The Shining

So I've been a big fan of the shining movie and wanted to see how the book told the story cause I heard that a) Stephen King didn't like the movie b) the story was different.

So considering that I felt like I was reading a story I really enjoyed specifically to appreciate the differences. At points it felt like a slog, with date rusty and clumsy politics and such. But some of the differences I really appreciated about the book included the greater sympathetic lens we view jack Torrence through, his suicidal tendencies, struggles with alcohol, and love for danny cast him in a much more sympathetic light, which makes his descent into unhinged murderous rage much more disturbing and tragic.

The shining and magic of the world is also much more prevalent and explored and even the jump scares and horrors focus on hornets, hedges, anthropomorphic ghouls, and possession than the blood tidal waves, and creepy twins that are so iconic from the film.

Definitely better appreciate all the liberties that were taken with the film and world building shoved aside that make up the novel. I can see why Stephen King felt antagonistic to the film, and appreciate the story better for it all.

But all in all, don't think I really like Stephen King's writings that much, this being my first read, and might just stick to how pop culture interprets and bastardizes his works in the world of b-rate horror films.

Some things are just better seen than read.

This is not so much a review, but reminiscing about how this was the absolute first novel I ever read that wasn't for school back in grade 8 in the early nineties. A friend lent it to me, a book that belonged to her mother who was a teacher and thus began a lifetime of reading all of his works. On the cusp of becoming a teenager, I clearly remember reading it in my closet inside my sleeping bag with a little lamp and munching on sunflower seeds, scared of leaving the security of the closet. I would end up sleeping in it until the morning. My bedroom was in a windowless basement of an old house. It got suffocatingly dark in that basement and I liked it in my closet!

My friend lent me more of her mother's Stephen King novels and that became a ritual, reading Stephen King in my closet with a lamp and sunflower seeds. It annoyed my mother, for some reason, that I wasn't sleeping in my bed.

This is a must-read classic ghost story, the best of its kind. I reread it a few years ago because I had planned to read the sequel, Doctor Sleep, and it was just as good outside of the closet! ;)

Look. I’m a book snob. Some time between the ages of 16 and 20, I went from simply enjoying books to believing I should only read “quality” books.

Despite the fact that during that time I read two Stephen King books and was secretly very impressed by one (Different Seasons), King has never fallen into the category of quality for me.

Fortunately, my 17-year-old nephew is cleared eyed than I am, and recommended that I read The Shining.

I’m glad he did because this was an amazing book.

I expected suspense and terror, but what I didn’t expect was how well crafted this book is.

King spends over half the book developing his characters and the themes that run throughout. He spends the time well. At the halfway point, I was fully invested in the characters.

The book is remarkably well plotted, without feeling as if it’s been well plotted. The events feel like they came naturally one after another.

In fact, even without the suspense and terror, this would be a remarkable book.

But it is the attention to character and narrative that make the suspense and terror work. It was my investment in the characters that kept me riveted for the last 100 pages, that brought tears to my eyes during an expected, beautiful and heartbreaking moment towards the end.

I’m still a recovering book snob, but I’m grateful for my nephew’s recommendation that has shown me my errors in judgement.

I thought I read this book in my teens but the farther I got into it, the more certain I became that I hadn't. I would have remembered how well done Jack's descent into madness was. For me, that was the best part of the book. I did enjoy Danny's parts of the book, and Wendy's to a lesser extent, but the star of the show was Jack's changes and his growing connection to the hotel.

I think my biggest shock was just how different Kubrick's film is to the novel. I need to watch the movie again since I don't remember a lot of the details. That and the insane number of times the N-word was used. I wasn't expecting it and it really put me off.

I listened to the audio book and initially Campbell Scott's calm tone made me wonder if I wouldn't fall asleep while reading. Luckily, he got down to business when the dialogue and more intense narration called for it. He did a really good job.

I don't know if it was just the audio book and there were clearer demarcations in the physical book, but I was throw off regularly which POV switches. There were a few times when I had to rewind to see if I either missed something or to figure out who was sharing info.

I'm glad I read this one. It won't end up on my all-time favorite Stephen King list but I enjoyed the story. 3.5 stars for me.

3.5 stars.

Commute audiobook. Easy to follow while driving, interesting enough to keep me awake. The reader was Campbell Scott, who often sounded quite a lot like Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek TNG), which was frankly distracting. I guess he can't help it if he sounds like Data.

Fair warning, I don't know how to talk about it without also talking about the film at least a little. For an interesting discussion about the differences between Kubrick's film and King's book, check out this great article at Salon which explains how, even if Kubrick's film is a great film, as an adaptation it misses the point of its source material which justifies Stephen King's longstanding and vocal dislike of the film.

So. The book.

The good
1. The book is more than a simple horror story -- it explores the causes of horror, one supernatural and one psychological. The supernatural: The hotel has basically absorbed all the bad things done at the hotel over the years, taking on its own evil force able to infect people who stay in the hotel too long. (Evil works from the outside in.) The psychological: Jack Torrance is an alcoholic. He's cleaned himself up but he still feels the pull of the bottle. He has a bad temper which he tries (mostly successfully) to keep under control when he's not drinking. As he falls back into alcoholism, he becomes a monster and a threat to his family. (Evil works from the inside out.)

2. King does a great job of capturing the isolation the family experiences once the hotel is snowed in.

3. It's a humanist story. King is obviously interested in his characters: their psyches, how they interact with each other, how they behave in different situations. I was very interested in the complex family dynamic. I've not experienced this kind of alcoholism or abuse first hand, but it felt (mostly) realistic to me. Book Wendy's feelings about Jack are complicated by his alcoholism and past behavior. Book Jack resents her for feeling this way because he can't take responsibility for the terrible things he did while drunk. Book Danny loves his dad even though his dad has hurt him. So, the book is a humanist and psychological story in a way the film is not. The film isn't interested in origins of evil or Jack's inner torment or Wendy's complicated feelings -- Kubrick is interested in the aesthetics of horror, and he uses his characters as set pieces to achieve particular aesthetic results.

The not-so-good
1. I get that Wendy's feelings about Jack are complicated, but why didn't she leave Jack IMMEDIATELY after he broke Danny's arm? I worry that sounds a little like victim-blaming, but frankly I don't have a lot of tolerance for people who fail to protect their children from abusive situations.

2. Dick Hallorann. Fuck. The ultimate example of the Magical Negro trope (a trope that Stephen King has returned to frequently. Ugh.). (Basically: the token black person in a lily-white cast of characters is imbued with magical powers and exists solely to aid the white characters.)

3. What's up with Al Shockley? He was Book Jack's alcoholic-in-arms. He got Jack the job at the hotel; we learn he has a huge financial stake in its success; he basically threatens Jack when Jack suggests he wants to write a book about the hotel's terrible history. I was under the impression that he was a Bad Guy who, like the mysterious Horace Derwent, was propagating the evil of the hotel and basically sacrificed Jack's family to the hotel for financial success. Except that at the end Wendy's taken a job with him, so I guess not? I'm no author, but that seems like a missed opportunity to me.

4. It's not scary. I think it's supposed to be -- there's ghosties and vicious animated topiaries and all sorts of things that go bump in the night, and we learn early on they can do real harm to Jack's family -- but it's just not. Maybe that's partly my fault. I'd seen the film before, which killed the surprise factor; and good hide-under-the-covers horror relies a lot on anticipation and surprise. But I still feel like the book could have been better in this regard. There's SO MUCH BACKSTORY. It took multiple CDs before we even got to the hotel, and more CDs still before creepy stuff starts to happen. And even then, it's kind of light on the creepy.

5. One thing I really liked about the film was the depiction of Movie Jack's writer's block and descent into madness. The book talks a little bit about the block he's experiencing with his play, but with nowhere near the power of the film's famed imagery. He eventually loses interest in the play and becomes interested in writing a book about the hotel's horrible history. But as a signifier of madness and evil, Book Jack's interest in writing a book about the hotel just does not compare with Movie Jack's pages and pages of "All work and no play..."

I used to think I was sort of immune to horror books. The only thing that ever really "gets me" in media is jump scares, and those don't tend to work so well on paper. I never get nightmares fervently knocks on wood and I've never been in a jumpy phase or a leave-the-lights-on-at-night phase after finishing such a book. Those things still didn't happen with The Shining, thank God, but it was very effective horror (read: frickin' terrifying). The fear it causes isn't so much of an "oh God my heart" variety as a sort of increasingly uncomfortable, bile-like thing rising up, biding its time and occasionally manifesting into terribleterribleterrible things. Which I was a fan of, I guess; as much as you can be a fan of that kind of thing. The horror is really steady, with the amount of not-subtle-in-the-slightest foreshadowing going on, and perpetually suspenseful. You don't get those flat places full of too much angsty character exposition or mildly-scared window-staring. Well, you do, and it's kind of a relief, you think you're safe for a bit and maybe you could read this part at night under the covers, and then the hedge animals start to fricking move. Gaah.

This book also works because it's not just "oh the scary things are coming to get us" horror, it's psychological horror as well (which is my jam). It's a story of abuse and violent cycles and family ghosts and being a little kid in a really big and scary world where no one quite understands you and you're not sure you understand yourself. The Torrance family is stuck in this like-father-like-son loop of alcoholism and abuse, but the story manages to be somewhat hopeful with the cycle finally coming to a cataclysmic halt within the confines of The Overlook hotel. And the hotel is like a metaphor or something. I believe King once said something about it being an extension of hell, whatever you perceive that to be. It's a place where pots that have been angrily simmering for years finally boil over.

The writing, as usual for King, is wonderful (aside from one line about a black hole resembling a "dilating iris" which made me twitch. No. You're thinking of a pupil. That's the thing that dilates.). Jack's downward spiral is absolutely chilling in the sense that you don't recognize it for what it was until you're at the bottom with him. It's only toward the very end of the book that you realize, "Wow, this guy is legit insane right now," and you leaf back to try to find exactly when it happened, when something Shifted, and you can't. It's eerily, and plausibly, gradual.

My gripes: the book is kept firmly grounded in patriarchal reality by King's inability to describe women as anything other than sensual or fat and ridiculous. Gratuitous and choppy sex scenes abound to make it feel more adult or something. Wendy Torrance would be an acceptable female character on her own--she has backstory, and pretending that overly submissive and victimized women don't exist for the sake of writing "strong women" is no good--if she wasn't a cardboard copy of almost every other female King character I've read. Sub in Sadie from [b:11/22/63|10644930|11/22/63|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327876792s/10644930.jpg|15553789] and nothing changes: the "great legs", the history of abuse and bending to husband(s)' will, the being endangered by a psychotic husband, the bizarre and inopportune sexual appetite. (Wendy's maternal instincts toward 5-year-old Danny are pretty strongly emphasized at the beginning of the book, but when he's nearly strangled by what is potentially a reanimated corpse with them in the hotel that they can't leave and they're all sleeping together in one room with Danny on a cot in the corner that. That is when she chooses to have sex with her husband and sleep happily in his arms for the rest of the night. ??!! Even if that wasn't my kid, every instinct I possessed in that situation would be telling me to GTFO of the hotel absolutely as soon as possible no matter what?) Wendy does sort of redeem herself at the end, but honestly I was more interested in her as a character than Danny, and I wish we could have had more material from her point of view. Her justifications for staying with Jack? More about how she feels about her extended family? She had a lot more potential as a character than was used.

I 1st read this book when I was in college, staying in my dormitory which was converted hotel on the lake (Lake Michigan) over Christmas break. The hotel was basically abandoned except for a few elderly permanent residents. I seen the movie with my then boyfriend the previous spring, so I knew the general idea. It was an unexpectedly creepy experience!
Forward some 35 years, and I watched the movie again with my younger son, and I consequently felt the need to re-read the book. The book is still creepy, but with the addition of years and experience, I was able to see it in a somewhat different light. It's interesting how much more can be attributed to insanity than to supernatural causes. Don't get me wrong, the book itself still has supernatural occurrences, but there is definitely a possibility to view it in a much more natural and realistic environment. I really like incorporation of Halloran and his experiences and abilities into the story. Still really like the book! And the meshing of reality, insanity, and supernaturalty (is that even a word?) was kind of refreshing.

I thought this book was better than [b:'Salem's Lot|11590|'Salem's Lot|Stephen King|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327891565s/11590.jpg|3048937], but not as good as [b:It|18342|It|Stephen King|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1309376909s/18342.jpg|150259]. The fear factor was definitely there!

Without giving too much away, the book centres around Jack and Wendy Torrence, and their son Danny. Danny has a supernatural ability to read people's minds, and sometimes to see things before they happen.

I'm sad to say that I think the Torrence family have become somewhat of a horror trope these days, but I'm sure when Stephen King wrote them, the concept was cutting edge.

I don't want to say too much about this book, in case any of you haven't read it yet, but there were times when it gave me the creeps in a way that only Stephen King can. Suffice to say, I'm really glad I don't have a bath with a shower curtain!

The ending was pretty satisfying as well, although also a bit cliched by now, I think. It was a good set up for [b:Doctor Sleep|16130549|Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)|Stephen King|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1362415596s/16130549.jpg|17851499], though - can't wait! The thing is, I'm not sure how I would've felt about it if I didn't know there was a "sequel" (well, of sorts, anyway).