Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
Scribner hc, 1st edition, 531pp
ISBN: 978-1-4767-2765-3
The sequel to The Shining, in which Danny is all grown up, succeeds in remaining consonant to the original novel enough to justify considering them a duad, a single whole in two distinct parts.
This is not to say the tone is the same. This is not a direct sequel, until the very end, where there is a show-down scene at the site of the now-burned Outlook, in Colorado, where Jack Torrance, Danny’s father, died. Where spirits wait for vengeance. Where there is emotional and spiritual power for all, light and dark.
Prior to that we see that Danny has had a rough life. He’s inherited his father’s propensity to get drunk; in his case, to dampen the shining, which can otherwise drive him crazy with all the ghostly chatter and appalling insights. He takes the latter syllable of redrum to heart for a long while.
We meet him during his last-ditch effort to pull himself out of the self-destructive downward spiral he has been in too long. He comes to a tidy New England town that has a small gauge steam locomotive for tourists during the season. He falls for its charm and, even better, finds a job at a local hospice where his skills with the shining allow him to help ease dying patients’ final moments.
He’s doing well and even psychically links with a little girl named Abra who may well be even stronger and better at shining than he is. His bond with her grows through occasional mental images, words on a chalk board, and other hints, winks, and nudges, but eventually they are communicating fully. They are birds of a feather and support each other. He’s like an uncle to her.
Less avuncular, more threatening is the True Knot. This is a group of travelers who look like slightly below-average retirees and families in battered RVs who roam the United States in a ragged group. What is not evident at first glimpse is how dark a group this is, and how old, and how powerful. Seems they like to feed on people, on the energies they release when tortured to death. They even bottle this energy and feed off it during lean times.
They’re hungry again, and if they don’t get what they call steam, which is what Danny calls shining, they will perish. Can’t have that, now can they?
Sensing Abra’s great power like an X station from across the border of humanity, they zero in, trying to find her so they can torture her to death or maybe, just maybe, keep her alive and tortured so she keeps producing that sweet steam.
Danny and Abra just can’t catch a break, and will not be left alone to enjoy their unusual lives. Not with the True Knot around.
King weaves the story lines well, bringing things together naturally into the kind of all-out show-down we crave. Shades of The Stand struck me, but perhaps that is in the nature of such chiaroscuro tales. Harsh contrast breeds apocalyptic conflict, and readers benefit.
Not knowing what to expect from a sequel to The Shining, I trusted King and let the book work its charms. It satisfied me in surprising ways and one can but applaud the bravura performance. Stephen King is King Stephen for a reason, and he continues to get better with age and experience. That can be said about few writers at his current stage of career.
Ignore the naysayers and grab a copy, especially if you loved The Shining and always wondered what happened to that intense little boy and his finger-pal who lives in his mouth, Tony. Incidentally, King also supplies some rational, reasonable explanations for his concept of the shining. Bonus material, no strings of goo attached.
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