A Book A Week - Week 40: Doctor Sleep

This week's book:
  Doctor Sleep   by Stephen King

Grade:   A      for the novel itself
             B-     for the horror

This is my very first Stephen King novel.  I kind-of read a short story decades ago and that was as far as I got.  I've seen more Stephen King movies than I have read Stephen King books.  I have to say, I liked it.  But then again, Mr. King has been a professional novelist for almost as long as I've been alive, so he'd better have learned a thing or two about telling a story.

Here it is in a nutshell:  the kid from The Shining, Danny, has grown up.  He's reliving all his father's mistakes, becoming an alcoholic and drug addict.  He tells himself it's a way to numb the 'shine' that shows him when people will die, but he knows that's not the real reason.  He hits rock bottom and starts to climb his way out with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Then he meets a little girl named Abra (no, really, that's her name) who has more of the shine than he does.  Trouble is, there are others after her as well, and they're not nice at all.

I liked this story more for its first part, where Danny - now Dan - is on his slow slide to the lowest point in his life.  Mr. King is himself a decades-sober alcoholic, and the description of Dan's worst moment rings completely true.  In the story it's complicated by his shining (psychic powers), but those chapters felt to me like the author ripping the scabs off his own addiction and ascribing the pain and remorse to a character.  Really good.  Beyond good.

The rest of the story... meh.  It wasn't bad. but it didn't feel so much like a horror novel to me as a comic book in novel form.  There's astral projection, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, all sorts of mental powers.  And then there are bad guys who feed off the shine of non-bad guys.  Yup... vampires.  Not blood-sucking vampires, soul-sucking vampires.  Same diff.  At least they weren't glowing and angsty teens, they were old.  And drove RVs.  Like vampire Travelers.

In the first half of the novel, when the narrative got to the horror parts where the bad guys were preying on their victims, who have to be children because the shining is strongest in them, I felt uncomfortable.  Like I didn't want to read it.  Then I realized that was pretty much the aim, the author intends those passages to be uncomfortable (scary?) as part of the genre convention.  Thing is, after a couple of these I got numb to it.  It stopped making me uncomfortable. And with all the psychic comic-book-y stuff going on, it kind of got lost in the whirl.  This is why I graded the novel down for its horror elements.  Sure, there are ghosts and vampires and revenants and what-have-yous, but they're opposed by two of the most powerful psychics around.  Tight and suspenseful, but not terribly scary.

Maybe one of my favorite parts of the story is what Danny does with his gifts.  Since he can read minds, and move stuff, and see ghosts, you could imagine what sort of charlatanism he might engage in.  But after he finds sobriety, he settles into a hospice, where he provides comfort for the residents in their last minutes alive.  It's a kind, gentle sort of application of an amazing talent, one that makes the character more human despite the incredible things he can do.  It's also why the staff call him 'Doctor Sleep.'  Good choice, Mr. King. 

Next week:
 The Reason I Jump   by Naoki Higashida
Years ago I worked several summers at a camp for handicapped kids, including severely autistic ones.  I know many autistic people, and a hallmark of for-real, no-shit autism is the inability to communicate, it's almost the defining characteristic.  This is a book purportedly written by an autistic boy.  Or maybe 'written,' you can make your own finger quotes.  I'm not buying it until someone proves it to me.  Stay tuned.