I came to know so much about the characters, even as King threw them into a downward mental spiral. The movie has its merits, but the impact of the characters in King’s original novel is far greater than it is in the film. You could argue that’s better for the screen anyway, and that’s fair.
But the movie eschews the psychological-thriller aspects of The Shining in favor of horror.
Movie buffs may not be surprised by this at all. Jack, Danny, and Wendy all feel intensely real in a way I’ve rarely experienced through my years-long reading career. Each successive chapter in The Shining dives deeper into the darkest portions of a character’s mind. As I read, I wondered if Jack was crazy the whole time, then I wondered whether I was crazy for not seeing how crazy he was from the get-go. There came a point in The Shining where I blurted out “Oh, Jack’s crazy” to myself. By isolating his three main characters in a creepy locale, King opens doors into gradually degrading psyches addled by the isolation and the terrors running rampant through the Overlook. It’s a masterpiece of character and a striking psychological thriller. As the Colorado winter snows them in, the Overlook begins to take its toll on the family, and Jack begins to lose his grip on sobriety and sanity. This power–the shining–is fueled by the Overlook, where sinister things dwell in the shadows. Jack’s five year old son has a knack for knowing what people are thinking, where lost things can be found, and what will happen in the future. Jack has been hired as the winter caretaker at the Overlook, a job he receives from a friend after he gets fired from his teaching job for, y’know, pummeling a student he kicked off the debate team. Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy, and his son Danny head to Colorado’s Overlook Hotel for the winter.
Whether or not you’ve seen Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film adaptation, The Shining is a fantastic read. This has perhaps never been more true than it is for The Shining, a hard-hitting crescendo of a book that bubbles and boils to an explosive climax. Stephen King’s original work is plenty present in Kubrick’s film, but as we readers know, books just hit different. Mentioning the film verges on necessary in any review of The Shining, because so many people are familiar with “Heeeeeere’s JOHNNY” and the like. But I also read it for my ongoing Screen series with Ian Simmons of Kicking the Seat–look out for our discussion of The Shining next week at the episode will cover both the film and book. I picked it up, naturally, to review it here. Love him or hate him, he’s a force to be reckoned with, and The Shining proves it. Tack on the fact that most readers have settled firmly on one side of the Stephen King fence. Cultural osmosis makes that a near certainty.
How does one review a book that everyone knows about already ( oops)? The Shining is so pervasive that you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard of it.
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