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Monday, September 8, 2008
title: The Shining
author: Stephen King
pages: 683
genre: horror
published: 1977
first line: 'Jack Torrence thought: Officious little prick.'
rated: 5 out of 5
Recovering alcoholic Jack Torrence, takes the job of caretaker of the 'Overlook Hotel' for a few months in the winter. The family will be in complete isolation in the hotel with no quick way to leave and barely any contact with the outside world. Once the snow falls they will be stranded. This hotel is located in Colorado and is famous for housing some famous people. It's also known for a triple murder/suicide that occured there from the previous caretaker who suffered from 'cabin fever'.
Jack's wife Wendy, and thier 5 year old son Danny, are hoping to spend a nice time at the hotel while Jack works on writing his screenplay. Danny has 'the sight', he has premonitions. These premonitions sometimes scare Danny, since they are so strong. Danny has an 'imaginary friend' named Tony who shows him things, like what is going to happen in the future. Danny's parents do not know he has visions, but they know something is different about their son.
Jack has been abusive before, and broke Danny's arm when he was only 3 years old.
He still craves alcohol and has anger issues. He came from an abusive home himself and battles many demons. Wendy is trying to keep her family together and hopes that Jack can change, since he has stopped drinking and has been sober for over a year. She has wanted to divorce him, but has stood with Jack hoping things will get better. She doesn't want to break her family up, especially since Danny & Jack are very close.
The Overlook's cook, a man named Halloran, also has the 'sight'. He can see right away that Danny has it and the two become friends when the Torrence's arrive at the hotel. He tells Danny he can mentally call to him anytime, and he will come to help if need be. Halloran knows that there are strange things going on at the Overlook, but he thinks Danny will be just fine and advises him to look away if he sees anything scary. He himself has seen the woman in the bathtub of room 217.
The family is alone in the hotel for about 3 weeks before odd things start to happen. Wendy notices that Jack is showing signs of drinking, like nervousness, irritability and his headaches, yet she knows he hasn't touched liquor. Deep down inside she knows the Overlook Hotel is having a bad effect on her husband. And once Jack finds a scrapbook in the basement of the hotel he slowly becomes obssessed with the hotel and its history. He then begins to crave drinking more and more.
'Now, kneeling in the sun and watching his son playing in the shadow of the hotel, he knew it was all true. The hotel wanted Danny, maybe all of them, but Danny for sure. The hedges had really walked. There was a dead woman in 217...'
Danny also has disturbing premonitions and nightmares about the hotel and his father.
'He wished he liked it as well as she did, but he kept telling himself over and over that the things Tony showed him didn't always come true. He would be careful. He would watch for something called Redrum. But he would not say anything unless he absolutely had to. Because they were happy, they had been laughing, and there were no bad thoughts.'
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Stephen King my favorite author when it comes to horror. Nobody does it like he does. He taps into our deepest fears.
He is one of the few authors whose books I buy no matter what. So I've had The Shining in my book collection for quite a while, but never got around to reading it. Partly because I was afraid to. Whenever I read a S.K. novel, I do get nightmares, and I know how scary the film The Shining is, so I shied away from reading the book.
But finally, I went for it. I told my hubby I'm reading The Shining, to which he told me the thought I was nuts...lol. He doesn't like anything scary.
And this book did give me nightmares.
I'm glad I read it. From page one, I was hooked on this novel. It's just the kind of book that you cannot put down. I liked Danny and Wendy and I wanted them to be ok. Having seen the film so many times, I know what happens but the book was excellent. It scared me. The thought alone of being stranded in a large hotel for months in the dead of winter scares me. And poor Wendy and Danny, they are supposed to be able to trust Jack to take care of them.
The way King describes the hotel, it's corridors and sordid past, the hotel becomes a living thing, a main character in the story. Then Jacks anger issues and Danny's premonitions, the way Wendy slowly comes to realize her husband has gone insane...all of that makes for an amazing and terrifying story. This book is on my top five favs read this year, and one of my favorite books now.
About the author:
quoted from wikipedia
Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author, screenwriter, musician, columnist, actor, film producer and director. Having sold over 350 million copies of his books, King is best known for his work in horror fiction, in which he demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the genre's history. He has also written science fiction, fantasy, short-fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, teleplays and stageplays. Many of his stories have been adapted for other media, including movies, television series and comic books. King has written a number of books using the pen name Richard Bachman and one short story where he was credited as John Swithen. In 2003 he received The National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
visit the author's website: StephenKing.com
The Shining was made into a film in 1980. This is one of my favorite horror films.
this clip scares me!
'The decision I made to try and make Jack's father a real person, one who was loved as well as hated by his flawed son, took me a long way down the road to my current beliefs concerning what is so blithely dismissed as the "horror novel" . I believe these stories exist because we sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives: the parent who punches instead of kissing, the auto accident that takes a loved one, the cancer we one day discover living in our own bodies.
If such terrible occurences were acts of darkness, they might actually be easier to cope with. But instead of being dark, they have thier own terrible brilliance it seems to me, and none shine so bright as the acts of cruelty we sometimes perpetrate in our own families. To look directly at such brilliance is to be blinded, and so we create any number of filters. The ghost story, the horror story, the uncanny tale-all of these are such filters. The man or woman who insists there are no ghosts is only ignoring the whispers of his or her own heart, and how cruel that seems to me.'
-S.K.
