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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
The bestselling author proves he's still the master of supernatural suspense in this minimally bloody but disturbing and sorrowful love story. [28 Aug 2006, p.27]
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Outstanding
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Chicago Tribune Alan Cheuse
In "Lisey's Story," King has created serious entertainment built on the psychology of loss and bereavement in marriage, joining, in what may be the best book of his career, his penchant for horror with a breakthrough in his presentation of the sorrows of everyday life. [19 Nov 2006]
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph Sam Leith
I think Lisey's Story stands among the best things this formidable writer has done.
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Favorable
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The Onion A.V. Club Noel Murray
This is a page-turner with a purpose, demonstrating through King's pure storytelling skill how a fictional world can draw people in because they need it to.
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Favorable
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USA Today Carol Memmott
Forty books later, King can still scare the bejesus out of us. He also can tell an epic love story as beautiful as his monsters are hideous.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Ron Charles
His new novel is an audacious meditation on the creative process and a remarkable intersection of the different strains of his talent: the sensitivity of his autobiographical essays, the insight of his critical commentary, the suspense of his short stories and the psychological terror of his novels.
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Favorable
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Chicago Sun-Times David J. Montgomery
A beautiful, exquisitely told story.
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Favorable
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The Guardian Toby Litt
This turns out to be a consummate, compassionate novel - one of King's very best.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Janet Maslin
Mr. King has delivered his version of Joycean wordplay, idiosyncrasy, voluptuousness and stubborn, obsessive chronology in “Lisey’s Story.”
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Jim Windolf
“Lisey’s Story” succeeds where “Bag of Bones,” its fraternal twin, failed.
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Favorable
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The New Yorker
It takes some time for these narrative strands to converge, but when they do Lisey moves between worlds at an exhilarating pace.
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Mixed
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Booklist Ray Olson
[A] long, often long-feeling, utterly Stephen Kingish novel. [1 Jun 2006, p.6]
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Mixed
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Boston Globe Erica Noonan
Most of the time, we feel stuck as outside observers on King's long-winded flights of fancy. It's much like paging slowly through someone else's photo albums chronicling a full, but not always interesting, life.
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Mixed
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Salon Laura Miller
This is one of his most artful efforts -- but in reaching so far, he's also come smack up against the wall of his own limitations as a writer.
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Mixed
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Andre Alexis
Though the writing itself was not graceful enough to move me, the act of imagination was. [28 Oct 2006]
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Mixed
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Daily Telegraph Justin Williams
But haunting though Lisey's Story is, at the end much of it feels like the refried leftovers from some of his acclaimed works from Misery through to Dolores Clairborne.
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Mixed
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Sydney Morning Herald Conrad Walters
If all you seek is guilty pleasure, begin chapter one now.
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Mixed
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Los Angeles Times Steve Almond
It should serve as definitive notice that Stephen King has evolved from a talented writer of horror into a serious literary artist. But he has yet to abandon the conventions that have made him a household name: a childish fixation on riddles and torture, a tendency to allow plot to trump character, action to overrun drama.
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Unfavorable
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Houston Chronicle Bruce Westbrook
Its rambling saga sags from ludicrous logic, cruel suffering and yet another of King's wacky alternate-universe worlds where he seems to make up rules as he goes along and where real-world tension and terror are MIA.
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Unfavorable
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The Observer Adam Mars-Jones
Lisey's Story is short on tension and poorly paced.
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