Palaver's Stephen King blog

“In the Overlook all things had a sort of life.”

The ultimate haunted house novel, right up there with the masterpieces by Shirley Jackson and Henry James, and as psychologically complex. As much a story about a haunted man as a building, it portrays the gradual going-insane of Jack Torrance – one King’s most memorable characters – in a hotel that’s not as empty as it supposed to be.

“The town new darkness”

Basically Dracula, set in 1970’s New England, with remarkably believable results. This book has what you expect from a King novel, but also some chapters that are unlike most of what I’ve read by him; chapters that describe the small town – as an almost sentient being – and those living there, in a wonderfully poetic way, with both distance and affection.

Writer Ben Mears returns to his childhood town, where he finds both love and horror. He is not the only newcomer, it seems. The mysterious Mr Straker and Mr Barlow have set up shop in town and also acquired the dreaded Marsten House – the setting of dark deeds in the past and quite probably haunted. When people mysteriously begin disappearing and dying, Mears and a handful of others try to make a stand against an ancient evil.

What should be either corny or at best tongue-in-cheek is somehow neither, but instead truly chilling.

The memorable Father Callahan is presented here – to lie dormant until the final three books of the Dark Tower series.

“…she had crossed a line, and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil”

The first published novel. Rather experimentally written – as a blend of news paper articles, courtroom statements, and “normal” narrative – yet a moving story about a girl with very little in life except a talent for telekinesis. A twisted Cinderella tale set in the often cruel world of high school. Also the first King novel to be filmed.

Doctor Sleep is a sequel to The Shining in much the same way that Black House is a sequel to The Talisman. That is, it’s in many ways a totally different story set many years later, in which the main character has gone from childhood into adulthood.

Doctor Sleep is for instance not a haunted house story but a haunted person story. And even though there are supernatural antagonists, the main enemy might be described as addiction.

It does begin scarily enough, with a prologue set not long after the finale of The Shining. The bulk of the story, however, deals with Danny Torrance as an adult, struggling with addiction and a gift both inherited from his father. In a memorable sequence, first sordidly amusing and then just tragic, we meet him at the very nadir and then follow his slow journey back from the brink.

He is also the titular ”doctor” due to his ability to guide people into the next life in a comforting manner. It’s part of the Shining of course, which is still strong in him. Not as strong as in Abra though, a young girl who he befriends first through telepathy and then in real life. Together they take on a travelling band of vampire-like people in what amounts to a supernatural adventure rather than a clear-cut horror story.

It sounds silly but in following the foe almost as closely as the good guys, King makes them feel depressingly real and void of the coolness common in the genre. It’s is a great novel (winner of the 2013 Bram Stoker Award), although not exactly what one might have expected.

A story about preventing the murder of John F. Kennedy in order to make history after this (prevented) event much better. This becomes clear early on in a book whose characteristics otherwise hardly include hastiness.

A teacher is told a marvellous secret by a mortally sick friend. He also gets an assignment, seemingly simple but very demanding: not only is murder part of the job description, but a few years of waiting around in another era very different from ours. It entails leading another life under a false identity.

It’s a patiently told time travel story with a unique hook. Here, there is no effortless skipping between the ages. A real investment of a large chunk of your life is required. It offers nostalgia alongside criticism of a bygone age and the vivid feel for the environment and characters you expect from King.

It’s a book you live with for a time rather than devour, with an ending as serious as it is ironic. It’s great.

If asked to compile a list of my favorite stories of all time, I would probably fill half of it with novels and short stories by Stephen King.

To dub King a horror writer, which is always popular, is to do his stories an injustice. I love horror stories, but there is so much more going on here. To my mind, above all, King writes about people. Real people; not the shimmering, handsome role models of a Koontz novel, nor the hastily sketched caricatures of a Barker book. People who breathe, think and feel.

What better way to get to know these people but to put them in an extreme situation, be it supernatural, horrifying, awe-inspiring or all of these? Not throw them into it while remaining on the outside, regarding them from a cool distance, but follow them all the way through the dark and, maybe, back into the light again. Describe the events in words that create vivid images and clear sounds, that ceases to be mere words, actually. Describe it so that if something unbelievable should happen, you have no choice but to believe it.

That’s what King does.

But hey, I sound as if he is just a different sort of psychologist. Let’s not forget, he’s also damn entertaining.