Exciting news, horror fans: Stephen King is writing a sequel to his 1977 masterpiece The Shining. According to his official website, it’s going to be about Danny, the precocious little boy who managed to survive Jack Nicholson’s best attempts to turn him into chop suey in Kubrick’s classic film adaptation.
But in this new novel—titled somewhat obscurely Doctor Sleep—Danny is no longer the shiny-haired kid who tricycled around the abandoned hotel halls. In King’s upcoming book, Danny will have morphed into Dan Torrance, a middle aged dude who must save a “very special twelve-year-old girl” from a “tribe of murderous paranormals.”
The synopsis of the book sounds very little like a sequel to The Shining. Like King and his beloved Castle Rock, the two novels will be connected by certain thematic threads, but Doctor Sleep sounds like it could definitely stand alone. Not that it would ever need to—considering the massive popularity of both the novel and the movie, it’s hard to believe that there are still people unfamiliar with Danny boy and his raving dad. Maybe amongst the Amish.
Anyway, here’s the basic outline of Doctor Sleep. Following his snowy ordeal, Dan becomes an alcoholic, who eventually sobers up and makes some friends in AA. He settles down in a small New Hampshire town, gets a job at a nursing home, and starts hanging out with a magical cat. Dan has some supernatural powers, which he eventually must use to save the soul of little Abra Stone, the aforementioned preteen who “shines” more brightly than anyone Dan’s ever seen.
Sounds pretty twisted, right? But we love twisted (by “we” I mean myself and Ali, who has professed her love for weirdo kids before) so chances are it will be awesome—or at the very least, entertaining. Read the full synopsis—and judge for yourself—here.
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