Analysis: Doctor Sleep

Doctor Sleep Synopsis

Back in the groovy 70's, Stephen King wrote a novel about a frustrated writer who takes his family up to a secluded hotel, under the guise of a caretaker's position. This frustrated writer had planned to enjoy the Colorado quiet, but it turns out that the silence only manages to awaken something inside of him. Bloodshed ensues.

I've yet to read Doctor Sleep, but I wanted to share some of my initial thoughts, based on the Chapter One Excerpt that King included in the Audiobook version of his most recent Dark Tower Novel, Wind Through The Keyhole.

The first chapter starts with a newspaper excerpt, reflecting on the previous novel, The Shining.  The largest portion of the first chapter resides in 1981. Danny
is a little older and a little more terrified. He has always been sensetive when it came to the dead. He can see them and now, he knows them. Like the world's worst penny, he finds at least one of the ghouls that had resided in the Overlook Hotel. The old lady, nude and scarred from some too-long bath. This terrible old woman had died there, in the Overlook, but she didn't stay there. She took a trip, all the way from Colorado to Florida.

What immediately strikes me about this noel is that King has returned to a straight-up Horror novel. King hasn't written a true Horror novel since 2008'S Just After Sunset. This isn't an insult  by means. King's work has been branching in many interesting directions. In recent years, King has shown an affinity for more action/adventure stories with the exception of 11/22/63, which had more of a romantic bent. Doctor Sleep, however, seems to be a out-n-out Horror story and if Mr. King and I think alike, we might see Danny's dad in the mixture. How fun would that be?