eilonwyhan

Dan Torrance, all grown up, thinks alcohol is the only demon he's fighting. Did he ever really escape the Overlook?

Stephen King's visit with Dan Torrance is a satisfying horror story that combines the old goose-pimply chills with modern-day life. I was sad to see that Dan had fallen so far, even with the knowledge of what alcoholism did to his father. Dan hits bottom in North Carolina, and the self-loathing nearly consumes him -- until his old friend Tony appears in a window in a small New Hampshire town. Dan settles down, gets sober, and starts making a life for himself. Oddly enough, being sober helps him find a constructive way to use his Shine: he helps dying people cross over peacefully.

Meanwhile, Dan feels connected to a little girl with a powerful Shine. His old friend Dick Hallorann once told him that his "student" will find him, and Abra finds him through small, meaningful, psychic play. But the playfulness goes away when she psychically stumbles upon a group of "vampires" who feed from children who Shine. Abra is the mother lode of "steam", and now she needs Dan to help her survive. Dan must travel West once again, and revisit the source of his life-long nightmares: the site of the Overlook Hotel.

For me, King finally figured out how to make something so bizarre as psychic vampires fit into our world. Of course they don't, but he manages to explain how they move among us unobtrusively. I still don't get some things, like why Abra and Dan can see that Rose the Hat has some bizarre tusk of a tooth. Are the True Knot using a glamour to hide that true face, or do they always look normal, but Dan and Abra see the truth inside? 

Overall, I enjoyed meeting the grown up Dan Torrance. It was satisfying to watch him put his life back together and dump the drink, even if it meant he had to feel the Shine again. Finding a constructive use for it puts Dan on the path to resolving the traumas from his childhood: loving a father who abused him, escaping the "ghosties" of the Overlook without ever really confronting them head on, watching his mother die of cancer.  He's kind of a reluctant hero, but when it comes to it, Dan is a stand-up guy who won't let the forces of evil consume a little girl -- or him, for that matter.