Doctor Sleep (novel)

Doctor Sleep is a novel by American writer Stephen King, a sequel to his novel The Shining (1977), released in September 2013.^[1] King stated that it is "a return to balls-to-the-wall, keep-the-lights-on horror".^[2] The book reached the first position on The New York Times Best Seller list for print and ebook fiction (combined), hardcover fiction, and ebook fiction. Doctor Sleep won the 2013 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel.^[3]

Plot

Following the events of The Shining, after receiving a settlement from the owners of the Overlook Hotel, Danny Torrance remains psychologically traumatized as his mother Wendy slowly recovers from her injuries. Angry ghosts from the Overlook still want to consume Danny to inherit his phenomenal "shining" power and eventually find him, including the woman from Room 217. Dick Hallorann, the Overlook's chef, teaches Danny to create lockboxes in his mind to contain the ghosts, including that of former Overlook owner Horace Derwent.

As an adult, Danny (now going by Dan) takes up his father's legacy of anger and alcoholism. Dan spends years drifting across the country, but eventually makes his way to New Hampshire and decides to give up drinking. He settles in the small town of Frazier, working first at a tourist attraction and then at a hospice, and attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. His psychic abilities, long suppressed by his drinking, re-emerge and allow him to provide comfort to dying patients. Aided by a cat who can sense when someone is about to die, Dan acquires the nickname Doctor Sleep.

In the meantime, Abra Stone, a baby girl born in 2001, begins to manifest psychic powers of her own when she seemingly predicts the September 11 terrorist attacks. She slowly and unintentionally establishes a telepathic bond with Dan; as she grows, the contact becomes more conscious and voluntary and her shining grows stronger than his. One night, Abra psychically witnesses the ritual torture and murder of a boy by the True Knot, a group of quasi-immortals who wander across America and periodically feed on steam, a psychic essence produced when the people who possess the shining die in pain. The True Knot's leader, Rose the Hat, becomes aware of Abra's existence and formulates a plan to kidnap Abra and keep her alive so she can produce a limitless supply of steam.

The True Knot begin to die off from measles contracted from their last victim; they believe that Abra's steam can cure them. Abra asks for Dan's help, and he reveals his connection with Abra to her father David and their family doctor, John Dalton. Angry and skeptical at first, David starts to believe Dan and agrees to go along with his plan to save Abra. With the help of Billy Freeman, one of Dan's friends, they foil and kill a raiding party sent by Rose; however, Dan realizes that Rose will relentlessly hunt Abra for revenge. He visits Abra's great-grandmother Concetta, who is dying of cancer, and telepathically learns from her that he and Abra's mother Lucy are half-siblings with the same father. As Concetta dies, Dan takes her diseased steam into himself.

Following another kidnapping attempt that Abra foils with Dan's telepathic help, she baits Rose into confronting her at the location where the Overlook Hotel once stood in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, now home to a campsite owned by the True Knot. Dan and Billy travel to the site, while Abra helps them by using her astral projection. Dan releases the steam collected from Concetta to the remaining group of True Knot members lying in wait, killing all of them. He frees the ghost of Horace Derwent to kill the last member waiting to ambush him and Abra, and the two fight Rose in a long psychic struggle. With help from Billy and the ghost of Dan's father, Jack Torrance, they push Rose off an observation platform to her death. Before leaving the campsite, Dan makes peace with his father.

In the epilogue, Dan celebrates fifteen years of sobriety and attends Abra's fifteenth birthday party. He tells her about the patterns of alcoholism and violent behavior that run in his family, and warns her not to repeat them by starting to drink or submitting to rage. Abra agrees that she will behave, but before they can finish the conversation, Dan is called back to his hospice, where he comforts a dying colleague who had antagonized him in the past.

Background information

King described the idea for a sequel to his 1977 novel The Shining on November 19, 2009, during a promotional tour for his novel Under the Dome. During a reading moderated by filmmaker David Cronenberg at the Canon Theatre, King said the sequel would follow a character from the original, Danny Torrance, now in his 40s, living in New Hampshire where he works as an orderly at a hospice and helps terminally ill patients pass away with the aid of extraordinary powers.^[4] Later, on December 1, 2009, King posted a poll on his official website, asking visitors to vote for which book he should write next, Doctor Sleep or the next Dark Tower novel:

I mentioned two potential projects while I was on the road, one a new Mid-World book (not directly about Roland Deschain, but yes, he and his friend Cuthbert are in it, hunting a skin-man, which are what werewolves are called in that lost kingdom) and a sequel to The Shining called Doctor Sleep. Are you interested in reading either of these? If so, which one turns your dials more? [We] will be counting your votes (and of course it all means nothing if the muse doesn't speak).^[5]

Voting ended on December 31, 2009. Doctor Sleep won the poll with 5,861 votes to The Wind Through the Keyhole's 5,812.^[6]

On September 23, 2011, Stephen King received the Mason Award at the Fall for the Book event at the George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, during which he read an excerpt from Doctor Sleep.^[7] King finished work on the first draft in early November 2011.^[8] On February 19, 2012, King read the beginning section of Doctor Sleep at the Savannah Book Festival, in Savannah, Georgia.^[9] The audiobook edition of King's 2012 novel The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole, released on April 24, 2012, contains the novel's prologue read by the author.^[10]

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, King revealed that he had hired researcher Rocky Wood to work on the continuity between The Shining and Doctor Sleep.^[11]

The story was partly inspired by Oscar, a therapy cat who allegedly predicts the deaths of terminally ill patients. King said, "I thought to myself: ‘I want to write a story about that.’ And then I made the connection with Danny Torrance as an adult, working in a hospice. I thought: ‘That’s it. I’m gonna write this book.' The cat had to be there. It always takes two things for me to get going. It’s like the cat was the transmission and Danny was the motor."^[12]

Publication information

On May 8, 2012, Stephen King's official website announced a tentative publication date of January 15, 2013, for Doctor Sleep. The book was available for pre-order that same day, with the page count of 544 and ISBN 978-1-4516-9884-8. However, the exact date was removed the next day with the statement that a new release date is forthcoming, and the pre-order items were removed. Stephen King was not happy with the present draft of the novel and felt it needed a lot of editing. On September 18, 2012, a publication date of September 24, 2013 was announced.^[13][14][15] Cemetery Dance also published Doctor Sleep as a limited edition in three versions: Gift edition (limited to 1,750 copies), Limited edition (limited to 700 copies), and Lettered edition (limited to 52 copies), the latter two signed by Stephen King and the illustrators.^[16] On March 1, 2013, Stephen King's official site unveiled the book's cover.^[17]

A collector's edition was announced in August 2013 by Hodder & Staughton for publication in the United Kingdom, limited to 200 numbered copies, signed by Stephen King.^[18]

An excerpt was published in the September 13, 2013 issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine.^[19]

References

External links

• Official UK site
• Goodreads Page