Rating: 8/10
I’m so glad that I finally read The Shining. Partially because that means that I was finally able to watch the movie (I have so many thoughts about the movie, so many that I may make a whole blog post about my feelings). I wish that I had loved it like so many seem to, but I wasn’t like overwhelmingly impressed. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the book. I didn’t hate reading it or anything. I just wasn’t in love with it. It’s certainly in my top ten, though it has yet to touch the top five. This is kind of one of those books where I can’t really articulate why I didn’t love it, I just know that it didn’t quite hit the spot. On the plus side, once I've read Carrie (which I'm currently working on), I will have read his first three books! I only point it out, because publishers like to sell the first three books in sets and for a long time, I had only read 'Salem's Lot. Anyway, I've gotten off topic, let’s get into it.
Summary from the back of the book (my copy is a little odd):
“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 claim the very souls of the Torrance family.”
Here is a slightly better summary from Amazon:
“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.”
So, like I said, I wasn’t in love with the book. I did really enjoy it, but I didn’t particularly vibe with it like I did with the books that sit in my top five. Don’t get me wrong, I thought that the writing was good and that the story flowed along rather smoothly. There were a couple of slow parts, but most books have those chunks. King did a great job of displaying Jack’s slow descent into madness. The way that he would lash out was done so in a way that really brought on the anxiety. King set up a very tense story where Jack was bound to blow any second, the question was just when it would happen. I thought that the dialogue was as good as ever. I’ve always thought that King is great with dialogue. It’s a tad outdated, but the book is from 1977, so at the time, it would’ve been very fitting. Dialogue in his books have always felt very easy and realistic to me. You can believe that the characters are real, because they feel real.
King has never minced around with his characters. They always seem to possess realistic traits, he doesn’t glorify them and make them into something that they aren’t. I know that some people had issues with Danny’s dialogue particularly, but I completely disagree. I think that his speech isn’t overly-mature. Danny is a smart kid, besides that, he can (more or less) read minds. It makes sense to me that a psychic-ly sensitive kid would probably appear to have more advanced speech patterns. My point is, it seems to suit his character. Along with feeling realistic, the characters also felt very well-developed. I know that King has a tendency to break off onto tangents, but in this case, it really helped to flesh out the characters and their motivations. This felt especially true with Jack.
Now that I’ve pointed out the things that I liked, let’s move to the things that I didn’t like. First of all, most of the tangent jumping was fine and it added to the story. I did not like when the book would shift back and forth between Dick and the events that were proceeding at the Overlook, at the end of the book. The book was in the throes of the climax, and every time it would shift to Dick, it would take away from the tension. I just really did not care about his journey up to the Overlook. Wendy’s character was also just kind of meh. She was just kind of a simpering, pitiful character, who should’ve left Jack a long time ago. She got better by the end of the book, but her character never read very well. In fact, she felt like the least developed character. Jack was the most developed, but also the most insufferable. I’m pretty sure that I was supposed to view Jack with some kind of sympathy, but I really couldn’t. Even when he was being nice he was kind of a dick. Like, we get to see his inner thoughts quite often, and they’re never really nice. This makes for a good antagonist, but not a very good sympathetic character. Of course I don’t think he was a bad character (like Wendy), but we could have done with just a tad less dickery.
Overall, I did like the book, it wasn’t my favorite, but it was a good read. The concept was very interesting and creative. However, may I point out a quick plot hole? The boiler at the Overlook creeps, Watson says so in the first like 20 pages of the book. Because it creeps, Jack has to let out the pressure periodically so that it doesn’t explode. Well, when the whole Grady family died in the book (including the murderous father/caretaker), it is assumed that the boiler would still be creeping. It said in the book that when their bodies were discovered, they were frozen solid. This means that it had to have been longer than a day. If the boiler were left unattended for more than a day, there is no way it wouldn’t have exploded. By all means, the boiler should have exploded when the Grady’s died. Don’t get me wrong, I assume that the boiler must’ve been turned off (and that’s why they were frozen) but it never said that. It never mentioned anything about the boiler being turned off. So, it isn’t a big deal, just a little tidbit to consider. The book really is very good, there are some risqué parts and some slow parts, but they come together to make for a smooth, interesting read.
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