Doctor SleepPaperback

The Turning Point: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King By Marc D. Goldfinger “We stood at the turning point. Half-measures availed us nothing.” The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

I’ve been reading Stephen King since I was young. Let me make this clear: young is a variable for me. The first book I ever read by Stephen King was The Stand, a book of about 800 pages. It was supposed to be longer but King’s publisher didn’t think a book that ran over 1100 pages would sell, so they asked King to cut, cut, cut, but no pasting, until they felt it was marketable.

The ravaged version, which, by the way, was great, came out in 1978. Years later, when King’s popularity was peaking, they released the full version. This was in 1990. It is now 2013 and Stephen King, after completing his magnum opus called The Dark Tower, is at his best.

King’s newest book, Doctor Sleep, was just released (528 pages). Way back when King was starting out, he wrote a book called The Shining, which was later made into movie starring Jack Nicholson. My guess would be that more people saw the movie than read the book, although the book sold quite well. The Shining has 447 pages, which makes it one of King’s shorter novels.

To appreciate Doctor Sleep, one does not need to go back and read The Shining, however, it might add some flavor to the experience. Loosely speaking, they are sequential.

The main character in Doctor Sleep is Dan Torrance. He is in his early 30’s in Doctor Sleep; in The Shining Dan Torrance is a little boy who sees more than the normal person. To be hyper-aware is not always a gift. If you can shake someone’s hand and see their imminent death, it’s hard to smile and say, “Have a good day and it was nice to meet you.”

As an avid reader, I hate book reviews that spoil the fun, if that would be the proper word to use for one of Stephen King’s books. I find myself faced with a conundrum. I don’t want to spoil Doctor Sleep. But I do want to tell you why I think it is Stephen King’s best book.

It’s quite different than his 7 book Dark Tower series- which is the modern Lord of the Rings. But Doctor Sleep touched me in a very special way.

If you happen to be an alcoholic in recovery, you will love Doctor Sleep. Boy, I put myself out on a limb there, didn’t I? But really, I mean it. Even if you’ve never read a King book before, if you are in recovery, just pick it up and read the first ten pages, including the quotes at the beginning of the book.

I’ll go one step further. If you’re an alcoholic or a drug addict who is still using but doesn’t want to use anymore, pick up Doctor Sleep and read it. Then go to an AA meeting or an NA meeting. You don’t have to wait until you finish the book. After all, you’ll want to be sober enough to remember the damn thing, right?

Just like Dan Torrance had the Shining when he was a child, in Doctor Sleep there is a little girl named Abra Stone who Shines like the sun. She’s got some power, all to the good.

There are other folks cruising down the highways and byways of America. You’ve probably seen them in their big RV’s, mostly retired people who are past their mid-sixties. Looks are deceiving my friend. Just like there are motorcycle clubs called The Devil’s Disciples, it could be that not all of these old folks have warmth in their hearts.

There is a gang of them that calls themselves The True Knot and they hunger to live. What they need is children who Shine and, just like vampires drink blood, these folks drink the Essence of the children. No, no, the children don’t survive. The True Knot has been around a long time. They traveled in covered wagons back in the day.

And, just like true Bikers, these folks have names like Steamhead Steve, Black-eyed Susie, Diesel Doug, & Steve the Chink, who is not Chinese. Their leader is a big woman who wears a sinister top hat and they call her Rosie the Hat.

They don’t like dogs and dogs don’t like them but they love children. Children who Shine. You know that statement from the old rock songs, “you always hurt the one you love”. The True Knot does just that.

Abra Stone picked up on The True Knot when they were draining the Steam from this young man, about 12 years old and never to see another birthday—she hooked in on what they were doing with her Shining and began to scream as she pulled away.

Not quick enough. Rosie the Hat sensed her and knew that, whoever that young girl was, she was definitely a large store of food for The True Knot. And that’s all I can say about that because I don’t want to ruin the story for you.

Dan Torrance, who we talked about before, has a job to do. When the teacher is ready, the student will appear. That’s an old saying. I don’t even know where it came from but it definitely applies here. But this is enough about Doctor Sleep. I’ve probably told you more than you want to know. This is Stephen King at his best and his heart is really in this book.

All of us, one way or another, reach a turning point in our lives and we either take the path we were meant to take—or we slip down the dark road. I’ll have to say that I was lucky and took the right path after 30 years of dark road. But it’s never too late for anyone as long as they are alive.

Now I get to read and collect these books, of which Doctor Sleep is one. Even if you don’t like to read Stephen King, this is the book to jump on. If you like it, pass it on. If you don’t like it, well write to me and complain. I’ll hear you out.

But watch out for caravans of RV’s with those bumper stickers that say “Old but not dead, save Medicare, I’m a conservative and I vote.” You never know whether they’re out hunting or Sight-seeing.

Oh, Doctor Sleep works in a Hospice. We come to find that the ties that bind a family together are stronger than we believe. The truth is always just one stranger away.

Whether you are a friend of Bill’s or just a close cousin, this is not a book to miss. _”DoctorSleepBook.com”—SimonandShuster.com”

I've always thought THE SHINING was Stephen King's best novel. It was scary in ways that creep up inside your skin and just never let go. The ghosts in the Overlook Hotel may have been terrifying, but that's not what made that novel so chilling - no, it's what happened to Jack Torrance, a man who loved his son with his heart and soul, but still allowed the demons to use him against the boy. And it wasn't the ghosts that were the most dangerous; it was Jack himself, and the kind of demons so many of us have inside us. DOCTOR SLEEP, King's sequel to THE SHINING, brought me back to the Torrance family, back to Danny and Wendy and Jack, back to wonderful Dick Hallorann, chef of the Overlook and hero of Danny's childhood, and back to Tony, the imaginary friend who tried to help Danny through the worst of his nightmares. DOCTOR SLEEP reminds me of the "old Stephen King," the King of DEAD ZONE and `SALEM'S LOT and THE STAND. It's a great book with a big story, a story that reaches across America and highlights once more that there are such things as Good and Evil in the world, and that it is sometimes necessary to risk everything to stand for one and against the other.

In DOCTOR SLEEP, Danny Torrence is Dan, haunted by the horrors he experienced that winter in Colorado when he was five. He carries with him his father's legacy - a thirst for drink, and a temper that's hard to control. King fills in some of the story for us, about Danny's struggles in the years following his father's death (Hallorann helps with that), about Wendy's injuries that never quite heal, and about the mess adult Dan makes of his life, including his alcoholism, his self-destructive behavior, and his unrelenting depression. Then, he finds himself in a little town in New Hampshire called Frazier, and a familiar voice in his head suggests "this is the place." In Frazier he finds AA, forever friends, a job with purpose (using his "shining" to help hospice patients ease their way into death), and a girl named Abra who seems to "shine" brighter than even Dan did when he was young. But there is a group of deranged people out there called the True Knot (Dan calls them a "paranormal Manson family"); they want Abra so they can feed on her essence (or "steam," as they call it). Their leader, a woman called Rose the Hat, knows how strong Abra is, and how much "steam" she possesses. Can Dan help Abra fight Rose and the True Knot, or are his own demons too strong? And once the True Knot sets up camp at the location of the long-gone Overlook Hotel, will Dan's past rise up to hurt or to help him?

DOCTOR SLEEP, like THE SHINING, really is about inner demons. Some of them are of the paranormal kind (Dan works hard to shut away the ghosts from the Overlook and it isn't easy), but some are a part of us, our own weaknesses and failings that get in the way of our best selves. Those, Dan discovers, are much harder to defeat and take much greater courage. The book is also about finding your true place in the world (or purpose, perhaps) and about repaying debts. Hallorann helped Dan when he was a child; now Dan will help Abra. As King describes it, "Life is a wheel, and it always comes back around."

Those familiar with THE SHINING only through the Kubrick film would be advised to read King's book before reading DOCTOR SLEEP. The two novels are intricately connected, like woven strands of one story. There are also significant differences between the novel and the Kubrick film which might confuse readers picking up the sequel without having read the original - the biggest difference, of course, is Hallorann, who is abruptly killed in the film but proves himself a hero in King's novel). A bigger difference, however, is Jack Torrence's character - the scariest, most horrifying scene in THE SHINING is the one where Jack is chasing his son with an ax, raging at him to "take his medicine" but also desperately screaming for him to "run, run, run!" It's this internal conflict between the influences of Good and Evil that define Jack's character - and none of this is present in Kubrick's film. Since those same conflicts are so important in DOCTOR SLEEP, it would make sense to know what they're all about before diving in.

Reading DOCTOR SLEEP felt very much like curling up with an old friend. I admire King's ability to completely immerse his readers in his characters, his settings, and his stories - I didn't want to put this one down until I'd reached the final page. I also admire King's knack for combining cultural references (you'll find mentions of "Twilight," "Harry Potter," "CSI," and Nancy Grace) alongside surprising literary allusions (watch for nods to T. S. Eliot, Shakespeare, Malamud, and Dickens). And then there's one very minor character named for Jame Gumm's first victim in Harris's SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (King knows how to turn the screw before you even know he has a screwdriver in his hand!). This is a rich and satisfying novel that's both desperately sad and beautifully uplifting. I enjoyed every minute of it. Very well done, Mr. King.

I love Stephen King's classic early novels - Salem's Lot, Carrie and the Shining, and I think the Shining may be my favorite of the three. You can imagine my excitement at learning that Stephen King had written a sequel to the Shining.

Doctor Sleep is a great story. I don't think it is as good as the Shining, but it doesn't try to be, and that works. Much like a child who finds his own identity separate and distinct from those of his parents, Doctor Sleep is rooted in the Shining but quickly cuts its own trail. The story begins in darkness, finding the gifted young protagonist of the Shining all grown up and wandering the earth in haze of substance abuse and addiction. His protectors - Danny's mother Wendy and his mentor, Dick Hallorann - are dead and gone, leaving Danny alone to cope with his addiction and emotional scarring.

However, where Jack Torrance reacted to his addictions self-justified rage, Danny gives in to despair and hopelessness. He is fully aware of his life's downward spiral and all he can do is stand by and watch as he heads for rock bottom. In its darkest moments, Doctor Sleep seems even more personal and revealing than the Shining.

Despite this bleak hopelessness, however, Doctor Sleep is ultimately a story of redemption and in many ways, it feels like that redemption extends to the characters of all three of Stephen King's first novels. Although the protagonists of Salem's Lot and the Shining survive their respective ordeals, survival, it turns out, is a bittersweet victory. Families are torn apart, communities lost and lives altered forever. And of course, poor Carrie White didn't even survive her story. Doctor Sleep redeems all three by taking up their causes in the form of Abra Stone, a child who shines far brighter than even Danny. Gifted and extremely powerful, Abra is also compassionate and wise beyond her years. Unlike Danny and Carrie, Abra is largely spared the emotional wounds of childhood trauma. Her parents are loving and supportive (albeit in denial about her gift) and Abra is shockingly well-adjusted. Despite her talents, Abra is happy, has plenty of friends, does well in school and by all appearances, seems like an ordinary child.

Her shine enables Abra to develop a bond with Danny, who tries to become a mentor to her, just as Dick Hallorann was to him. Abra also attracts the attention of a traveling coven of serial killers who prey on those who shine. Calling themselves the True Knot, they travel the country, kidnapping, torturing and murdering gifted individuals (mostly children) to take their "steam" - their spiritual essence - as it escapes their dying bodies. "Taking steam" makes these killers immortal (and no longer human) - so long as they can find enough steam to feed. When the True Knot discovers Abra, they see an opportunity for an endless source of steam, with plans to hold her in captivity and slowly bleed the steam from her with torture.

Much like his mentor did for him, Danny finds himself rushing to rescue Abra from the True Knot. For him, it is as much about redeeming his soul, exorcising the memories of the Overlook and atoning for his own transgressions, as it is about saving Abra. Abra, however, is not necessarily a helpless child in distress. Under her cheerful exterior there is frighteningly intense, steely resolve. As the story reveals more of Abra's character, I began to wonder if this is how Carrie would have ended up had she grown up in a loving, accepting home. Or if this is what Danny might have become if not for his father's murderous rampage. Abra refuses to be a victim and takes on the True Knot, head on. Unlike Ben and Mark, who just manage to make it out of Salem's Lot alive, Abra isn't interested in just surviving - she intends to win.

The combination of these elements makes Doctor Sleep great fun. The battle royale finale alone is worth the price of admission. But don't come expecting the Shining. Doctor Sleep is its own novel and it makes no apologies for that.

First off: I promise, NO SPOILERS. I apologize if there is some vagueness as a result.

I'd like to write two reviews for Dr. Sleep: one on its stand-alone merits, and as a continuation of the story of the Shining, and one on its success as a continuation of the brilliance of The Shining. I'd give the first 5 stars, but the second only...3. Which is unfair, I guess, especially in light of Stephen King's afterward ("...people change. The man who wrote Doctor Sleep is very different from the well-meaning alcoholic who wrote The Shining, but both remain interested in the same thing: telling a kickass story. I enjoyed finding Danny Torrance again and following his adventures. I hope you did, too. If that's the case, Constant Reader, we're all good.")--which seems to say that my first 5 star review is the one King would care about, if I were to presume he cares what I have to say. And since I love Stephen King, that's what I gave it, officially, and that's the one I'll start with.

This book is SUCH a fun read! The best kind of King book, the kind that leaves you hungover in the morning because you were up much too late reading, and almost makes you miss your bus to work because you get engrossed in it again while you brush your teeth. Several times I got a big giddy grin on my face and even laughed aloud with ridiculous delight at a super stephenkingy turn of phrase, words I imagined gave him a similar satisfaction as they left his fingers for the page. Some of these were even scary-creepy things, but they were so perfectly done, they were thrilling on that second level, too. It felt to me like King had a lot of fun with a lot of this book, just reveling in his own GoodAtItNess, long passages spooling out with gleeful sprezzatura.

The story runs smoothly along, suspenseful questions answered with perfect timing, never leaving so much unknown at once that the complications are impossible to follow. The central characters are excellent. Grownup Dan surprisingly unlike 5 year old Dan in the way my own grownup children are surprisingly unlike their 5 year old selves--something of the little boy remains, but he didn't just stretch to man-size, he's a fully realized person, very changed. Abra is a great character on her own, and her relationships with Dan, her parents, and her friends, are all truthful and nuanced. Good on whoever talked King through the markers of early adolescent girlness that pepper her believability. The scary creepy horrors are scary, creepy, and horrible; turning off the light when I finally forced myself every night was just as unpleasant as it had been when I read The Shining.

Loose strings of the original plot are nicely knotted up. I'd have maybe liked to know more about Wendy, but real grown men--as Dan is, in this novel--don't have the kind of insight or, frankly, interest, in their mothers' inner lives. Even if they're psychic. So it works, as a function of Grownup Dan being well done. Less likely, I thought, was the way Dick was written out of Dan's life, but I have to admit that works too, in the sense that Dan grew up in ways that were unpredictable when he was five. Expository backstory from the first book doesn't get the clumsy treatment it normally does in sequels, but is dropped in usefully and gracefully throughout the plot. It was very satisfying to have some things I thought I understood about the Overlook, and Dan, and Jack, confirmed, and equally satisfying to have some new details mixed in to deepen and thicken that foundation of the story. The final revisitation from The Shining gets a muted, subtle treatment in the narrative, and I hope it's not just sentimental over-imagination on my part to think King let it be so simple because it might have been unbearably moving otherwise.

Five stars! Buy it, read it, you'll enjoy it!

Now then. The Shining is one of my all-time favorite books. It's the one I wax rhapsodic about when I'm making an obnoxiously over-thought case for Stephen King as an underrated capital G genius of American capital L literature. It's the one I compare to Dickens and the one I compare to Steinbeck and the one I say doesn't need to lean on those comparisons because it's capital G greatness all by itself. I like to make people listen to me say that the only reason The Shining is not a genuine masterpiece, recognized or not, is that King was young and still growing as a writer. And still not so market-proven that his (now routinely over-indulgent) editors gave him free reign. I have always assumed those factors caused the flaws (I apologize for my cheek, Mr. King; I know I'm unworthy, but for lack of a better, more obsequious term, I have to go with flaws) in The Shining, and I was unrestrainedly thrilled to hear a sequel unaffected by those was in the works. I refused to entertain fears that I wouldn't like it as much as the original, the way absolutely everyone likes the sequel less than the original; when the first reviews came out and I read that Barbara Kingsolver loved Dr. Sleep, I went directly to Kindle, did not pass go, and Amazon collected my seven dollars. And it was, as I've already said, money well and unregrettedly spent.

But this book isn't anything like The Shining. Not as a literary feat. Both books tell, as King says he intended, kickass stories. The Shining, though, spent its first half telling a fascinatingly ambiguous story, too. The Shining is about a man with demons we all recognize, and a lot of us live with intimately. For a good chunk of the beginning of the book, it is impossible to determine from the text alone whether or not those demons are the only demons in the Torrance family's life. The interplay between Jack and his family and the things in Jack's head is fantastic, and the aforementioned flaw is that the transition between "Is This Real or Is Jack Just Crazy" to "Oh, yeah, it's real. Jack's crazy, too, but that's secondary" is less smoothly done than the writing on either side of the divide. And Dr. Sleep has nothing at all like that. The kickass story is all out in the open and straightforwardly linear, as is the development of all the characters and the reader's understanding of who they are and what they're doing.

Dr. Sleep is extragood pop culture writing. The Shining was that, with unrecognized actual literature icing its cake. Without the icing, I give it three stars.

When I was a hyperactive and slightly crazed child I learned to read by reading comic books. And yes I'll admit that at first all I did was look at the pictures, but eventually I found myself running in to my parents to try and figure out what exactly Spiderman, The Hulk, The Avengers, and the X-Men were saying. The comic books instilled within me the desire to learn because I found them vastly entertaining and interesting. At the same time as this I was living out in the country and we only had four TV channels, ABC, NBC, CBS, and KTVU Channel 2 out of San Francisco. I know in this age where we have hundreds, upon hundreds of channels to choose from, that its hard to imagine just having four TV channels, but that's what I grew up with. One of my favorite TV Channels outs, of the big four I had to choose from, was the independent KTVU Ch.2 and the reason I liked it more than the others was that on Friday Nights they would have Creature Feature movies, which were hosted by a dude named Bob Wilkins, who had a great sense of humor and always had great intros to the movies he'd play like, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Werewolf, and a whole bunch of other great black and white horror films. I thought these films were just great because they opened me up to the wild world of horror.

And then somewhere around the seventh grade I discovered Stephen King and everything changed...

Stephen King took the horror that I saw on Creature Features and made it scary. The Stephen King novels were the first full length books that I read for pleasure. At the time I would have told you that it was the subject matter that drew me to the books, but as I look back now, I think it was more the way he told his stories. The Creature Feature Movies and the Comic Books were aimed at a more innocent audience, but the Stephen King books were aimed at scaring the hell out of adults, and as I was reading them, not completely understanding all of what was being said, I was thinking that I was being let into the world of adults, like I was pulling back a door and looking into a world I was not yet a part of. Stephen King wrote in such a way that it drew me in and made me a part of that horrific event at the center of each novel and in doing so he personalized it, he humanized the horrible, and that he made you feel each and every action that was perpetrated on his characters.

I wasn't alone in feeling like this, because at that time Stephen King was the absolute Rock Star of writing, every single one of his novels was a blockbuster success, and they were all being made into movies, one right after the other. So it's fair to say that what I was feeling as a reader was what other were feeling too. But really when you look at what he was producing at that time, Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, Cujo, Christine, and Pet Sematary and you realize it is a succession of great books that tap into some of our deepest fears. I'm not sure which book I started with, but I think it was The Dead Zone. Today I understand politics, and how the wrong person in office can have dire consequences, but at the time I had absolutely no idea what any of that stuff meant, all I knew was that Stephen King made it scary as all hell and totally engrossing to read about. And from that point I was hooked. I went racing through the books as fast as my little mind would allow me to read. I remember it got so bad my mother would take the bulb out of my light at night so I wouldn't stay up reading too late, but I couldn't be thwarted, I got a flashlight and a bunch of batteries and just kept reading. King had that kind of effect on me, I felt compelled to keep turning the pages until I reached the cataclysmic conclusions of his books.

And then came The Shining...

Of all the books I read by Stephen King The Shining is the one book that made me sleep with a light on at night after I read it because it just terrified me. The Overlook Hotel, the snow, the moving hedge animals outside, the little girls, Room 217, all combined together in a nightmarish vision that frightened me half to death. I mean they were stuck, miles away from anything and anyone else, in a hotel filled with horrifying things, and that had this strangulating feel to it, like there was no possible way out, and everyone was going to get killed. Of all the books I've ever read that one made one of the deepest impression Ive ever felt.

It was hard to top The Shining. The Kubrick Movie left a bad taste. I started college. I moved on to Clive Barker, and I didn't read anything else from Stephen King...

And then came Doctor Sleep.

Doctor Sleep was the first Stephen King book I've bought since my last year of high school in 1984. It wasn't as good as The Shining, but it was still a pretty damn good book. More than anything, for me, it was like meeting up with a good friend, where you find yourself falling into the same patterns, and memories, and you walk away with a smile on your face because you remember just how much that friend meant to you. Stephen King ushered me from my childhood into the adult world of reading for enjoyment. He taught me that a writer could be a superstar, that his books could be made into a massive succession of movies and TV shows, and that a writer could have a deep influence on a persons life. Doctor Sleep brought me back to those thoughts. It gave me an idea what actually happened to Danny Torrence and his mother. It gave me new creatures to hate and fear. It gave me a new hero to cheer for. King gave me a story I could deeply enjoy like a fine wine that's been aged to perfection and is filled with all of those tastes that remind you of where the grapes were grown, what barrel it was aged in, and the person who made it. The story wasn't deeply original, and borrowed from a lot of sources, but it was very Stephen King and that was greatly satisfying for me.

As I begin my own writing career I've had a lot of influences in my life, my parents, Mr. Murphy in high school english, too many movies to name, a whole bunch of books, and Stephen King. I don't think my head would be filled with all the thoughts I have of writing glory if I hadn't started reading that first Stephen King book. If I hadn't watched Stephen king become a household name. If I hadn't read The Shining. As I went through college as an English Lit Major I remember teachers looking down their noses at what they called "populist writer" like Stephen King as they tried to get me interested in all of the greatest literature, and yes some of those books and plays were very good, but it was very wrong of them to do that. I don't care if it's Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, or Stephanie Meyer, if the books get people excited and make them want to read, then teachers should encourage that and they should embrace it. You never know where the next writer is going to come from or what is going to influence along the way.

Doctor Sleep is a very good followup to The Shining. I couldn't recommend it higher. But I make that recommendation with one piece of advice, read The Shining first, and make sure all the lights work in your house, because you might need to keep a few of them on.