The Shining

Doubleday Books

The Shining
Stephen King
1977

The Summary
"Jack Torrance's new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start.  As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he'll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing.  But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote...and more sinister.  And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old."

The Good
Stephen King is an excellent writer.  His characters are fleshed out and full-bodied (and, more importantly, interesting), his writing is clear and precise (if a little heavy on wasp imagery), and his story is well formed and intricate.  And he makes, as one might expect, The Shining a triumph of the horror genre.

Like any number of his books, The Shining is a gravely unsettling novel.  It preys upon one's innate fears of isolation, darkness, doubt and despair - and the unnatural things which creep into the hallways, entirely unseen.  It shows one man's digression into madness, and one young boy's desperate fight to survive against a place that's intent on swallowing him whole.

If you're looking for a good scare or if you're looking for a novel that will give you chills and make your skin crawl, then The Shining is certainly a good place to start.

The Bad
I read The Shining as an ebook on my tablet.  While I still enjoyed it, I think something was lost in translation when I read it electronically.  It just didn't seem as scary and it felt a little more disjointed, like parts were split up when they shouldn't have been, like it had been formatted wrong.

Let's just say, I probably would have enjoyed it more if I'd actually read the physical book.  (Or, at least, found a larger screen than my tablet phone.)

The Ugly
Do I even want to get into how disturbing and morbidly terrifying this book was?

I found The Shining to be one of the scariest, one of the most unusual books I've ever read.  I was frightened by King's novel, but I was also disturbed and disgusted by the gruesome things lurking in the halls of the Overlook Hotel.  Danny has a frightening gift, which would have made The Shining eerie no matter the circumstances; however, King takes it a step further and introduces a cast of malevolent spirits, throws in some wasps and a grisly history for a sinister (and sentient) hotel - and a particularly fiendish ghoul in Room 217.

You see, I've realized that King has a way of really making you feel emotions, making you feel what his characters feel in certain situations, and he has a way of unsettling you with his writing.  I often felt squeamish and nervous, a lingering sense of disquiet, as I read The Shining - and it never really went away.  Not even after I finished the novel.

Which, I suppose, is the real point of horror:  it stays with you.