Book #81
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance and the very special 12-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.
On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They are quasi-immortal, living off the steam that children with the shining produce when they are slowly tortured to death.Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father's legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, in a job at a nursing home where his remnant shining power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes Doctor Sleep.Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan's own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra's soul and survival.
I always felt King was mighty ambitious in trying to write a sequel for something so monolithic as The Shining. So much so, that Doctor Sleep has been on my shelf unread for a number of years, because really, how do you top The Shining?
The answer is, simply, that you don’t. You take the beloved innocent boy from your original novel, tear him to pieces, and carve an entirely new story from his mutilated parts. It was so utterly unlike The Shining, and yet something quite special in itself.
Dan Torrance grows up to exhibit many of his father’s flaws - alcoholism and violence, yes, but battling demons more so. As Dan grows older, his shine diminishes, and the more he drinks, the duller he shines. Through alcohol, he manages to almost entirely lose his power, until he meets a young girl who shines like a lighthouse, and they band together to combat a band of true supernatural bad guys intent on murder and torture.
King’s prose is gorgeous and descriptive, and yet I found his pace jarring. I was propelled along initially, dragged along in the middle third, and then roused back into life for the finale. I know King is capable of keeping this momentum for the entirely of the novel, so the middle section was a slight disappointment.
I think most of the draw here for me was seeing how Dan had grown. That he’d developed most of his father’s addictions and habits sparked a true nature vs nurture debate in my head. That he and his mother had kept in touch with Dick Hallorann warmed my black heart. King characterises Dan perfectly, and it truly was a joy to see the little boy on the tricycle as a man - albeit a broken one.
Having said that, I really felt some of the other characters could have done with some attention; they were interesting as hell, and yet their back stories and motivations were pretty lacking. King presents us with a whole new idea of the shining, a whole new cast of weirdos with this curious ability, and yet we aren’t allowed to explore their lives.