Lisey's Story

written by Stephen King

I used to have a thing for Stephen King books back in the day. Like way back. Then in my early days of figuring out what I wanted to do with God and spirtuality, I got kind of creeped out by how dark these books were, and I didn't touch any of his stuff for a long while. But I've had this one lying around for about a year and finally decided to pick it back up. It was an impulse purchase I made in a moment of panic when I thought I might need to go on a road trip, bookless ... but then the trip ended up being canceled and I never did get into the book. I tried a couple times, but I just couldn't quite get my interest piqued.

Which brings me to my first complaint about the King of horror: the guy just meanders all over the place in his later writings, and it takes forever to get to the point. But I guess he's entitled to do that now that he's made his millions and can just write for the fun of it. I envy that, actually.

Quick synopsis of the book: it's a disturbing tale (big surprise there, huh?) of a middle-aged writer named Scott Landon, who has been plagued for his whole life by what appears on the surface to be a mental illness that runs in his family. His father and his brother both suffered from extreme and bizarre mental breaks, and Landon's means of escaping from the pain and danger of living with such circumstances leads him to discover (create?) an alternate reality - not a mental one but an actual physical one where he can travel away from his current anguished existence to another "plane" of reality. Not only does that escape route prove to be his means for staying (seemingly) sane, but the whole experience provides him endless material for his career as a horror fiction writer.

So the obvious question here is, did King write this book about himself? Did he suffer under a hellaciously crazed father and a brother who suddenly turned into a dangerous animal-like beast? I don't think so. After reading the book I poked around to find out a little about his life, and it looks to me like he had a fairly ho-hum upbringing. But the guy does have some twisted imagery in his head, let's be clear on that. The book portrays mental illness as startlingly predatory, and I won't spoil the story for you, but I will say that eventually the beastly darkness hunts down some folks, and it's not pretty.

It's actually a really good story once you get into it, and it sated my appetite for something scary, at least for a while. I like King's style and his creativity. So even when he got into the meandering parts of the book, I didn't really mind all that much because his writing is so fun to read. One of his really remarkable skills is to seamlessly take you across many different locations and time periods without being at all confusing. I don't know how he does it so artfully, but I love that. Another notable thing is that there are a lot of subtle but clever references to other literature, and to music. I probably only got half of them (or less!), but they were fun to discover nonetheless.

The only glaringly "off" thing in the story seemed to be that the heroine, Lisey (Scott's wife) was a little too steely. There is no way that any woman (or any person, for that matter), no matter how strong, could endure some of the experiences in this story without completely freaking out into a nervous fit. But whatever. If he had baked that into the story, I'm sure it would have added even more bulk to the already-bulky 653 pages.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

written by Lisa See

For one reason or another, I've really fallen off in my consumption of fiction these last few months. I hate it when life gets in the way of reading! This was a great novel to dive back in with. It came from my very smart and well-read mother-in-law, who reads all the good books out there.

This book is both amazing and disturbing. It chronicles the lives of two Chinese women living in rural nineteenth-century China, and the horrific struggles they endure simply because they are female. Though the two women, Snow Flower and Lily, are not related, at around age 6 they are matched with each another by their families as laotong. Literally translated, this means "old sames," implying that the girls' past, present and future are so aligned that they are sort of soulmates.

Not all Chinese girls of that era were matched with a laotong, and it seems to be something of a privilege. The seriousness of the match was almost akin to marriage; families had to consent to the pairing of the girls, and there was a legal agreement involved which the girls had to sign (at age six or seven!), pledging to be faithful to this contractual friendship for life. The relationship provided lifelong emotional support for the two women, and it was often also a boon to the families involved: alliances between respected or prosperous clans helped to cement the economic and social stability of both families.

Lily and Snow Flower endure the barbaric ritual of footbinding together (Google it — you'll be appalled), they grow into young women together, and they both eventually "marry out" to men of their families' choosing. Through all the stages of their lives, they share and document their histories in nu shu (a secret writing created by Chinese women) on the fan that they share.

Once the girls reach adulthood and marry, the novel gets pretty turbulent. Through circumstances that neither of them can control, Lily marries into a well-to-do family and Snow Flower marries into a despised family. Their lives diverge and their friendship suffers, though they are still bound together through a handful of shocking and heartbreaking experiences. Both endure amazing hardships, and you're left with the impression that it generally sucks to be a woman in nineteenth-century China — regardless of how well off your family might be. As one of the traditional sayings from the book quips, "Raising a girl and marrying her off is like building a fancy road that others may use." Nice.

This would be a good book for any young woman to read, as it's a jarring reminder of how far women have come, not only in the Chinese culture but in the world in general.