Jeremy has more than 2300 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He’s an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU… well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He’s also very proud of the fact that he’s seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He’s plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings).
When he’s not writing lists – and the occasional feature article – for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account.
He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author’s 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas.
It’s tricky enough trying to pick your own personal favorite work for an author, filmmaker, or artist you admire, but it’s something else entirely when you ask an author, filmmaker, or artist what their favorite work is, of the ones they’ve created. Plenty haven’t come out openly and said what that work is, and maybe that’s a fair enough approach to take. It could feel like picking a favorite child to some people, but then other creative individuals don’t mind picking a favorite child, so to speak. And sometimes, their selections are unexpected. Alfred Hitchcock might be the most noteworthy example, since his favorite film, of the ones he directed, isn’t Vertigo, Psycho, North by Northwest, The Birds, or Rebecca (the last of those being the only film of his that won the Academy Award for Best Picture). Instead, Hitchcock’s favorite is the well-regarded – but not quite as famous – Shadow of a Doubt. With Stephen King, you get a similar situation.
He’s an author, and one of the most prolific and popular of all time, doing for horror what Hitchcock did for suspense, albeit in the literary landscape rather than the film world. Since he’s written dozens of novels that have been published over more than half a century (Carrie came out all the way back in 1974, and he’s still active as a writer, as of 2026), it’s hard to find a consensus for the crown of “best Stephen King book.” But some usual suspects do tend to get rounded up, and might include the likes of The Stand, The Shining, It, The Dark Tower (like, the whole series is kind of one big story), and sometimes even something more recent, like 11/22/63. One title that doesn’t usually come up is Lisey’s Story. But Lisey’s Story is King’s personal favorite, and one that he personally adapted into a TV series, writing all the episodes of 2021’s Lisey’s Story, the miniseries (starring Julianne Moore in the titular role). Both as a book and a miniseries, Lisey’s Story is odd, and certainly unexpected as a personal favorite pick (unless you know already, because King hasn’t exactly been quiet about the subject), but even if you don’t like the book all that much, you can, with a bit of work, sort of get an idea of why it appeals so much to its author.
What ‘Lisey’s Story’ Is About
Usually, summarizing the plot of a work you’re talking about is the easy part of an article like this, but the story of Lisey’s Story is… uh… it’s… maybe it’s a story? Is it even a story? It’s hard to get a handle on. It’s intensely personal and you get the sense that Stephen King knows what it’s about, and loves what it’s about, but it’s honestly difficult to crack if your name doesn’t start with a St and end with an ing. Stella Flemming, if you’re reading this, you’re in luck. You should check out Lisey’s Story as soon as possible because it might mean everything to you.
Lisey’s Story is messy and confusing, but always sentimental, and admittedly gutsy with how self-reflective it is.
No, but really. Uh, Lisey’s Story is about a woman trying to make sense of her life and her memories after her husband passes away. She has a traumatic past and a difficult family life, and the connection she had with her now-deceased husband was a meaningful yet complex one, to say the least. Her husband, Stephen King… no, sorry. Her husband, Scott Landon, was a writer, and like anyone prolific who writes for a living, he kind of lives on through some of his writing, including notes Lisey discovers while trying to sort out the area he used to work in. This sets her off on a quest he might well have planned for her to undertake after his passing, and then the past, present, and happenings in some kind of other dimension all collide. It’s messy and confusing, but always sentimental, and admittedly gutsy with how self-reflective it is, and how openly it confronts death. Some of that’s well and good and all, but does it translate to something readable and emotionally compelling if you’re not Stephen King, or Stella Flemming, or Stavos Fielding?
Why Stephen King Loves ‘Lisey’s Story’
Maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe this is Stevie’s Story, or Tabitha’s Story, with King writing it for himself and/or Tabitha King more than anyone else (born Tabitha Spruce, she’s a published author in her own right, and has been married to King since 1971). The inspiration for Lisey’s Story is perhaps more moving and striking than the book itself, since he went about writing it after being hospitalized with pneumonia. His wife had rearranged his working space when he was in hospital, tidying it up, but the gesture made King think that that’s how it would look if someone cleaned it up after his passing. Like so many Stephen King stories, everything exploded outward from that idea, and Lisey’s Story can be seen as a book about all that weird stuff, sure, but also about an author confronting mortality and his legacy.
It’s not directly autobiographical, and isn’t intended to be. Stephen King has written plenty about his life in a more direct way, getting pretty upfront about his creative process in various forewords, afterwords, and author’s notes he’s written for different books of his, and then there’s also the work of non-fiction that is On Writing. But maybe Lisey’s Story is Stephen King doing that as much as he can while keeping things in a fictional zone, exaggerating certain things with the addition of supernatural elements, or otherwise hiding/obscuring certain truths by changing names, character traits, and circumstances. You can’t entirely crack the code here, so to speak. You get the sense that King’s put a lot into this book, and that he’s also hidden a lot in there. Maybe you wouldn’t want to understand it the way he has. It already feels a tiny bit invasive reading Lisey’s Story. You get some discomfort there even, which is then exacerbated by the style of this novel. Oh god, the style.
Why Readers Weren’t As in Love With the Book (or Later TV Series Adaptation)
Before, the question was asked of whether it matters what other people think of Lisey’s Story; people who aren’t King, or his wife, or his family members. It does, to some extent. It wouldn’t, if Lisey’s Story had remained unpublished, and really just something for King and those close to him, but it was put out into the world, and so it can be critiqued. There is so much here to critique. The whole book is way too long, and is filled with genuinely cringe-inducing language. Lisey and Scott have made-up words they share, and they’re meant to showcase their bond, but you’ll want to throw your book across the room the 57th time you hear someone say “smucking,” “bool,” “sowisa,” or “babyluv.” It never gets easier. It never feels as natural or endearing as you assume it’s supposed to. As showcased before, when trying to summarize the events of the book, everything is all over the place. It sprawls, gets repetitive, and stumbles over itself at various points. It’s out of control and rambling, but not in a fun sort of way, like you might find in It or The Stand.
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The miniseries did little to improve upon the novel, maybe because Stephen King wanted to adapt it himself, so, well, it’s in line with the original text, for better or worse. Lisey’s Story is a quintessential “so obsessed with whether he could, he didn’t stop to think about whether he should” kind of story. And the “should” in this instance is, like, “should this have been published?” A writer can write whatever they want, just as someone can technically think whatever they want, and if those thoughts aren’t expressed or made obvious, you can’t really blame someone for thinking what they do. Maybe you don’t want to know what that sketchy guy on the subway is thinking. Maybe he doesn’t want you to know. Maybe Stephen King shouldn’t have wanted people to know about Lisey’s Story. Read literally anything else by him before you tackle the book he says is his greatest work. There’s more merit to find elsewhere; indeed, other worlds than Lisey’s Story.
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