Doctor Sleep by Stephen King Review and Commentary
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 237, 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.
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 237, 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.
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