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The Shining (Paperback)
by Stephen King
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Horror fiction, Bestsellers, Original books |
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| MSL Pointer Review:
A complete isolated hotel, a family on the verge of destruction, a survival fighting against the demon of mind. |
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Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Pocket
Pub. in: October, 2002
ISBN: 0743437497
Pages: 528
Measurements: 8.2 x 5.3 x 1.4 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00927
Other information: Reprint edition
ISBN-13: 9780743437493
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- MSL Picks -
Twenty-seven years after its publication, The Shining remains a visceral, gripping read that showcases Stephen King's unfathomable powers to hypnotize and terrify readers, a power King had in abundance in the early stages of his career. If you've only seen the original movie starring Jack Nicholson, you really owe it to yourself to read the novel; Stanley Kubrick made a fine and scary movie, but he did not capture the essence of King's story, and his dramatization followed a different path than what you find in the original vision brought to life through the words of King.
The Torrance family embarks on a months-long retreat into complete isolation when Jack Torrance signs on to be the winter custodian of the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. Jack takes some personal demons with him to a hotel chock-full of malevolent, ghostly spirits; he is a recovering alcoholic who, in the last couple of years, lost his job and broke his little boy's arm in a state of drunken fury. He thinks the months alone with his wife and son will allow him to find peace - and to finally finish the play he has been working on. His long-suffering wife has some misgivings, but the only person really clued into the dreadful possibilities is his son Danny. Danny has "the shine," a gift which allows him to see and know things he cannot possibly know; it is a powerful gift which the Overlook (which really is an entity unto itself) jealously desires for itself. As the days pass, the Overlook exerts more and more of an influence on Jack, exploiting his weaknesses, exacerbating his paranoia and persecution complex, and basically turning him into a murderous new tool at the hotel's disposal. Danny sees what is happening, although he cannot really understand much of it given his very young age. He can certainly understand the terror of the Overlook, as he sees images of the hotel's murderous past and very dark near future in a number of unsettling scenes interspersed throughout the novel.
This is a harrowing tale of survival against incredible odds of a supernatural nature, and King brings every nuance of the story to vivid life, capturing perfectly the internalization and externalization of fear among exceedingly real, believable characters that the reader gets to know very well indeed. As has always been the case with Stephen King, it is his incomparable powers of characterization that make the supernatural elements of his story work so amazingly well. You can't help but be emotionally committed to these characters. It is about a five-year-old boy who is impossibly mature and wise beyond his years, and who has a terrifying gift that seems as much a curse. It is about his father, a recovering alcoholic with demons in his soul and skeletons in his closet, who is battling both in order to keep his family financially afloat. It is about his wife, a doting mother who has braved the ups & downs of her husband's turbulence, who loves him, and who wants to trust him beyond his past mistakes but is just on this side of being unable to do so. It is about a classic, Art Deco hotel tucked deep within the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, whose name is respected but nevertheless has a mysteriously chequered past. It is about the ghosts that occupy this hotel, that wish to possess the above family but can only be seen by the boy and the head cook. It is about the head cook, an older black man who shares the same gift with the boy, and who develops a special friendship with him as a result. It is about a family who begin at their last chance for hope and unity, who end up fighting for their last chance at survival.
King structures this novel in five parts, referring to the Shakespearian Five Act Structure. Is it no surprise then that King manipulates this historical structure in an unconventional manner, placing the Inciting incident in the third section and pairing the crisis and resolution in part five. King transcends the ghost story genre to meet his own thematic needs. The thematic levels that underlie King's dramatic choices make this novel more intense and real than any suspense story you have ever read. The Shinning is a true gestalt entity: it is more than the sum of its parts. Stephen King masterly intertwines all of the above elements, plus some truly frightening imagery, to create a novel of several hundred compulsively-turning pages that add up to one of your greatest experiences.
What makes a book scary? Is it a story of demons, or ghosts, or a few murders? Or is it the inexplicable madness that could taunt the mind of a reader long after the story is over and the book is closed and returned to the book shelf? The Shining is one such story. It's the account of a family, their battles with their own demons in a hotel that somehow feeds on their fears and emotions. Often, the case is made that a book is scary because it unexpectedly freaked a reader with a sudden twist, a ghostly encounter, or a creepy voice. In this book there is something different. There is suspense, ever so slowly building, until the trickle becomes a river that pulls one toward a vortex of twisting horrors, of something evil that has been molded and cooked and stored until the one to be fed stumbles on it unexpectedly and then its so horrifying that he is left stunned, numbed, petrified.
The Shining truly established Stephen King as a modern master of horror and an unequalled purveyor of a literary mirror into pop culture. King has been called a great many things. The Master of Horror Fiction: Fascinating. Frightening. Hypnotic. Demonic. Tremendous. Spellbinding. His own biography blurb refers to himself as the "world's best selling novelist." One critic has even gone so far as to speculate that Stephen King is "our era's Charles Dickens". Anyone who has read King would probably agree he's a writer with a tremendous range, a genius-level vivid imagination, and an understanding of human emotions both simple and yet rarely matched. King is a king in the world of literary terror. He is a king of his own domain, of the masterful horror story, of a universe where hedge animals stalk, hotels share emotions and people communicate via their minds. The Shining must be experienced only through the words, because only words can make alive that which is too dreadful to share, or show.
Target readers:
general readers
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Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947. After his parents separated when Stephen was a toddler, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of the elderly couple. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and then Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, The Maine Campus. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co. accepted the novel Carrie for publication. On Mother's Day of that year, Stephen learned from his new editor at Doubleday, Bill Thompson, that a major paperback sale would provide him with the means to leave teaching and write full-time.
At the end of the summer of 1973, the Kings moved their growing family to southern Maine because of Stephen's mother's failing health. Renting a summer home on Sebago Lake in North Windham for the winter, Stephen wrote his next-published novel, originally titled Second Coming and then Jerusalem's Lot, before it became 'Salem's Lot, in a small room in the garage. During this period, Stephen's mother died of cancer, at the age of 59.
Carrie was published in the spring of 1974. That same fall, the Kings left Maine for Boulder, Colorado. They lived there for a little less than a year, during which Stephen wrote The Shining, set in Colorado. Returning to Maine in the summer of 1975, the Kings purchased a home in the Lakes Region of western Maine. At that house, Stephen finished writing The Stand, much of which also is set in Boulder. The Dead Zone was also written in Bridgton.
In 1977, the Kings spent three months of a projected year- long stay in England, cut the sojourn short and returned home in mid-December, purchasing a new home in Center Lovell, Maine. After living there one summer, the Kings moved north to Orrington, near Bangor, so that Stephen could teach creative writing at the University of Maine at Orono. The Kings returned to Center Lovell in the spring of 1979. In 1980, the Kings purchased a second home in Bangor, retaining the Center Lovell house as a summer home.
Because their children have become adults, Stephen and Tabitha now spend winters in Florida and the remainder of the year at their Bangor and Center Lovell homes.
He has put some of his college dramatic society experience to use doing cameos in several of the film adaptations of his works as well as a bit part in a George Romero picture, Knightriders. Joe Hill King also appeared in Creepshow, which was released in 1982. Stephen made his directorial debut, as well as writing the screenplay, for the movie Maximum Overdrive (an adaptation of his short story "Trucks") in 1985.
Stephen is the 2003 recipient of The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
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"You're The Caretaker,Sir. You've Always Been The Caretaker. I Shoud Know, Sir. I've Always Been Here..." - Delbert Grady of the Overlook Hotel
First published in 1977, The Shining quickly became a benchmark in the literary career of Stephen King. This tale of a troubled man hired to care for a remote mountain resort over the winter, his loyal wife, and their uniquely gifted son slowly but steadily unfolds as secrets from the Overlook Hotel's past are revealed, and the hotel itself attempts to laim the very souls of the Torrence family. Adapted into a cinematic masterpiece of horror by legendaryStanley Kubrick - featuring an unforgettable performance by a demonic Jack Nicholson -The Shining stands as a cultural icon of modern horror, a searing study of a family torn apart, and a nightmarish glimpse into the dark recesses of human weakness and dementia.
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Part One: Prefatory Matters
Chapter 1: Job Interview
Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.
Ullman stood five-five, and when he moved, it was with the prissy speed that seems to be the exclusive domain of all small plump men. The part in his hair was exact, and his dark suit was sober but comforting. I am a man you can bring your problems to, that suit said to the paying customer. To the hired help it spoke more curtly: This had better be good, you. There was a red carnation in the lapel, perhaps so that no one on the street would mistake Stuart Ullman for the local undertaker.
As he listened to Ullman speak, Jack admitted to himself that he probably could not have liked any man on that side of the desk - under the circumstances.
Ullman had asked a question he hadn't caught. That was bad; Ullman was the type of man who would file such lapses away in a mental Rolodex for later consideration.
"I'm sorry?"
"I asked if your wife fully understood what you would be taking on here. And there's your son, of course." He glanced down at the application in front of him. "Daniel. Your wife isn't a bit intimidated by the idea?"
"Wendy is an extraordinary woman."
"And your son is also extraordinary?"
Jack smiled, a big wide PR smile. "We like to think so, I suppose. He's quite self-reliant for a five-year-old."
No returning smile from Ullman. He slipped Jack's application back into a file. The file went into a drawer. The desk top was now completely bare except for a blotter, a telephone, a Tensor lamp, and an in/out basket. Both sides of the in/out were empty, too.
Ullman stood up and went to the file cabinet in the corner. "Step around the desk, if you will, Mr. Torrance. We'll look at the hotel floor plans."
He brought back five large sheets and set them down on the glossy walnut plain of the desk. Jack stood by his shoulder, very much aware of the scent of Ullman's cologne. All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all came into his mind for no reason at all, and he had to clamp his tongue between his teeth to keep in a bray of laughter. Beyond the wall, faintly, came the sounds of the Overlook Hotel's kitchen, gearing down from lunch.
"Top floor," Ullman said briskly. "The attic. Absolutely nothing up there now but bric-a-brac. The Overlook has changed hands several times since World War II and it seems that each successive manager has put everything they don't want up in the attic. I want rattraps and poison bait sowed around in it. Some of the third-floor chambermaids say they have heard rustling noises. I don't believe it, not for a moment, but there mustn't even be that one-in-a-hundred chance that a single rat inhabits the Overlook Hotel."
Jack, who suspected that every hotel in the world had a rat or two, held his tongue.
"Of course you wouldn't allow your son up in the attic under any circumstances."
"No," Jack said, and flashed the big PR smile again. Humiliating situation. Did this officious little prick actually think he would allow his son to goof around in a rattrap attic full of junk furniture and God knew what else?
Ullman whisked away the attic floor plan and put it on the bottom of the pile.
"The Overlook has one hundred and ten guest quarters," he said in a scholarly voice. "Thirty of them, all suites, are here on the third floor. Ten in the west wing (including the Presidential Suite), ten in the center, ten more in the east wing. All of them command magnificent views."
Could you at least spare the salestalk?
But he kept quiet. He needed the job.
Ullman put the third floor on the bottom of the pile and they studied the second floor.
"Forty rooms," Ullman said, "thirty doubles and ten singles. And on the first floor, twenty of each. Plus three linen closets on each floor, and a storeroom which is at the extreme east end of the hotel on the second floor and the extreme west end on the first. Questions?"
Jack shook his head. Ullman whisked the second and first floors away.
"Now. Lobby level. Here in the center is the registration desk. Behind it are the offices. The lobby runs for eighty feet in either direction from the desk. Over here in the west wing is the Overlook Dining Room and the Colorado Lounge. The banquet and ballroom facility is in the east wing. Questions?"
"Only about the basement," Jack said. "For the winter caretaker, that's the most important level of all. Where the action is, so to speak."
"Watson will show you all that. The basement floor plan is on the boiler room wall." He frowned impressively, perhaps to show that as manager, he did not concern himself with such mundane aspects of the Overlook's operation as the boiler and the plumbing. "Might not be a bad idea to put some traps down there too. Just a minute..."
He scrawled a note on a pad he took from his inner coat pocket (each sheet bore the legend From the Desk of Stuart Ullman in bold black script), tore it off, and dropped it into the out basket. It sat there looking lonesome. The pad disappeared back into Ullman's jacket pocket like the conclusion of a magician's trick. Now you see it, Jacky-boy, now you don't. This guy is a real heavyweight.
They had resumed their original positions, Ullman behind the desk and Jack in front of it, interviewer and interviewee, supplicant and reluctant patron. Ullman folded his neat little hands on the desk blotter and looked directly at Jack, a small, balding man in a banker's suit and a quiet gray tie. The flower in his lapel was balanced off by a small lapel pin on the other side. It read simply staff in small gold letters.
"I'll be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Torrance. Albert Shockley is a powerful man with a large interest in the Overlook, which showed a profit this season for the first time in its history. Mr. Shockley also sits on the Board of Directors, but he is not a hotel man and he would be the first to admit this. But he has made his wishes in this caretaking matter quite obvious. He wants you hired. I will do so. But if I had been given a free hand in this matter, I would not have taken you on."
Jack's hands were clenched tightly in his lap, working against each other, sweating. Officious little prick, officious little prick, officious --
"I don't believe you care much for me, Mr. Torrance. I don't care. Certainly your feelings toward me play no part in my own belief that you are not right for the job. During the season that runs from May fifteenth to September thirtieth, the Overlook employs one hundred and ten people full-time; one for every room in the hotel, you might say. I don't think many of them like me and I suspect that some of them think I'm a bit of a bastard. They would be correct in their judgment of my character. I have to be a bit of a bastard to run this hotel in the manner it deserves."
He looked at Jack for comment, and Jack flashed the PR smile again, large and insultingly toothy.
Ullman said: "The Overlook was built in the years 1907 to 1909. The closest town is Sidewinder, forty miles east of here over roads that are closed from sometime in late October or November until sometime in April. A man named Robert Townley Watson built it, the grandfather of our present maintenance man. Vanderbilts have stayed here, and Rockefellers, and Astors, and Du Ponts. Four Presidents have stayed in the Presidential Suite, Wilson, Harding, Roosevelt, and Nixon."
"I wouldn't be too proud of Harding and Nixon," Jack murmured.
Ullman frowned but went on regardless. "It proved too much for Mr. Watson, and he sold the hotel in 1915. It was sold again in 1922, in 1929, in 1936. It stood vacant until the end of World War II, when it was purchased and completely renovated by Horace Derwent, millionaire inventor, pilot, film producer, and entrepreneur."
"I know the name," Jack said.
"Yes. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold . . . except the Overlook. He funneled over a million dollars into it before the first postwar guest ever stepped through its doors, turning a decrepit relic into a showplace. It was Derwent who added the roque court I saw you admiring when you arrived."
"Roque?"
"A British forebear of our croquet, Mr. Torrance. Croquet is bastardized roque. According to legend, Derwent learned the game from his social secretary and fell completely in love with it. Ours may be the finest roque court in America."
"I wouldn't doubt it," Jack said gravely. A roque court, a topiary full of hedge animals out front, what next? A life-sized Uncle Wiggily game behind the equipment shed? He was getting very tired of Mr. Stuart Ullman, but he could see that Ullman wasn't done. Ullman was going to have his say, every last word of it.
"When he had lost three million, Derwent sold it to a group of California investors. Their experience with the Overlook was equally bad. Just not hotel people.
"In 1970, Mr. Shockley and a group of his associates bought the hotel and turned its management over to me. We have also run in the red for several years, but I'm happy to say that the trust of the present owners in me has never wavered. Last year we broke even. And this year the Overlook's accounts were written in black ink for the first time in almost seven decades."
Jack supposed that this fussy little man's pride was justified, and then his original dislike washed over him again in a wave.
He said: "I see no connection between the Overlook's admittedly colorful history and your feeling that I'm wrong for the post, Mr. Ullman."
"One reason that the Overlook has lost so much money lies in the depreciation that occurs each winter. It shortens the profit margin a great deal more than you might believe, Mr. Torrance. The winters are fantastically cruel. In order to cope with the problem, I've installed a full-time winter caretaker to run the boiler and to heat different parts of the hotel on a daily rotating basis. To repair breakage as it occurs and to do repairs, so the elements can't get a foothold. To be constantly alert to any and every contingency. During our first winter I hired a family instead of a single man. There was a tragedy.
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Aaron Cassidy (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-30 00:00>
I saw the movie first, the Kubrick film with Jack Nicholson, and I thought that one was spectacular. But I am very serious when I say that the book is even better. Having read the original, terrying words straight from the pen of Stephen King, it almost makes me mad that Kubrick treated the characters so hollowly in his movie. In the movie, Jack Torrance is a man insane. In the book, Jack Torrance is a man fighting against the insanity. Wow! The characters are so real and handled so carefully, that being trapped inside the Overlook is no longer just a freaky experience. You run along with them, filled with dread, from all the horrible personifications of evil inside the hotel's awful walls. There were several times where I actually dropped the book and was too scared to pick it back up. Intellectually, you know it's not real. It's just a bunch of letters and words grouped together on pages. Still, whenever I go into the bathroom late at night, I have to pull back the shower curtain just to make sure.
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J Zullo (MSL quote), Brazil
<2007-01-30 00:00>
Untill this book I had never been afraid of what I read. But Stephen King made it. "The shining" is thrilling since the beginning to the very last page. It's the story of an ex-teacher thrown out of his job for beating up a student. But the life of Jack Torrance is a complete mess. Not only he's unemployed, he's also a drunk. And in between he's got to take care of his wife and his enigmatic son, Danny. Ah, almost forgot: he has a dream of writing this masterpiece script, a book that will reach the top of the bestselling list. How he can do all this? His companion in booze and master offers him a job as a caretaker of a famous hotel in Colorado during the winter season. The Overlook Hotel is famous not only because of its great view of the country, but for his shaky story. Built early in the century, it has passed through various owners, all faded with bankruptcy, Mafia murders and scandals. The present time of the story is the first year in many that the account books aren't closed in read ink. And Jake has to keep the integrity of the place during the long winter. It's the oportunity he asked for. Now he's got time for his family and his script. But... His son Danny has some special gifts, discovered when he arrives at the Overlook and meets the old black cooker and is told that he has "The shining". A power to view what other people can't normally see. That usually is something very nice, if you know how to use it in your favor. But that's something hard for a five-year old. And when the powerful forces that hide in the shadows of the Overlook decide to play with your gift, the long and easy winter may turn into a white-snow nightmare. Stephen King was able to create some very complex characters. Jake is a booze addict with a very hard past relationship with his folks, and his tendence is to loose it with his family. His behavior gets worse when he discovers the history of the Hotel in some newspapers at the basement, and what happened to the last winter caretaker. ! Danny is the central point of the plot. The Overlook uses him to "comunnicate" with the Torrance family, using his shine against him. Danny can see with his eyes all the terrible things that took place in the hotel. Wendy is the powerless wife, sees his husband loose his mind, take it over her son, and has her hands stoped with fear. Her construction is also very complex, even if it's hard to see. She has ger own family problems and loves her husband too much to do something against him. But when it comes to Danny... She transforms into the main character and her actions give road to the continuity of the story. But the most vivid and terrible part of the book is played by the Hotel Overlook... Himself! Yes, I think that we can make it into a person, for he thinks, decides what to do, has a past background, everything that a real person would have. Because, in fact, he's the personality and the will of Stephen King. He overlooks his entire work, his imaginary Boulder, his characters and his plots. Only a writer like him could imagine the scenes with the grass animals. "The shining" is a unique piece of writing. Among King's works, it's only compared with the grandeur of "The stand".
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Alexie Kinast (MSL quote), Canada
<2007-01-30 00:00>
Usually, I avoid giving popular authors shining reviews (pun intended) unless their work Really deserves it. I figure, what the heck- they have enough people flocking around them. They could use a good criticism. So, with this in mind, I took an excursion into the dark and eerie world of five-year-old Daniel Torrence in King's "The Shining". And instead of coming away full of tips on how he could better his writing, I find myself amazed by it.
King is, as so many reviews before me have plainly stated, a true master of the horror genre, and "The Shining" stands right up there among the best in horrific fiction. It's about a young boy who posesses a sort of telepathic power; a clairvoyence called "The Shining". he can read minds (although not always understand what he is reading) and see into the future with the aid of an imaginary friend named Tony. When Danny's father accepts an offer to be a hotel caretaker for the famous Overlook hotel in the Colorado rockies, Danny is catapulted into a world of terror. For, it seems, the Overlook has it's own nasty history and is more than eager to put Danny and his family in it's macabre lexicon.
Read this book. It is a true gem.
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Jacob Lickers (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-31 00:00>
If you need blood and guts every few pages to stay interested in a book, you will be dissapointed. If your definition of drama is the murderous villains lengthy monologue before his final, grisly defeat, you will be dissapointed. If you're looking for a clone of the movie in book form, you will be very dissapointed. If, however, you appreciate one of those rare novels that leads you into the story step by step, immersing you with effortless grace into the world in which it occurs, a world that is, on the surface, plain and even non-descript yet brimming just beneath with murky, brooding awareness, then this one might be for you. If you appreciate full and starkly realistic characters painted in bold and brilliant strokes of emotion and personality, you may want to have a look. Finally, if you can accept Steven King as something more than "The Horrormeister", and instead as a natural story-teller who is as capable of capturing the subtles and nuances of terror as the hack and slash aspects, who can blend it perfectly into a familiar yet hauntingly awry world of ghosts darkness and ordinary people struggling against not only such mundane horrors as abuse and acoholism but horrors of a decidedly more supernatural nature, then you might be ready for this book.
I was captivated by the plight of Danny, a very unique young boy, struggling against unimaginable forces out of pure, unconditional love for his father. Likewise, Jack Torrence is not merely the bloodlusting maniac of the movie, but a man who is hounded by his alcoholism, all the way into the heart of the Colorado Rockies where he attempts to come to terms with his personal ghosts and heal the rift that is threatening to pull his family apart. Despite his best efforts, however, the sinister awareness that has infested the Overlook, an awareness birthed by years of murder and tragedy, slowly twists him to it's evil ends in a heart-breaking struggle of wills.
This book is full of disturbingly memorable imagery, moments of slow and creeping terror that will keep you turning pages deep into the night. The ending is a satisfying as it is tragic, bringing the grisly drama to a gut-wrenching climax and exorcising the tortured prisoners of the Overlook in a curtain of purifying flame.
As King books go, this is one of his finest. As far as any book goes, this is one of the scariest I've ever read.
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