Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

Anyone who’s followed this blog long enough knows of my great love for the literary works of Stephen King. He is one of the great American authors of the 20th century, and he keeps getting better and better. Though he is skilled at conveying horror in mundane, everyday settings, he is just as talented when it comes to showcasing humanity in all its varied forms, which is why his popularity continues to this day. We can all relate to his characters, good and bad, and it’s the inherent and essential humanity that is there in all of them, whether they do evil deeds or are heroic, that makes us all see ourselves. The main character of this book Doctor Sleep, Daniel Torrance, is recognizable to all King fans not only from his first appearance as a child in King’s masterpiece The Shining, where his psychic ability is preyed upon the spirits and evil of the Overlook Hotel, which takes over his father Jack and tries to destroy young Danny and his mother Wendy, who ultimately escape. But not without significant emotional damage that follows Danny into adulthood. Well, hell. Who among us can’t relate to that?

Dan Torrance has grown up, emotionally damaged from his winter at the Overlook Hotel and from memories of his equally damaged father Jack. His “shine” has remained with him from childhood, though tempered as an adult by his heavy drinking. Like father, like son, eh? As the book progresses, Dan is able to overcome his alcoholic demons by getting a stable job as a hospital orderly in a small town in New Hampshire, making new friends, committing to AA, and by using his “shine” to help hospice patients pass on in a calm and peaceful way. He has found a modicum of peace and is as happy as anyone can reasonably be, given his memories and his talent.

Dan is contacted mentally by a little girl named Abra Stone, who also has the “shine.” She’s been experiencing psychic flashes of kids being killed by a group of people called The True Knot, who are led by the vicious Rose The Hat and who are all what you’d call psychic vampires, but in the literal sense because they kill children who have the “shine” so that they can feed off that psychic energy and extend their lives. Rose senses Abra sensing her and begins to plan the kidnapping and murder of Abra in order to steal her shine, which is pretty significant. Abra, however, is extremely intelligent, just as Danny was when he was young, and is able to psychically fight Rose off. Abra becomes friends with Dan, first psychically and then they meet in person and realize they are connected by more than just their shine. Abra’s mother Lucy was born out of wedlock and it is discovered by Dan that Lucy’s mother Alessandra had an affair with Jack Torrance (his father) when she was attending Stovington College, where Jack had been her advisor. I really liked that aspect of the story, because it gives Danny that family connection he has been missing since his mother Wendy died.

The film version, directed by the excellent Mike Flanagan, is a fantastic one, incorporating elements both from the book itself as well as from the Kubrick film version, not an easy task if you consider how many people consider the Kubrick film to be sacrosanct. It is, in a way, but I appreciated how Flanagan humanized so many of the characters in his film version. One of my great beefs with the Kubrick film, in addition to how Wendy’s character was portrayed, was the sheer lack of humanity to be found in most of the characters. You never see Jack touch Wendy and the only time you see him be affectionate with Danny is when he holds him on his lap and Danny asks “You’d never hurt Mommy and me, would you?” Obviously Jack Nicholson’s portrayal was at Kubrick’s direction and Kubrick had a very specific vision of what he wanted the film to be. I have no problem with that, and in fact, I love The Shining film as much as I love the King novel. To me, however, they have very little to do with one another, and that lack of humanity is the key difference.

I also loved how the book brings closure to Danny in the sense that he is able to finally face up to his father’s memory, the memory of how terrifying and abusive his father was at the end of his life but ultimately letting Danny escape from a moment where his love for his son is stronger than the hotel’s influence. Flanagan chose to not go there, but rather, incorporated a touching moment with Wendy at the end where her spirit comes back to Danny as he goes to destroy the hotel once and for all. King’s book ends with the Overlook Hotel exploding as Jack has forgotten the boiler, whereas Flanagan’s film uses the Kubrick elements so that the hotel still exists, but Danny sacrifices himself at the end when he lets the boiler destroy the hotel. But I still prefer the book ending, where Danny lives. I didn’t like the idea of the entire Torrance family being destroyed by the Overlook.

In the book, Danny is able to kill Rose The Hat by psychically taking in the cancerous last breath of Abra’s grandmother when he helps her move on. He holds onto the cancer so that he can psychically poison Rose and the remaining few of the True Knot. He is helped by his friend Billy, who drives Dan from New Hampshire back to Sidewinder, Colorado where the True Knot have set up camp in what is the remains of the Overlook Hotel. Dan is so sick from holding the cancer inside of himself that he is unable to eat, even at Billy’s urging.

He felt too sick to put up much of a front. “Yeah? Well, maybe I’ll have that steak dinner, anyway. What about you? “I think I could manage a little soup. As long as it’s clear.” The thought of eating anything too thick to read a newspaper through – tomato bisque, cream of mushroom – made his stomach cringe.

One of the things I love about King’s writing is how he incorporates food into the overall narrative. His food is always what I’d call good old American comfort food. Macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, ice cream, chocolate cake, omelettes, meatloaf, pizza, roast chicken, and cream of mushroom soup. The fact that such comfort foods are mentioned so much in his books points to the use of food as a barometer of normalcy before the horrors begin. As a foodie who loves to read and cook, I relate to this because that is what food is, ultimately. It’s nourishment, yes, but it is also comfort and one of the things that connects all of us across the human spectrum. For sheer comfort, you can’t beat a bowl of homemade cream of mushroom soup. So that’s what I made.

INGREDIENTS
4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon mushroom-infused olive oil
2 red onions
6 cloves of garlic
4 ribs of celery
1 pound sliced bella mushrooms (you can use any type of mushroom you like)
6-7 sprigs fresh thyme
1 cup dry white wine
6 tablespoons flour
4 cups chicken stock
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon chicken bouillon paste
1 tablespoon mushroom bouillon paste
1 cup half-and-half

METHOD
Heat the butter and olive oil in a large soup pot over low heat.

Finely chop the onion, the celery and the garlic and add to the melted butter. Raise the heat to medium and sauté for roughly 7-8 minutes until the onion is translucent and the garlic is fragrant.

Add mushrooms and the thyme leaves which you will strip from the stems, and sauté for another 7-8 minutes.

Sprinkle the ‘shrooms with the flour, mix, and cook for another 3 minutes.

Pour in the white wine, and add in the chicken and mushroom bouillon pastes and stir again.

Add in your chicken stock and give everything another good stir to incorporate the stock into the other ingredients. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the mixture thickens.

Add in the half-and-half, stir to mix, and let simmer gently but do not let it boil or the half-and-half will curdle.

At this point, you can use a hand mixer to blitz most of the mushrooms but still leave a few large ones, which is what I did. Then, decant into a bowl and devour, much like the True Knot devour psychic steam. They’d appreciate the comparison, I’m sure.