He has been dead a couple of years when the story begins — the novel was partially inspired by King’s brushes with death — but will appear plenty, in flashbacks, dreams, visions and a sort of purgatory where much crucial action will take place, and in and out of which certain characters will travel with relative ease.
Though King has stated his dislike of Stanley Kubrick‘s “The Shining,” “Lisey’s Story” seems to take cues from its pacing, composition and camerawork, with a similar emphasis on scenes that put a few bodies in a big space.
King begins the novel, which is dedicated to his wife, author Tabitha King, with “To the public eye, the spouses of well-known writers are all but invisible.” Yet he gives Lisey little life of her own; she is an appurtenance, a helpmate, sometimes a savior to her well-known writer spouse, and a little bit of an action heroine, but without intellectual interests, or hobbies or even any sort of job of her own.
That Leigh’s Darla has been given more to do here, closer to the action, is a happy change, as she is not afflicted with otherworldly heebie-jeebies or saddled with great pain or, for that matter, in thrall to some great love — but she is real and funny, in an eight-hour series in which almost nothing else is, and grounds the story whenever she shows up.