Category: Novels

Upcoming Stephen King: Doctor Sleep

Stefanie Snider

From StephenKing.com:

“Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special twelve-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.”

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, The Shining is one of my favourite King novels. I think it might be interesting to revisit Danny and see him grown up; how does he cope with his psychic powers as an adult? What kind of psychological damage may have been caused by his father’s breakdown and death? I’m excited to find out what happened to one of my favourite King characters.

On the other hand, it feels a little gimmicky. Now, I adore Stephen-King-the-person AND Stephen-King-the-writer. He’s a big part of why I love horror. It just makes me a little preemptively disappointed to revisit the same topic (psychic children) in a next-generation format. I’m worried it will turn out to be just another reboot; I’m not sure this story will be new enough to be as good as The Shining.

I’ll be buying it on release day (January 15, 2013), like I do all his others. And I’ll be putting in long nights reading. I’m just hoping against hope that this one lives up to my expectations.

An Exercise in Madness: House of Leaves

Stefanie Snider

Okay, so this is a novel that I’ve been meaning to talk about. It’s one that requires its own post, and even then I’m not sure I’ll do it justice.

Ready?

The story in House of Leaves (without spoiling) goes something like this:
There’s this guy, Johnny. He’s our narrator, in a way. He finds a manuscript by a deceased old man known as Zampano. The manuscript is a book about a documentary about a family who made a documentary about their house, which is considerably bigger inside than it is outside. Oh, and it’s growing. And there are growls in the dark.

So we’re reading a book about a book about a movie about a movie. Yep.

It starts when Will Navidson, the homeowner, finds a door where there wasn’t one before. It’s inside, but on an exterior wall: so if opened, it should lead outside. Instead it opens onto a pitch-black hallway that gets longer the further you walk it.

The typesetting in the novel itself is upside down, backwards, crossed-out, different colours, encoded. The book is heavily cross-referenced to books and articles that don’t exist. It’s maddening, and fascinating, and hypnotic.

You can read it with or without Johnny, with or without solving the code. It’s several books inside one big one, and if that wasn’t layered enough, there’s an album recorded specifically to complement it.

It’s one of my favourites, by far, and up next on my re-reading list. I’ve only just begun feeling comfortable looking down dark hallways since my last read-through…it’s about time I scared the shit out of myself again.