Book Review: The Shining by Stephen King November 7, 2008
Posted by lightnessanddark in Darkness, stephen king.Tags: bag of bones, stephen king, the shining, here's johnny, overlook hotel, redrum
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Book Review: The Shining
I’ve written before about the superiority of books to movies, but The Shining is one of those rare occasions where both the book and the movie are excellent. My recollections of the movie, which I saw on TV as a kid, consist of several key scenes – most of which ironically don’t appear in the novel. They are also, in most cases, the most famous scenes from the movie. In the book, Jack doesn’t say, “Here’s Johnny,” and the creepy little girls don’t appear in the hallway. Although these were some of the most memorable scenes of the movie, the fact that they aren’t in the book doesn’t mean the movie is superior — I’ll have to rewatch the movie before I decide which was actually better. What I remember of the movie, aside from the scenes listed above and the bathtub scene with the dead woman, is that it was really creepy. Well, I have to say, the book is also…really creepy.
I started reading The Shining the week before a scheduled business trip to Oshawa, Ontario (not far from Toronto). I knew I’d be spending three nights alone in a hotel room, so I figured what better book to take along than one about a haunted hotel. In hindsight, I was lucky I didn’t make it to any of the scary parts while I was in Oshawa. I might not have slept much if I had.
I am gifted with a powerful imagination, and it can sometimes be a mixed bag. On the one hand, I am able to write short stories and have ideas for 7 different novels rolling around in my head. On the other hand, after reading or seeing something scary, my imagination is able to really freak me out. If I’d gotten to the middle of The Shining while alone in that hotel room in Oshawa, I would have been sleeping with the lights on and avoiding the tub at all costs.
The novel The Shining is one of Stephen King’s most famous, no doubt some of the attention comes from Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film, but King’s novel would do the job even if Kubrick hadn’t cast Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, launching him into the pop culture with “Here’s Johnny!” and “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” (Also, not in the book, in case you were wondering.)
This review is about the book, so I’m going to treat the book and movie as two completely separate works, which is as it should be. The problem is, over 20 years after I saw it, I still vividly remember scenes from the movie, and I’m sure they influenced my enjoyment of the book.
So, here goes the book review…
The Shining is one of the best books written in the horror genre, period. After reading it, I have to update my Top 10 Horror Novels blog post. The only decision is where do I want to list it. I have to decide whether I liked it better than another of King’s great ghost stories, Bag of Bones. (Bag of Bones is also reportedly headed for the big screen one day, but rumors about a Bag of Bones movie have been bouncing around the internet for years, so it’s next to impossible to get any solid information.)
The Shining and Bag of Bones are both excellent novels. The Shining was scarier, but Bag of Bones had better character development, so I really don’t know where to put them right now. (Actually, I just inserted The Shining into my list, but I’m not going to give away the spot until I post my updated Top 10 Horror Novels list around the end of the year.)
The weakness I found with The Shining was this: in the beginning, I really didn’t like Jack or Wendy Torrance much. Danny gets a pass because he’s 5, but I really couldn’t relate to Jack or Wendy. This probably kept The Shining from taking over the top spot of my Top 10 Horror Novels list, but it wasn’t enough to derail my enjoyment of the novel as a whole. However, if The Shining had characters like Mike Noonan and Mattie Devore (from Bag of Bones), characters who we were really invested in, this novel would have had much more emotional impact and been off-the-charts good.
King does deliver some exceptionally creepy scenes in this novel (as the Overlook gains power, and Jack begins to lose his mind); but I also noticed a few spots of really bad writing. “He squeezed the accelerator like the breast of a much-loved woman,” was laugh-out-loud bad. I would say “What was he thinking?”, but we know exactly what he was thinking about when he wrote that. The bad lines really stood out because I haven’t found many in King’s work, even the early stuff, but other than the occasional bad line, this was a well-written page turner once things started heating up.
It was one of those novels that took a while to draw me in, so I read the first third of the novel in a week and a half, and the last two thirds in four days. Once this thing gets going, it’s hard to put it down – a sure sign of a great novel.
I highly recommend The Shining – unless you’re alone in a quiet hotel room while you read it.
9.5 out of 10
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