This is the first Stephen King novel I have read. (I have seen the movie adaptation of this, which I enjoyed very much.) I have to say, I was wondering initially why it is considered a scary book, even though I was enjoying it. I was waiting for the scares, and they just weren’t happening … for the first half. And then, as they say, all hell broke loose, and it was obvious then that what had occurred up to that point was just foreshadowing, setting the scene for what was to come.

There have been a great many comparisons made between the book and the film by Stanley Kubrick. I consider the film excellent, and interestingly I don’t find the plot significantly different from the book. There is, however, a massive difference in characterisation between the two. The character of Jack Torrance, particularly, is much more layered in the book, and consequently the reader is more invested in his struggle. He is a man with some major character flaws, which he is fighting against and doing well. He has stopped drinking and is trying to get his bad temper under control. The reader learns through flashbacks that Jack’s childhood was abusive, his own father was an alcoholic who beat his wife and children. Jack desperately does not want to become his father. He loves his family and is trying to turn things around, for them. This person walks into a hellscape (calling the Overlook Hotel a haunted house does not describe the magnitude of what it is) and this malevolent force is very good at making use of character flaws. These are chinks in Jack’s armour, and despite his best efforts, the evil finds its way through.

In that instant, kneeling there, everything came clear to him. It was not just Danny the Overlook was working on. It was working on him too. It wasn’t Danny who was the weak link, it was him. He was the vulnerable one, the one who could be bent and twisted until something snapped.

Towards the end of the story, it is Jack’s love for his family that helps him break through the hotel’s control over him. Jack’s character arc is tragic – he has made many bad mistakes, he works hard to get past them and do better, then is landed in an unwinnable fight.   

 Danny Torrance is an extremely well-written character, all the more for only being five. This is a small child who is seeing and being aware of things no small child should experience. These experiences are such that he barely even can define what he sees. When he does have a moment of understanding about the Overlook he realises his presence is fuelling it, and sees the unfairness of it, protesting ‘I’m just five!’

Here in the Overlook all times were one. There was an endless night in August of 1945, with laughter and drinks and a chosen, shining few going up and coming down in the elevator, drinking champagne and popping party favours in each other’s faces. It was a not-yet-light morning in June some twenty years later and the organisation hitters endlessly pumped shotgun shells into the torn and bleeding bodies of three men who went through their agony endlessly. In a room on the second floor a woman lolled in her tub and waited for visitors.

His perceptions into other people’s thoughts tell him way too much about the problems his parents are having, leaving the kid terrified about them divorcing. He also has a fear of being thought crazy, from an only partially understood situation where a local man in their area had some kind of breakdown and was taken to a mental hospital. He wonders if people knew about him he would be deemed to have ‘lost his marbles’ and be taken away from his family. This prompts Danny to keep quiet about many things he might otherwise have spoken about. He wants his parents to be happy, and he wants them to love him and not think he is crazy. So he puts up with being terrified himself, not mentioning the premonitions about the place he had before ever seeing it, half-understanding that the job was the only one his dad could get and they needed it. Danny is trying to be a good boy, and what comes through is that he is very good, having a supreme empathy and kindness that his ability only enhances.

Wendy is such a great character, a strong-willed woman who is definitely capable of holding her own, against Jack when needed, and against the Overlook as she begins to realise that Danny is in terrible danger. She’s a tiger mum, fighting for her child, and she will clearly lay down her life to save him (and nearly does.) Wendy’s not a saint in this story – she jumps to conclusions, unfairly blames Jack for the incident where Danny is injured by one of the ghosts (though I don’t know if ghost is really the right word), and by her own acknowledgement has inherited a little too much from her own childhood of a manipulative abusive mother. When Halloran tells Danny about his ‘shining’ he says Wendy has a bit of shining, wondering if all mothers have it. Wendy does have moments of insight that might indicate some level of ability.

In his faded tartan bathrobe and brown leather slippers with the rundown heels, his hair all in sleep corkscrews and Alfalfa cowlicks, he looked to her like an absurd twentieth century Hamlet, an indecisive figure so mesmerised by onrushing tragedy that he was helpless to divert its course or alter it in any way.

Ultimately, she is right. Jack is a victim of onrushing tragedy, and unable to avoid it. (Also, I would like to pause in appreciation of ‘sleep corkscrews and Alfalfa cowlicks’ – a great description of bed head.)

I was constantly struck by the skilful use of foreshadowing throughout the book. A good example of this is in Chapter 12, where the Torrances are being shown around the hotel as the usual staff and final customers are leaving. There is a moment when the handyman Watson reminds Jack before he leaves to check the boiler twice a day, saying “She creeps.”

She creeps, Danny thought, and the words echoed down a long and silent corridor in his mind, a corridor lined with mirrors where people seldom looked.

This tiny moment, easily overlooked, would come back in the climax as being of vital importance. The early parts of the book are haunted by Danny’s dream of being hunted by a shadowy creature yelling at him to come and ‘take his medicine’. Well before the climax the reader can safely assume who that shadowy figure is going to be. However, this foreshadowing doesn’t spoil the climax at all. The endlessly repeated costume party in itself is a clue to Danny, with the constant call to ‘unmask’. I found the climax of the book, Jack’s showdown with first Wendy, then Danny, a real page-turner (a cliché perhaps, but true.) And all the foreshadowing does not detract from Danny’s confrontation of the Overlook entity, talking to him through his father’s disintegrating psyche. It is such a frightening, exciting, and brilliantly realised moment.

(Not real! False face! I know what you are! Take off your mask!)

“You’re a mask,” Danny said. “Just a false face. The only reason the hotel needs to use you is that you aren’t as dead as the others. But when it’s done with you, you won’t be anything at all. You don’t scare me.”

I found “The Shining” to be a thrilling and exciting read. It’s construction, use of foreshadowing and inner dialogue of characters to inform events and progress the plot is masterful. The characters themselves are interesting, including Halloran (who I haven’t mentioned, but was also an excellent character). Finally, the overall atmosphere of threat posed by the Overlook Hotel (whatever it is), permeates the book with suitable menace. This is a great book, and I recommend it highly.