Doctor Sleep (novel)
Doctor Sleep is a 2013 horror novel by the American writer Stephen King . The German translation by Bernhard Kleinschmidt was also published in 2013 under the same title. The novel continues the story of Danny Torrance from the 1977 Shining .
content
The action begins three years after the death of Danny's father Jack Torrance and the destruction of the Overlook Hotel, when eight-year-old Danny is haunted again by the ghosts who were already chasing him in the Overlook. Danny has a supernatural talent, the so-called "Shining", which lets him read the minds of other people and experience visions of future and past events. Danny's mentor Dick Hallorann shows him a trick to lock up uninvited ghosts and visions in an imaginary locker.
Danny starts drinking in high school, even though he knows how the alcohol played its part to his father. After his mother, Wendy, dies of cancer, Danny begins to travel aimlessly around the country, but loses one job after another due to his alcohol addiction and even ends up in jail for a short time due to his irascible outbursts. When he woke up one morning next to young Deenie, completely hungover, and discovered that he had not only wasted all his money on coke and alcohol, but that Deenie also had a little 18-month-old son whom she was neglecting and who was obviously being physically abused he questioned his life for the first time. Still, he steals the money from her wallet and disappears before she wakes up. After that, he drinks less regularly and continues to wander the country until his old friend Tony tells him upon arrival in the small town of Frazier that this is the place. Dan gets out and meets Billy Freemann, who controls the miniature train "Helen Rivington", called "Riv", in the small amusement park Teenytown and who takes care of the parks. Billy, who has a little shining himself but doesn't know it, senses that Dan needs help and gets him a job in Teenytown. Dan has his alcohol addiction under control for a while, but one night when he has visions of Dennie and her little son, who are now both dead, he sits down with a bottle of wine in the park, where Billy Freemann finds him that morning. The bottle is unopened, but Billy, seeing Dan's desperation, sends him to his superior Casey Kingsley. Kingsley, himself a dry alcoholic, takes Dan under his wing and becomes his Alcoholics Anonymous mentor. At one of these meetings, Dan, without knowing why, begins to write the name Abra in his notebook.
After the season, Dan gets a job as a carer at the local Rivington House hospice. Through his Shining it is possible for him to facilitate the detachment from the world for the dying and to accompany them into a peaceful death. After a while he gets the nickname "Doctor Sleep" there.
The “True Knot” is an association of apparently older to younger people who travel across the country in mobile homes from campsite to campsite. Inconspicuous and inconspicuous, "the real" behave like ordinary tourists. However, they are beings who were once Shined and have lived hundreds of years through the murder of Shining children. They feed on these children like vampires, but not on their blood, but on a substance called "steam". When the children die, this steam is released and serves as food for the True Knot. The more agonizing and longer the death of the children, the cleaner the steam. Each member of the True Node has specific skills; this is how they manage to kidnap the children. The leader of the True, Rose “The Hat” O'Hara, for example, can locate them through her talent for searching and lead the True Knot to children who have a particularly large amount of steam.
Abra Stone, a girl who was born just a few weeks before the 9/11 attacks in Anniston, like Dan, had a strong shining as a child and foresaw the attacks on the World Trade Center as a baby. Her great-grandmother (Momo), the Italian-born poet Concetta Reynolds, is just as concerned about her little granddaughter as Abra's parents, but also encourages her to be who she is. Through her imaginary friend Tony, Abra begins to establish mental contact with his "daddy", Dan, by writing messages on the blackboard in Dan's room. What is harmless at first turns into a cry for help at some point. Abra, who accidentally saw the murder of the boy Bradley Travor, the “baseball boy” as she calls him, a few years earlier “in a dream”, came across a missing person ad of this boy in a newspaper a few years later and accidentally landed in her head by Rose the Hat, who thereby becomes aware of her. Tired of driving around the country in search of steam sources, Rose decides to kidnap Abra and keep him alive "like a dairy cow" so that she can permanently supply the real world with steam.
Abra meets with Dan and tells him everything. Fascinated by Abra's strong shining and still plagued by remorse that he hadn't helped Deenie's son back then, he promises Abra to stand by her and protect her.
Together with Billy Freemann and Dr. John, Abra's pediatrician and also Alcoholics Anonymous, Dan and Abra try to thwart the True Knot's plans. This one, however, has a huge problem: Through the steam of the "baseball boy", the real people have become infected with a childhood disease that kills one member after the next. Convinced that Abras Steam can bring healing as well as a good meal, the True are even more eager to get their hands on the girl. After a failed kidnapping attempt that kills several members of the True Knot, Dan and Abra decide to put an end to it and face Rose the Hat to destroy them and the rest of the True Knot for good.
Together with Billy Freemann, Dan drives to Colorado to the "Bluebell Campground", one of the campsites of the True Knot, which is exactly where the famous Overlook Hotel used to be. With Abra's help, Dan succeeds in destroying the members of the True Knot and confronting Rose the Hat. When the whole thing threatens to fail, Dan receives unexpected help from a presence that he cannot initially classify. This turns out to be the "ghost" of Jack Torrance, who wants to save Dan. Dan and Abra finally manage to kill Rose the Hat and wipe out the True Knot.
reception
For Margaret Atwood , Doctor Sleep is not least about families and the abuse of children and women by male relatives. In addition, negotiating family relationships is a fundamental constant in American horror literature.
Dietmar Dath describes the novel not only as an undisguised horror, but also as an assurance of what the genre can achieve: an analysis of basic social conditions. In comparison with Shining , Dath works out that in the 70s fear should be tamed by politics and culture, whereas today politics and culture are about nothing but fear. With Doctor Sleep , King recommends not reacting to fear with anger, but with a clear head and empathy for the supposed opponent.
Burkhard Müller is particularly impressed by the emotional quality of the characters. He refers to the successful portrayal of various outsiders who come together and, just like their opponents, experience loyalty and love in a group.
In 2013 Doctor Sleep was awarded the Vincent Prize for “Best International Literature” . In 2013 the novel won the LovelyBooks Readers Award in the Crime & Thriller category .
filming
Shortly after the novel was published, Warner Bros. secured the rights to a film adaptation and in April 2016 the first plans for this project became known. Akiva Goldsman was originally supposed to adapt the novel, while Stephen King was slated to act as executive producer of the film. On January 26, 2018, it was announced that Mike Flanagan would rewrite the script for Goldsman and also direct the film. Ewan McGregor took over the leading role . Doctor Sleep's Awakening was released in the United States on November 8, 2019 and in Germany on November 21, 2019 and is set in the same film universe as Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film adaptation The Shining .
expenditure
- Doctor Sleep , Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-453-26855-5 (German by Bernhard Kleinschmidt)
- Doctor Sleep , New York 2013, ISBN 978-1-4767-2765-3 (American first edition)
Web links
- Detailed table of contents in KingWiki
Individual evidence
- ↑ Margaret Atwood: Shine On. In: New York Times Book Review, September 19, 2013 ( [1] ).
- ↑ Dietmar Dath: Shine and time. In: FAZ, September 27, 2013 ( [2] ).
- ↑ Burkhard Müller: These pensioners are vampires. In: Die Zeit, November 7, 2013 ( [3] ).
- ↑ Doctor Sleep: The Shining sequel from Stephen King set for movie adaptation . In: The Independent , April 4, 2016, accessed April 6, 2016.
- ↑ Shining - Mike Flanagan directs horror sequel Doctor Sleep . In: moviepilot.de . January 29, 2018 ( moviepilot.de [accessed January 29, 2018]).
- ↑ Stephen King's Horror Family: Ewan McGregor stars in "The Shining" sequel . In: Spiegel Online . June 14, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed June 14, 2018]).