Doctor Sleep

I have an ambivalent relationship with The Shining. As a slobbering young King fan, I read the novel first and watched the movie afterwards, and came to agree with King: Kubrick missed the point completely. The Shining is supposed to be a story about an alcoholic with anger issues who honestly struggles with his demons and loses bit by bit (given King's own subsequent struggles with addiction, there's a bit of autobiography in there) but in the movie, Nicholson plays him as a wolf-grinning psycho right from the beginning. But just last year, I watched it again (preparing for the excellent documentary Room 237) and realised I'd gotten it all wrong. King wrote a King novel, but Kubrick (whose movies are all about people who think they're the protagonist but really aren't) wrote a Kubrick movie. In the novel, we're Jack, trying to remain in control; in the movie, we're Danny, and we know that we're trapped in an impossible house with a Father who will try to kill us. Both are great horror stories, but even though the plot is identical, the stories are completely different.

So that's what's going through my head as I pick up Doctor Sleep, King's long-awaited... really? Well, long-in-coming sequel, at least. I won't lie, seeing writers follow up books I loved years later (Bret Easton Ellis, I'm glancing in your direction) always brings to mind a rock band past their prime going on a reunion tour, promising to play their big hit album from beginning to end; it's a safe cash cow that doesn't necessarily ask much of them. On the other hand, one thing I always loved about King is that he doesn't go easy on his characters. People who live through his books don't come out unscarred; kids die, adults become traumatised, friends drift apart. So what will he do with little Danny Torrence, all these years later?

Dan Torrence, as it turns out, has followed in his father's footsteps - happily, without a family. He's a drunk with massive anger issues, not helped in the slightest by his psychic visions that remain strong. When he realises he can't sink any lower and decides to make one last try to on the straight and narrow, he settles down in a small town in Maine HA! New Hampshire! Take that, everyone who thinks King is predictable!, takes a job and starts going to AA. Years pass... and then he "meets" Abra, a little girl whose powers make his look like a newspaper horoscope. And there are Monsters after her. Monsters who have always been there, who have preyed on the likes of her and little Danny Torrence for centuries. And they look just like a gang of middle-aged moderately Republican campers.

What I said about Kubrick and King earlier: the point is that any horror plot can be a great story as long as there's a idea shining through it. King has said that all of his stories begin with "Wouldn't it be fun if..." I'm not sure this one did, though; this one feels more like a "I wonder what happened to..." King has come up with a great idea for a villain (though I think he could have done more with them), Abra Stone is one of his more intriguing child characters - you gotta love a 12-year-old who fights dirty - and above all, Dan's struggle with alcoholism contains some of King's best regular-guy-trying-to-survive writing yet. But a little too often, it all feels like an excuse; the plot is clumsy, the resolutions too easy, the tension maintained far too long by simply not telling the reader what the characters intend to do.

That said, the old King fan proverb of "Well, at least it's nowhere near as bad as Cell" holds up fine, as does the novel itself - albeit with some creaky floor boards. There's an intriguing hint at times that King knows times have changed, that stories are changing, that there have been both cultural and technological shifts that change how his characters deal. If The Shining was either Jack's or Danny's story; Doctor Sleep is both Dan's and Abra's story. I can't not like that.