The Shining
The Shining series, Book 1
Stephen King
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Frustrated in his writing efforts and fired from his teaching job, recovering alcoholic Jack Torrance knows that his latest job - live-in winter caretaker for a Colorado luxury resort, the Overlook Hotel - is likely his last chance, both for himself and his failing marriage. Being snowed in for months might be trying, but it just may be what he needs to rebuild his relationship (and trust) with his wife Wendy and young boy Dan. But the Overlook has a long and checkered history, and shadows just beneath the surface of reality... shadows that his son's unusual gifts waken...
REVIEW: Like some other King novels, this classic horror story explores the generational impact and lifelong scars of abuse - substance abuse, physical abuse, and psychological abuse - and whether it's ever possible to outrun the demons handed down from our elders. Jack is a man coming apart long before he sets foot inside the haunted hotel, a simmering stew of unhealed scars and resentments and self-hatred that he tried to medicate away with alcohol for too long. His marriage already hangs by a thread, trust irrevocably damaged after a drunken incident with his son that Wendy witnessed, for all that the boy Danny still sees Jack as the hero of his life. Wendy also comes from a bad place, struggling with feelings of inadequacy and jealousy. And while both love their son dearly, they can't help feeling like they don't understand him and his unusual ways, ways that go far beyond having an imaginary friend "Tony" who shows him things he could not possibly know. As for Danny, he's a kid struggling with burdens that would crush the average adult, trying to cope with abilities he doesn't fully understand on top of knowledge he shouldn't have - knowledge of the dark word "divorce" that flits through his parents' heads too often, knowledge of the darkness in the Overlook, and more. The hotel almost doesn't even need supernatural influence to set the ball rolling toward disaster, and yet it becomes a malevolent character on its own, delighting in tormenting its new toys with dreams and hallucinations and unearthing the darkest of dark ideas from their psyches. Trouble builds slowly and steadily as the winter sets in and options for escape dwindle, with Jack's mind slowly cracking from internal and external pressures, Wendy trying and failing to hold onto the man she loves (or the version of him she loves) and protect her son, and Dan under constant mental assault from the Overlook's evil, precognitive dreams, and the fraying sanity of his parents. The whole makes for an enjoyably dark tale.
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