The Shining by Stephen King | Book Review

The Shining by Stephen King

Published: January 1977

Read: November 2019

Series: The Shining #1

Rating: 5 stars

Synopsis: 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. 

I have been slowly making my way through Stephen King's novels in publication order, and I must say that so far, his first two novels haven’t wowed me. But now I finally feel like I'm understanding how King has become one of the greatest authors of all time. This novel was near flawless and is my favourite by King so far. I went into this thinking I was going into a simple horror story, but boy was I wrong.

All of the characters felt so well developed, the writing felt clean, easy to follow and descriptive, and I loved the seamless transitions between each character's perspective. This, and well, basically everything in this novel, was so wonderfully done.

This book gets quite a bit of criticism for its slow beginning, and I have to agree that it does take a while to get to the main plotline, but this wasn't a negative for me as I love King's character work. Every word felt very intentional and every character felt incredibly fleshed out as a result, allowing the story to explore something far deeper than traditional horror, namely alcoholism and abuse. 

I thought this story was a great exploration of alcoholism, and Jack wasn't merely a one-dimensional "alcoholic abusive dad turned scary killer". So much of the time, I found myself rooting for him to stay sober, desperately wanting him to overcome the influence of the Overlook Hotel. Don’t get me wrong, Jack was by no means perfect, and I am not condoning his actions, but he was trying hard to set his life on track and loved his family dearly, as they did him. It was so sad and quite hard to read as the Overlook started to get to him and it was painful seeing this family fall apart as he inevitably succumbed to the Hotel’s pull. 

I really enjoyed Danny and loved reading from his perspective. I especially loved those moments when his childlike logic would creep in, this definitely had me giggling at parts. He did come across far older than his age most of the time though, and I was often taken aback by his level of maturity and understanding as a 5-year-old. However, I was able to suspend disbelief here as I can see how living with the shine would result in this. 

Speaking of the shine, I wasn't sure how I would feel about the ability that I have heard is across many of King's novels. I was worried I wouldn't like it, or that I would find it too unrealistic and confusing. But Hallorann and Danny's shining felt subtle and natural enough to be believable, it was just so well done. 

I should also mention that this novel is scary. I went into it being told it would scare me, but I highly doubted it as I didn't think a book could scare me (after all I made it through House of Leaves without a worry). But throughout this one, I caught myself holding my breath at parts. This is the first time I have ever felt scared reading a book and King had me on edge over the most benign things (I never thought I could feel so tense reading about a hose reel before). 

King creates fantastic atmosphere and the horror elements were so wonderfully done here (the scene with Danny in the tunnel at the playground, yikes! Not to mention the manual elevator working on its own still makes me shudder). That said, the hedge animals didn’t do anything for me. At the beginning they were great, a slight head movement here and there is incredibly creepy, but once they came fully to life they felt a little silly to me, perhaps my imagination let me down here.

As for the ending...I don’t want to spoil anything, but it is safe to say that I absolutely loved it!

I have heard that King's books are all part of a large multiverse that he has subtly weaved throughout all of his work. I don't know much about it beyond this, so whenever I read a King novel I find myself looking out for connections, not that I know exactly what I am looking for, but I actually have a theory with this one...

Spoilery discussion ahead

Could the entity haunting the Overlook Hotel be a manifestation of Pennywise from IT? I haven’t read IT yet, but I have seen the movie, and I couldn’t help but find some small hints that may suggest this could be true (or, more than likely I am being ridiculous and looking far too into it). 

For example, towards the end of the novel, when Jack has the roque mallet and is about to deliver the killing blow to Danny, crying Danny says he doesn't believe Jack is his daddy anymore and that he's not scared of him. It's about here in the novel that Jack begins being referred to as "it" rather than Jack. Also when Danny stops believing “it” is his daddy, “it” starts to falter, similar to the way Pennywise does when people stop being afraid as he feeds on fear.

Another correlation was how the other scary manifestations lingering around the Hotel started to disappear when Danny yelled at them saying (and believing) they weren't real. This also happens in IT when the kids are no longer scared or show fear when being approached by Pennywise's monsters and trickery. 

It can definitely be argued that in this high stake emotional moment it was Danny's shine giving him the power to overcome the manifestations rather than the above, if so, could that then mean the kids from IT have some level of the shine? Could Pennywise be what this entity becomes? and the town of Derry where it’s going to when Hallorann sees the darkness swirl and disappear after the explosion? I am probably grasping at nothing here, but what the heck, it's a fun idea to explore especially having not read IT yet. I look even more forward to eventually picking it up now.

End of spoilers

All in all, this novel has taught me many things, like never to be a caretaker at a haunted hotel, when you are told to stay out of room 217 you stay out of room 217, and that Jack is a nickname for John (go figure). As I read through King's novels, it's becoming pretty clear that he uses horror as a tool to explore deeper issues rather than using it just for cheap jump scares, and I love that and can't wait for more. I absolutely loved The Shining and already want to pick it back up.