Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
For nearly 40 years Stephen King has thrilled his readers and on many occasions has put just enough wind up them to make them see something in the shadows, something unnatural that makes the reader slightly unnerved about turning over the next page but also too riveted to put down the book, even into the small hours of the day. His latest novel, Doctor Sleep, is no exception.
Like all great story-tellers, Stephen King has never really lost the ability to surprise, frighten or enthral. Some books may go off on a tangent that is so weird that even the hardiest fan might scratch their heads in discouraging disbelief but his latest work is an absolute pleasure to join in with under the bed clothes and with sound of the clock slowly ticking out the time you are gripped in anticipation.
Doctor Sleep buries many demons, or should that be resurrecting them? The spectre of the sequel is chiefly amongst those but also throughout the book the weight of the authors own inner demons, the complex life of a man who scares people for a living and with the knowledge of what misery alcohol can bring along to the party is never too far from the surface.
Doctor Sleep sees the return of Danny Torrance, one of three survivors from the night where the Overlook Hotel burned down in his 1970s book The Shining. The story is a fan favourite and the unsettling breakdown in his father’s life as he becomes possessed by the fury that dwells in the heart of the hotel and with his rising alcoholism is one that grips the reader from the start before building up the desired effect of a man losing his mind and the young boy who loves him and fears him just the same. Doctor Sleep sees the boy become the man, the same rage combats within him; the same thirst he has inherited down a very long line of men whose battle with alcohol has often got the better of them. This though is the redemption, the hope that the man can swerve away with good help away from his demons…even though the demons take many forms and usually come for you in the end.
When Dan Torrance got off the bus in yet another town, he never realised just how far the demons of the past would come or how far he would have to travel with his new young friend Abra to actually bury them for good or how much Abra herself would need to fight the demons of the present.
Doctor Sleep is perhaps arguably his best work of fiction since Duma Key and the sense of history that Stephen King has to hold carefully in his hands as he revisits certain aspects of his work is astonishing. If ever there was a sequel that the master of horror could have written, a follow up to The Shining might not have been everybody’s first port of call but in the end there is too much history within that novel to have ever ignored.
Chilling and revealing, the master returns with a subject from the past and allows you to peek once more inside his mind, where the terror actually lays, is up to reader.
Ian D. Hall