book he was writing and they didn’t add much to the plot of the actual book. The horror scenes were very well written and made me forget I was reading 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Torture, Body horror, Mental illness, and Violence

Moderate: Drug use, Medical content, and Medical trauma

Minor: Cursing

scarlojazzy's review against another edition

dark hopeful sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Car accident, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Murder, Physical abuse, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Sexual violence

miraclesandmeatballs's review against another edition

dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Torture, Medical trauma, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Injury/Injury detail, Emotional abuse, Drug use, Drug abuse, Death, Confinement, Addiction, Mental illness, Medical content, Kidnapping, Gore, Vomit, Blood, Cursing, Murder, Animal death, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Racism, Fatphobia, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Sexual violence, Self harm, Misogyny, Mental illness, Body shaming, Suicidal thoughts, Child death, Sexism, Murder, Cultural appropriation, and Colonisation

Minor: Death of parent and Car accident

zurszula's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Blood, Emotional abuse, Grief, Confinement, Death, Gore, Drug use, Body horror, Physical abuse, and Medical trauma

boundforinfinity's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

'Misery's Annie Wilkes proves 5 star material. A villain with a narrative that compels and excites. Writer Paul Sheldon gives enough energy, sparky but troubled. He works a miracle on the writing and Wilkes complements his fury.
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I don't believe I have to prove how amazing both the book and the film where, but they were worth their weight in gold

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Car accident, Chronic illness, Child death, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Grief, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Medical content, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, and Torture

frankiejo's review against another edition

dark reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Even more poignant today than it was in 1987! It's frankly eerie how well this book (which, mind you, is thirty-five years old) still holds up in its criticisms of fan culture, especially when it comes to obsessive fans and unhealthy parasocial relationships. Other parts of the book don't hold up as well, unfortunately. The "Misery interludes" as I call them start off strong but pretty quickly become...racist, to be honest. Also, Annie drops an n-bomb at one point, which is not reflected on at all and is just brushed past like it's another one of her cockadoodie quirks.

Now, in another novel (written by a different authour—no shade to King, but I feel like he's shown that racism isn't a topic he covers well, I'll get to why in a moment) this could be used to examine the often racist aspects of toxic fandom. This is not that novel. Annie's racism seems to be a trait added to her slapdash in order to make her More Evil. It's not necessary. By the point she says the n-word, she's already (MAJOR SPOILERS)

cut off Paul's foot with an axe.

Depictions of racism in King's books is often only as an additional layer of evilness on an already vile character, which I feel disregards the more insidious form racism takes—covert, not overt. I think it paints an unrealistic portrait of what racism looks like—as a mustache twirling villain who announces his intentions loud and clear. Not your nice, friendly neighbour, not your boyfriend, and certainly not you. When King writes more subtle racism, "nice" racism, to use a term I think was coined by Robin DiAngelo, it's often seems to be an incidental product of his own biases. (I say I think because I can't find a use of it prior to her 2001 book. If I am incorrect there, please do tell me so I can adjust accordingly.) I feel this has lessened somewhat in his more recent work, which is good, but I'm reviewing Misery right now.

I'm gonna be honest, that's the main reason I rated this 4 stars. Without the aforementioned things, it would be an easy 5. Maybe that sounds overzealous, I don't know. It just really bothered me while I was reading, and also this is my review so. Yeah.

As for the good stuff, there's a lot of it.

Like I said before, Misery is more poignant now than it was before, largely because of the advent of social media further thinning the veil between our lives and the lives of celebrities. I would hate to touch the masterpiece that is Kathy Bates' Annie, but part of me wants to see a reimagining of Misery set in the modern day. Imagine an Annie with access to Paul's Instagram DMs...brrrrr.

Paul himself is a great protagonist. The whole novel, I was raging at his captor and pleading for his rescue to come sooner. He begs to be rooted for. I don't know a better way to phrase it—he's perhaps not the most layered character, but that's okay. Annie more than makes up for it, enough that I can't get to it all here, and he's likable enough to make up for his relative lack of depth. Besides, his journey from being completely dependent on Novril and hardly able to move to (MAJOR SPOILERS)

fighting off and <i>killing</i> his much stronger captor is a character journey in and of itself.

Finally, the novel contains many intriguing thoughts on writing. I can't share them all, although I wish I could, so I'll leave you with my favourite:

[...] the increasing dismissal of his work in the critical press as that of a 'popular writer' (which was, as he understood it, one step — a small one — above that of a 'hack') had hurt him quite badly. It didn't jibe with his self-image as a Serious Writer who was only churning out these shitty romances in order to subsidize his (flourish of trumpets, please!) REAL WORK! Had he hated Misery? Had he really? If so, why had it been so easy to slip back into her world? No, more than easy; blissful, like slipping into a warm bath with a good book by one hand and a cold beer by the other. Perhaps all he had hated was the fact that her face on the dust jackets had overshadowed his in his author photographs, not allowing the critics to see that they were dealing with a young Mailer or Cheever here — that they were dealing with a heavyweight here. As a result, hadn't his 'serious fiction' become steadily more self conscious, a sort of scream? Look at me! Look how good this is! Hey, guys! This stuff has got a sliding perspective! This stuff has got stream-of-consciousness interludes! This is my REAL WORK, you assholes! Don't you DARE turn away from me! 

Seems to parallel real world reaction to King's work—that his horror is just meaningless genre fiction (just ignore the heavy emotional themes in books like Pet Sematary and Doctor Sleep) and his non-horror work is True Art. All your writing is "Real Writing," no matter if it's a fluffy romance or the next 1984.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Death, Gore, Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Torture, Violence, Confinement, Kidnapping, and Blood

Moderate: Car accident, Suicidal thoughts, Addiction, Cursing, Gaslighting, Racism, and Self harm

Minor: Cannibalism, Excrement, Gun violence, Misogyny, Rape, Sexual content, and Transphobia

Elaboration on a couple of the triggers:

the cannibalism is only threatened and the rape is metaphorical. tagged to be safe

yeolliesutr's review against another edition

challenging dark funny reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Death, Kidnapping, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Self harm, Torture, Addiction, Car accident, Fire/Fire injury, Medical trauma, and Murder

Moderate: Vomit and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Animal death, Racism, Animal cruelty, and Racial slurs

malaikawrites's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

My first Stephen King book and I’m kinda shocked that I liked it? I always assumed his writing would be extremely pretentious… and I was totally right, but I found that I genuinely enjoyed it? It was very meta which was pretty cool and the whole concept was so interesting. 

Despite my enjoyment I did have some issues with the book. The black man caricature was terrible, the use of the n word with the  “er” was unnecessary, the use of sexual assault in metaphors was disturbingly graphic and the blatant hatred for women was a bit… yeah. 

I think the whole last section could’ve been cut out. I hated the whole last epilogue like part from beginning to end. (note: the rest of this paragraph is a spoiler) The book could’ve ended with the second last section which concluded with Paul finding out that Annie was no longer in the room where he left her after he thought he’d killed her. In all honesty, the book not ending there solidified my lower rating because the last part was ridiculously anticlimactic.

Aside from those major irritations, I really did like this book and it’s convinced me to read more Stephen King in the future! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Confinement, Kidnapping, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Violence, Gore, and Torture

Moderate: Car accident, Sexual assault, Addiction, Drug abuse, and Rape

Minor: Racial slurs and Animal cruelty