Video Published on Sep 19, 2013
The best-selling author behind The Shining has returned to its central character, 36 years after the book was first published, for his latest novel. Doctor Sleep begins a year after the events at the end of The Shining, and follows Danny Torrance to adulthood.
He spoke to the BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz about why Jack Torrance is his most autobiographical character and why he hated Stanley Kubrick's film version.
I'm more excited than I would have originally thought a sequel to this outstanding book to finally be published. People have talked for years about the chance of one day seeing a sequel, and now it's finally happening!
It helps I re-read The Shining last year (link to review HERE), but also that I've always loved paranormal ghost type stories and the ability for 'The Shining' intrigues me. Ronald Kelly recently posted a blog post that I stumbled upon at Goodreads about his mother and her version of 'The Shining.' I hadn't really considered it so much as a psychic ability in the terms he applied before, but after reading his thoughts I think he may be right. I posted a few comments on Goodreads about it, as my mother does something similar, but to a lesser degree as his mother.
The story blurb doesn't have anything to do with the Overlook Hotel, but here is the synopsis in all it's exciting sounding glory:
Stephen King returns to the character 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 twelve-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 look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky twelve-year-old Abra Stone learns, the True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the steam that children with the shining produce when they are slowly tortured to death.
Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel, where he spent one horrific childhood year, 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, an AA community that sustains him, and 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. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of devoted readers of The Shining and satisfy anyone new to this icon in the King canon.
What do you think? Sound interesting? I don't know if I'll have the funds to pre-order but it will be a goal I'm shooting for.
