The AppleTV miniseries recently adapted It, that is high praise indeed coming from King.
However, it is not hard to see how the story of Lisey Landon has such a prized place in King’s heart, as many of the novel’s elements are autobiographical. To be clear, Lisey’s Story is a fictional fusion of horror and romance, and neither the novel nor its miniseries adaptation could be considered an autobiography of King by any means. Nonetheless, there are many similarities between the life of Stephen King and the tale of Lisey’s Story.
A lot of King’s writing features protagonists who are authors, such as even works that the writer has all-but-disowned like The Shining’s Jack Torrance may have shared King’s issues with drinking, Landon shares his brush with death, his intensely close and collaborative creative relationship with his wife, and his occasionally overzealous fanbase. All of these elements can be found in other King stories, but it is only in Lisey’s Story that they all coalesce, making the novel and its subsequent miniseries adaptation the most autobiographical of King’s many books. King himself has said in the past that Lisey’s Story is not autobiographical, exactly, which will come as no surprise to viewers and readers since the novel and miniseries both open with his fictional counterpart already dead.
There are some important similarities to explore between Clive Owen’s Scott Landon and King. For one thing, the novel was inspired by a bout of double pneumonia that hospitalized King and almost killed him, similar to the mystery illness that claimed Landon’s life before the story begins. Moreover, the fact that the story is told by and centers on Landon's wife Lisey is a testament to King’s frequent ission that his wife Tabitha is the unsung hero of his work. A novelist and poet herself, Tabitha King guides her husband’s writing and has given him throughout his career.
It is hard to overstate the importance of this, with one famous anecdote describing how Tabitha King saved the abandoned manuscript of Carrie from a trashcan because she wanted to see where the story was heading. Meanwhile, the run-ins that King has had with some obsessed stalker fans provide the basis for the antagonist of Lisey’s Story. King’s Misery, which is also based on his life and was adapted earlier into a critically-acclaimed Kathy Bates vehicle, seems like an obvious instance of King addressing the unhinged extremities of fan culture, but, according to the author himself, Annie Wilkes is actually intended to represent the hold that cocaine had on his life and self-worth throughout his turbulent early success. Zack McCool of Lisey’s Story, though, sees King offer a direct representation of the occasionally scary lengths some fans go to invade the author’s personal life. This villain, along with Landon's illness and his closeness with his wife, reinforce how uniquely autobiographical Lisey's Story is among the prolific Stephen King's sizeable back catalog.