This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:
Doctor Sleep by Stephen KingSept 24, 2013 (Scribner)
Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) 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 the territory of this icon in the King canon.
It was November of 2009, An Evening with Stephen King, at the Canon Theatre in Toronto. I sat there and listened as he did a little reading from Under the Dome, talked about a myriad of topics on stage with David Cronenberg . . . and teased a project he'd been thinking about, one involving a grown up Danny Torrance. The Shining has never been one of my favourite King novels, likely because it's the only one where I saw the movie first, but I love how he seems to be bridging his early work with his later work here, and I'm excited to discover more about The True Knot.
If you're keeping track, we're officially down to 3 months and counting . . .
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