The two shiners soon find themselves in spiritual communication, which is a lucky thing, because young Abra is going to need big help. She alarmed her parents early on by predicting the 9/11 disaster while still in her crib, and has since caused dismay by sticking all the spoons to the ceiling during her birthday party. What, indeed?)Įnter another magic child, Abra - as in “cadabra,” the text helpfully points out - who’s even better at the shining stuff than Dan is. Thus his nickname, Doctor Sleep, which echoes his childhood nickname, “doc.” (As in the “What’s up?” of Bugs Bunny fame. and working at a hospice facility, where, with his mind-probing talents, he helps the dying to reconcile themselves to their often misspent lives. Having wrestled the demon drink to an uneasy standstill - his father had that problem too, as we recall - he’s attending A.A. In “Doctor Sleep” Dan has grown up, but he retains his “shining” abilities. “Doctor Sleep” picks up on the story of Danny, the little boy with psycho-intuitive powers in King’s famous 1977 novel, “The Shining.” Danny survived both his evil-infested dad, Jack Torrance, and the ghouls that inhabited the grisly Overlook Hotel in Colorado, escaping by the hair of his chinny-chin-chin just before the clock struck midnight and the hotel’s infernal boiler blew up, incinerating the forces of bad and leaving readers hiding under the bed, but cross-eyed with relief. The house is haunted, and the welcome mat is alive with things.

The family doctor is greenish in hue and has been dead for some time. Both Rockwell and King know such details intimately, right down to the brand names.

The Rockwell small-town rocking chair, the old-fashioned house with the welcome mat, the genial family doctor, the grandfather clock: there they are, depicted in all their lifelike, apparently cozy detail. According to Vladimir Nabokov, Salvador Dalí was “really Norman Rockwell’s twin brother kidnapped by gypsies in babyhood.” But actually there were triplets: the third one is Stephen King. “Doctor Sleep” is Stephen King’s latest novel, and it’s a very good specimen of the quintessential King blend.

Sequel to the shining book