Jack Torrance needs to get away, anywhere will do as long as he can have some peace and quiet. He needs to forget about getting fired from his job as a teacher for a violent assault, forget about his excess drinking, forget about having broken his young sons arm in a fit of uncontrolled anger and at least try and bury deep down his seething and uncontrollable resentment that his wife knows exactly what he really is, a drunken violent bully with a temper! Five months as a caretaker in a supposedly haunted and extremely empty Colorado hotel cut off from the outside world by deep snow sounds just about right. Perhaps he can write the great American novel, perhaps he can finish his long gesturing play, or maybe just maybe he will try to murder his family!
Stephen Kings utterly fantastical supernatural novel introduces us, from page one, to one of his finest ever creations, the truly frightening Jack Torrence. On a par with the deranged nurse Annie Wilkes from Misery, Jack is a supremely complicated man who seems uncomfortable with the world around him, his high opinion of himself and his intelligent is at odds with his inability to recognise or even accept his own deep and ultimately fatal personal flaws. Jack, like al Psychopaths, sees the world in terms of himself, and sees his son and wife as merely extensions of him, they live in his world and are expected to follow the rules as he sees them. He doesn't outwardly hate them but he doesn't love or really care for them either, he just seems to accept them as a necessary inconvenience that he just has to put up with to appear normal. It's his well practised outward projection of ordinariness that sets him apart from your run of the mill homicidal killer, he's the kind of person you don't notice, the guy who mows his lawn and takes out the trash, the guy who takes his kid to the park, the guy who is always pleasant and says hello. However there is something old and ugly hiding in Jack Torrence, something from his past, something rotten, something extremely dangerous, something deadly waiting to emerge.
Although The Shining is at heart a variation on a “ghost story”, King's ability to present the reader with real and credible (if horrible) characters lifts this novel to a higher plane. Jack's tortured and often very unpleasant internal narrative peppers the text and even interrupts his own lines of dialogue and in doing so we see him in a much broader light. We see what he is saying and also know what he is really thinking in real time. We know he lies, we know he is weak and frustrated, we know he does not respect or love his wife and we know of his true feelings, those he keeps well hidden possible even from himself.
Some have said rather unfairly that it's not “very scary” or words to that effect. It is certainly true that some of the book is about Jacks early life and it does take some time to set the stage. However once set the terror builds as Jack becomes more unstable and unpredictable. The true horror of possible living with an undiagnosed and extremely dangerous psychopath who believes ghosts are communicating with him to kill his family becomes very real. As his and Danny's visions become more “real” the fight for survival intensifies as does the pace of the book. I found it very scary, not for the ghosts but Jack's inability to hold onto reality.
Whether the hotel really does have “demons” that can affect a weak and easily dominated mind or the “demons” are his own fully formed ready for use in the right circumstances is a debate for another time. King thought one way (the hotel was haunted) and that Jack was a victim. Kubrick the other (the hotel was just a hotel) and Jack was a Psychopath, however which ever way you side it's a grand ride finding out.
I have always felt that Kings earlier work (pre 1995) was his best. This his third novel is probably his second best novel after The Green Mile and that is saying something.
Enjoy.
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The Shining Massmarknadsbok – 1 Januari 2012
Engelska utgåvan
av
Stephen King
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Jack Torrance sees his stint as winter caretaker of a Colorado hotel as a way back from failure, his wife sees it as a chance to preserve their family, and their five-year-old son sees the evil waiting just for them
- Längd (tryckt bok)659 sidor
- SpråkEngelska
- UtgivareRandom House US
- Publiceringsdatum1 Januari 2012
- ISBN-100307743659
- ISBN-13978-0307743657
- Lexile-mått840L
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Produktbeskrivning
Recension
“A master storyteller.” —Los Angeles Times
“Scary! . . . Serves up horrors at a brisk, unflagging pace.” —The New York Times
“This chilling novel will haunt you, and make your blood run cold and your heart race with fear.” —Nashville Banner
“Guaranteed to frighten you into fits. . . . with a climax that is literally explosive.” —Cosmopolitan
“The most wonderfully gruesome man on the planet.” —USA Today
“An undisputed master of suspense and terror.” —The Washington Post
“[King] probably knows more about scary goings-on in confined, isolated places than anybody since Edgar Allan Poe.” —Entertainment Weekly
“He’s the author who can always make the improbable so scary you’ll feel compelled to check the locks on the front door.” —The Boston Globe
“Peerless imagination.” —The Observer (London)
“Scary! . . . Serves up horrors at a brisk, unflagging pace.” —The New York Times
“This chilling novel will haunt you, and make your blood run cold and your heart race with fear.” —Nashville Banner
“Guaranteed to frighten you into fits. . . . with a climax that is literally explosive.” —Cosmopolitan
“The most wonderfully gruesome man on the planet.” —USA Today
“An undisputed master of suspense and terror.” —The Washington Post
“[King] probably knows more about scary goings-on in confined, isolated places than anybody since Edgar Allan Poe.” —Entertainment Weekly
“He’s the author who can always make the improbable so scary you’ll feel compelled to check the locks on the front door.” —The Boston Globe
“Peerless imagination.” —The Observer (London)
Från baksidan
Before Doctor Sleep, there was The Shining, a classic of modern American horror from the undisputed master, Stephen King.
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.
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.
Om författaren
STEPHEN KING is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and an AT&T Audience Network original television series). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, and Doctor Sleep are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.
Utdrag. ©Omtryckt med tillstånd Alla rättigheter förbehållna
Excerpted from Chapter One
Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.
Ullman stood five-five, and when he moved, it was with the prissy speed that seems to be the exclusive domain of all small plump men. The part in his hair was exact, and his dark suit was sober but comforting. I am a man you can bring your problems to, that suit said to the paying customer. To the hired help it spoke more curtly: This had better be good, you. There was a red carnation in the lapel, perhaps so that no one on the street would
mistake Stuart Ullman for the local undertaker.
As he listened to Ullman speak, Jack admitted to himself that he probably could not have liked any man on that side of the desk—under the circumstances.
Ullman had asked a question he hadn’t caught. That was bad; Ullman was the type of man who would file such lapses away in a mental Rolodex for later consideration.
“I’m sorry?”
“I asked if your wife fully understood what you would be taking on here. And there’s your son, of course.” He glanced down at the application in front of him. “Daniel. Your wife isn’t a bit intimidated by the idea?”
“Wendy is an extraordinary woman.”
“And your son is also extraordinary?”
Jack smiled, a big wide PR smile. “We like to think so, I suppose. He’s quite self-reliant for a five-year-old.”
No returning smile from Ullman. He slipped Jack’s application back into a file. The file went into a drawer. The desk top was now completely bare except for a blotter, a telephone, a Tensor lamp, and an in/out basket. Both sides of the in/out were empty, too.
Ullman stood up and went to the file cabinet in the corner. “Step around the desk, if you will, Mr. Torrance. We’ll look at the hotel floor plans.”
He brought back five large sheets and set them down on the glossy walnut plane of the desk. Jack stood by his shoulder, very much aware of the scent of Ullman’s cologne. All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all came into his mind for no reason at all, and he had to clamp his tongue between his teeth to keep in a bray of laughter. Beyond the wall, faintly, came the sounds of the Overlook Hotel’s kitchen, gearing down from lunch.
“Top floor,” Ullman said briskly. “The attic. Absolutely nothing up there now but bric-a-brac. The Overlook has changed hands several times since World War II and it seems that each successive manager has put everything they don’t want up in the attic. I want rattraps and poison bait sowed around in it. Some of the third-floor chambermaids say they have heard rustling noises. I don’t believe it, not for a moment, but there mustn’t even be that one-in-a-hundred chance that a single rat inhabits the Overlook Hotel.”
Jack, who suspected that every hotel in the world had a rat or two, held his tongue.
“Of course you wouldn’t allow your son up in the attic under any circumstances.”
“No,” Jack said, and flashed the big PR smile again. Humiliating situation. Did this officious little prick actually think he would allow his son to goof around in a rattrap attic full of junk furniture and God knew what else?
Ullman whisked away the attic floor plan and put it on the bottom of the pile.
“The Overlook has one hundred and ten guest quarters,” he said in a scholarly voice. “Thirty of them, all suites, are here on the third floor. Ten in the west wing (including the Presidential Suite), ten in the center, ten more in the east wing. All of them command magnificent views.”
Could you at least spare the salestalk?
But he kept quiet. He needed the job.
Ullman put the third floor on the bottom of the pile and they studied the second floor.
“Forty rooms,” Ullman said, “thirty doubles and ten singles. And on the first floor, twenty of each. Plus three linen closets on each floor, and a storeroom which is at the extreme east end of the hotel on the second floor and the extreme west end on the first. Questions?”
Jack shook his head. Ullman whisked the second and first floors away.
“Now. Lobby level. Here in the center is the registration desk. Behind it are the offices. The lobby runs for eighty feet in either direction from the desk. Over here in the west wing is the Overlook Dining Room and the Colorado Lounge. The banquet and ballroom facility is in the east wing. Questions?”
“Only about the basement,” Jack said. “For the winter caretaker, that’s the most important level of all. Where the action is, so to speak.”
“Watson will show you all that. The basement floor plan is on the boiler room wall.” He frowned impressively, perhaps to show that as manager, he did not concern himself with such mundane aspects of the Overlook’s operation as the boiler and the plumbing. “Might not be a bad idea to put some traps down there too. Just a minute...”
He scrawled a note on a pad he took from his inner coat pocket (each sheet bore the legend From the Desk of Stuart Ullman in bold black script), tore it off, and dropped it into the out basket. It sat there looking lonesome. The pad disappeared back into Ullman’s jacket pocket like the conclusion of a magician’s trick. Now you see it, Jacky-boy, now you don’t. This guy is a real heavyweight.
They had resumed their original positions, Ullman behind the desk and Jack in front of it, interviewer and interviewee, supplicant and reluctant patron. Ullman folded his neat little hands on the desk blotter and looked directly at Jack, a small, balding man in a banker’s suit and a quiet gray tie. The flower in his lapel was balanced off by a small lapel pin on the other side. It read simply STAFF in small gold letters.
“I’ll be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Torrance. Albert Shockley is a powerful man with a large interest in the Overlook, which showed a profit this season for the first time in its history. Mr. Shockley also sits on the Board of Directors, but he is not a hotel man and he would be the first to admit this. But he has made his wishes in this caretaking matter quite obvious. He wants you hired. I will do so. But if I had been given a free hand in this matter, I would not have taken you on.”
Jack’s hands were clenched tightly in his lap, working against each other, sweating. Officious little prick, officious little prick, officious—
“I don’t believe you care much for me, Mr. Torrance. I don’t care. Certainly your feelings toward me play no part in my own belief that you are not right for the job. During the season that runs from May fifteenth to September thirtieth, the Overlook employs one hun- dred and ten people full-time; one for every room in the hotel, you might say. I don’t think many of them like me and I suspect that some of them think I’m a bit of a bastard. They would be correct in their judgment of my character. I have to be a bit of a bastard to run this hotel in the manner it deserves.”
He looked at Jack for comment, and Jack flashed the PR smile again, large and insultingly toothy.
Ullman said: “The Overlook was built in the years 1907 to 1909. The closest town is Sidewinder, forty miles east of here over roads that are closed from sometime in late October or November until sometime in April. A man named Robert Townley Watson built it, the grandfather of our present maintenance man. Vanderbilts have stayed here, and Rockefellers, and Astors, and Du Ponts. Four Presidents have stayed in the Presidential Suite. Wilson, Harding, Roosevelt, and Nixon.”
“I wouldn’t be too proud of Harding and Nixon,” Jack murmured.
Ullman frowned but went on regardless. “It proved too much for Mr. Watson, and he sold the hotel in 1915. It was sold again in 1922, in 1929, in 1936. It stood vacant until the end of World War II, when it was purchased and completely renovated by Horace Derwent, millionaire inventor, pilot, film producer, and entrepreneur.”
“I know the name,” Jack said.
“Yes. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold... except the Overlook. He funneled over a million dollars into it before the first postwar guest ever stepped through its doors, turning a decrepit relic into a show- place. It was Derwent who added the roque court I saw you admiring when you arrived.”
“Roque? ”
“A British forebear of our croquet, Mr. Torrance. Croquet is bastardized roque. According to legend, Derwent learned the game from his social secretary and fell completely in love with it. Ours may be the finest roque court in America.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Jack said gravely. A roque court, a topiary full of hedge animals out front, what next? A life-sized Uncle Wiggily game behind the equipment shed? He was getting very tired of Mr. Stuart Ullman, but he could see that Ullman wasn’t done. Ullman was going to have his say, every last word of it.
“When he had lost three million, Derwent sold it to a group of California investors. Their experience with the Overlook was equally bad. Just not hotel people.
“In 1970, Mr. Shockley and a group of his associates bought the hotel and turned its management over to me. We have also run in the red for several years, but I’m happy to say that the trust of the present owners in me has never wavered. Last year we broke even. And this year the Overlook’s accounts were written in black ink for the first time in almost seven decades.”
Jack supposed that this fussy little man’s pride was justified, and then his original dislike washed over him again in a wave.
He said: “I see no connection between the Overlook’s admittedly colorful history and your feeling that I’m wrong for the post, Mr. Ullman.”
“One reason that the Overlook has lost so much money lies in the depreciation that occurs each winter. It shortens the profit margin a great deal more than you might believe, Mr. Torrance. The winters are fantastically cruel. In order to cope with the problem, I’ve installed a full-time winter caretaker to run the boiler and to heat different parts of the hotel on a daily rotating basis. To repair breakage as it occurs and to do repairs, so the elements can’t get a foothold. To be constantly alert to any and every contingency. During our first winter I hired a family instead of a single man. There was a tragedy. A horrible tragedy.”
Ullman looked at Jack coolly and appraisingly.
“I made a mistake. I admit it freely. The man was a drunk.”
Jack felt a slow, hot grin—the total antithesis of the toothy PR grin—stretch across his mouth. “Is that it? I’m surprised Al didn’t tell you. I’ve retired.”
“Yes, Mr. Shockley told me you no longer drink. He also told me about your last job... your last position of trust, shall we say? You were teaching English in a Vermont prep school. You lost your temper, I don’t believe I need to be any more specific than that. But I do happen to believe that Grady’s case has a bearing, and that is why I have brought the matter of your... uh, previous history into the conversation. During the winter of 1970–71, after we had refurbished the Overlook but before our first season, I hired this... this unfortunate named Delbert Grady. He moved into the quarters you and your wife and son will be sharing. He had a wife and two daughters. I had reservations, the main ones being the harshness of the winter season and the fact that the Gradys would be cut off from the outside world for five to six months.”
“But that’s not really true, is it? There are telephones here, and probably a citizen’s band radio as well. And the Rocky Mountain National Park is within helicopter range and surely a piece of ground that big must have a chopper or two.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Ullman said. “The hotel does have a two-way radio that Mr. Watson will show you, along with a list of the correct frequencies to broadcast on if you need help. The telephone lines between here and Sidewinder are still aboveground, and they go down almost every winter at some point or other and are apt to stay down for three weeks to a month and a half. There is a snowmobile in the equipment shed also.”
“Then the place really isn’t cut off.”
Mr. Ullman looked pained. “Suppose your son or your wife tripped on the stairs and fractured his or her skull, Mr. Torrance. Would you think the place was cut off then?”
Jack saw the point. A snowmobile running at top speed could get you down to Sidewinder in an hour and a half... maybe. A helicopter from the Parks Rescue Service could get up here in three hours... under optimum conditions. In a blizzard it would never even be able to lift off and you couldn’t hope to run a snowmobile at top speed, even if you dared take a seriously injured person out into temperatures that might be twenty-five below—or forty-five below, if you added in the wind chill factor.
“In the case of Grady,” Ullman said, “I reasoned much as Mr. Shockley seems to have done in your case. Solitude can be damaging in itself. Better for the man to have his family with him. If there was trouble, I thought, the odds were very high that it would be something less urgent than a fractured skull or an accident with one of the power tools or some sort of convulsion. A serious case of the flu, pneumonia, a broken arm, even appendicitis. Any of those things would have left enough time.
“I suspect that what happened came as a result of too much cheap whiskey, of which Grady had laid in a generous supply, unbeknownst to me, and a curious condition which the old-timers call cabin fever. Do you know the term?” Ullman offered a patronizing little smile, ready to explain as soon as Jack admitted his ignorance, and Jack was happy to respond quickly and crisply.
“It’s a slang term for the claustrophobic reaction that can occur when people are shut in together over long periods of time. The feeling of claustrophobia is externalized as dislike for the people you happen to be shut in with. In extreme cases it can result in hallucinations and violence—murder has been done over such minor things as a burned meal or an argument about whose turn it is to do the dishes.”
Ullman looked rather nonplussed, which did Jack a world of good. He decided to press a little further, but silently promised Wendy he would stay cool.
“I suspect you did make a mistake at that. Did he hurt them?”
“He killed them, Mr. Torrance, and then committed suicide. He murdered the little girls with a hatchet, his wife with a shotgun, and himself the same way. His leg was broken. Undoubtedly so drunk he fell downstairs.”
Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.
Ullman stood five-five, and when he moved, it was with the prissy speed that seems to be the exclusive domain of all small plump men. The part in his hair was exact, and his dark suit was sober but comforting. I am a man you can bring your problems to, that suit said to the paying customer. To the hired help it spoke more curtly: This had better be good, you. There was a red carnation in the lapel, perhaps so that no one on the street would
mistake Stuart Ullman for the local undertaker.
As he listened to Ullman speak, Jack admitted to himself that he probably could not have liked any man on that side of the desk—under the circumstances.
Ullman had asked a question he hadn’t caught. That was bad; Ullman was the type of man who would file such lapses away in a mental Rolodex for later consideration.
“I’m sorry?”
“I asked if your wife fully understood what you would be taking on here. And there’s your son, of course.” He glanced down at the application in front of him. “Daniel. Your wife isn’t a bit intimidated by the idea?”
“Wendy is an extraordinary woman.”
“And your son is also extraordinary?”
Jack smiled, a big wide PR smile. “We like to think so, I suppose. He’s quite self-reliant for a five-year-old.”
No returning smile from Ullman. He slipped Jack’s application back into a file. The file went into a drawer. The desk top was now completely bare except for a blotter, a telephone, a Tensor lamp, and an in/out basket. Both sides of the in/out were empty, too.
Ullman stood up and went to the file cabinet in the corner. “Step around the desk, if you will, Mr. Torrance. We’ll look at the hotel floor plans.”
He brought back five large sheets and set them down on the glossy walnut plane of the desk. Jack stood by his shoulder, very much aware of the scent of Ullman’s cologne. All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all came into his mind for no reason at all, and he had to clamp his tongue between his teeth to keep in a bray of laughter. Beyond the wall, faintly, came the sounds of the Overlook Hotel’s kitchen, gearing down from lunch.
“Top floor,” Ullman said briskly. “The attic. Absolutely nothing up there now but bric-a-brac. The Overlook has changed hands several times since World War II and it seems that each successive manager has put everything they don’t want up in the attic. I want rattraps and poison bait sowed around in it. Some of the third-floor chambermaids say they have heard rustling noises. I don’t believe it, not for a moment, but there mustn’t even be that one-in-a-hundred chance that a single rat inhabits the Overlook Hotel.”
Jack, who suspected that every hotel in the world had a rat or two, held his tongue.
“Of course you wouldn’t allow your son up in the attic under any circumstances.”
“No,” Jack said, and flashed the big PR smile again. Humiliating situation. Did this officious little prick actually think he would allow his son to goof around in a rattrap attic full of junk furniture and God knew what else?
Ullman whisked away the attic floor plan and put it on the bottom of the pile.
“The Overlook has one hundred and ten guest quarters,” he said in a scholarly voice. “Thirty of them, all suites, are here on the third floor. Ten in the west wing (including the Presidential Suite), ten in the center, ten more in the east wing. All of them command magnificent views.”
Could you at least spare the salestalk?
But he kept quiet. He needed the job.
Ullman put the third floor on the bottom of the pile and they studied the second floor.
“Forty rooms,” Ullman said, “thirty doubles and ten singles. And on the first floor, twenty of each. Plus three linen closets on each floor, and a storeroom which is at the extreme east end of the hotel on the second floor and the extreme west end on the first. Questions?”
Jack shook his head. Ullman whisked the second and first floors away.
“Now. Lobby level. Here in the center is the registration desk. Behind it are the offices. The lobby runs for eighty feet in either direction from the desk. Over here in the west wing is the Overlook Dining Room and the Colorado Lounge. The banquet and ballroom facility is in the east wing. Questions?”
“Only about the basement,” Jack said. “For the winter caretaker, that’s the most important level of all. Where the action is, so to speak.”
“Watson will show you all that. The basement floor plan is on the boiler room wall.” He frowned impressively, perhaps to show that as manager, he did not concern himself with such mundane aspects of the Overlook’s operation as the boiler and the plumbing. “Might not be a bad idea to put some traps down there too. Just a minute...”
He scrawled a note on a pad he took from his inner coat pocket (each sheet bore the legend From the Desk of Stuart Ullman in bold black script), tore it off, and dropped it into the out basket. It sat there looking lonesome. The pad disappeared back into Ullman’s jacket pocket like the conclusion of a magician’s trick. Now you see it, Jacky-boy, now you don’t. This guy is a real heavyweight.
They had resumed their original positions, Ullman behind the desk and Jack in front of it, interviewer and interviewee, supplicant and reluctant patron. Ullman folded his neat little hands on the desk blotter and looked directly at Jack, a small, balding man in a banker’s suit and a quiet gray tie. The flower in his lapel was balanced off by a small lapel pin on the other side. It read simply STAFF in small gold letters.
“I’ll be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Torrance. Albert Shockley is a powerful man with a large interest in the Overlook, which showed a profit this season for the first time in its history. Mr. Shockley also sits on the Board of Directors, but he is not a hotel man and he would be the first to admit this. But he has made his wishes in this caretaking matter quite obvious. He wants you hired. I will do so. But if I had been given a free hand in this matter, I would not have taken you on.”
Jack’s hands were clenched tightly in his lap, working against each other, sweating. Officious little prick, officious little prick, officious—
“I don’t believe you care much for me, Mr. Torrance. I don’t care. Certainly your feelings toward me play no part in my own belief that you are not right for the job. During the season that runs from May fifteenth to September thirtieth, the Overlook employs one hun- dred and ten people full-time; one for every room in the hotel, you might say. I don’t think many of them like me and I suspect that some of them think I’m a bit of a bastard. They would be correct in their judgment of my character. I have to be a bit of a bastard to run this hotel in the manner it deserves.”
He looked at Jack for comment, and Jack flashed the PR smile again, large and insultingly toothy.
Ullman said: “The Overlook was built in the years 1907 to 1909. The closest town is Sidewinder, forty miles east of here over roads that are closed from sometime in late October or November until sometime in April. A man named Robert Townley Watson built it, the grandfather of our present maintenance man. Vanderbilts have stayed here, and Rockefellers, and Astors, and Du Ponts. Four Presidents have stayed in the Presidential Suite. Wilson, Harding, Roosevelt, and Nixon.”
“I wouldn’t be too proud of Harding and Nixon,” Jack murmured.
Ullman frowned but went on regardless. “It proved too much for Mr. Watson, and he sold the hotel in 1915. It was sold again in 1922, in 1929, in 1936. It stood vacant until the end of World War II, when it was purchased and completely renovated by Horace Derwent, millionaire inventor, pilot, film producer, and entrepreneur.”
“I know the name,” Jack said.
“Yes. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold... except the Overlook. He funneled over a million dollars into it before the first postwar guest ever stepped through its doors, turning a decrepit relic into a show- place. It was Derwent who added the roque court I saw you admiring when you arrived.”
“Roque? ”
“A British forebear of our croquet, Mr. Torrance. Croquet is bastardized roque. According to legend, Derwent learned the game from his social secretary and fell completely in love with it. Ours may be the finest roque court in America.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Jack said gravely. A roque court, a topiary full of hedge animals out front, what next? A life-sized Uncle Wiggily game behind the equipment shed? He was getting very tired of Mr. Stuart Ullman, but he could see that Ullman wasn’t done. Ullman was going to have his say, every last word of it.
“When he had lost three million, Derwent sold it to a group of California investors. Their experience with the Overlook was equally bad. Just not hotel people.
“In 1970, Mr. Shockley and a group of his associates bought the hotel and turned its management over to me. We have also run in the red for several years, but I’m happy to say that the trust of the present owners in me has never wavered. Last year we broke even. And this year the Overlook’s accounts were written in black ink for the first time in almost seven decades.”
Jack supposed that this fussy little man’s pride was justified, and then his original dislike washed over him again in a wave.
He said: “I see no connection between the Overlook’s admittedly colorful history and your feeling that I’m wrong for the post, Mr. Ullman.”
“One reason that the Overlook has lost so much money lies in the depreciation that occurs each winter. It shortens the profit margin a great deal more than you might believe, Mr. Torrance. The winters are fantastically cruel. In order to cope with the problem, I’ve installed a full-time winter caretaker to run the boiler and to heat different parts of the hotel on a daily rotating basis. To repair breakage as it occurs and to do repairs, so the elements can’t get a foothold. To be constantly alert to any and every contingency. During our first winter I hired a family instead of a single man. There was a tragedy. A horrible tragedy.”
Ullman looked at Jack coolly and appraisingly.
“I made a mistake. I admit it freely. The man was a drunk.”
Jack felt a slow, hot grin—the total antithesis of the toothy PR grin—stretch across his mouth. “Is that it? I’m surprised Al didn’t tell you. I’ve retired.”
“Yes, Mr. Shockley told me you no longer drink. He also told me about your last job... your last position of trust, shall we say? You were teaching English in a Vermont prep school. You lost your temper, I don’t believe I need to be any more specific than that. But I do happen to believe that Grady’s case has a bearing, and that is why I have brought the matter of your... uh, previous history into the conversation. During the winter of 1970–71, after we had refurbished the Overlook but before our first season, I hired this... this unfortunate named Delbert Grady. He moved into the quarters you and your wife and son will be sharing. He had a wife and two daughters. I had reservations, the main ones being the harshness of the winter season and the fact that the Gradys would be cut off from the outside world for five to six months.”
“But that’s not really true, is it? There are telephones here, and probably a citizen’s band radio as well. And the Rocky Mountain National Park is within helicopter range and surely a piece of ground that big must have a chopper or two.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Ullman said. “The hotel does have a two-way radio that Mr. Watson will show you, along with a list of the correct frequencies to broadcast on if you need help. The telephone lines between here and Sidewinder are still aboveground, and they go down almost every winter at some point or other and are apt to stay down for three weeks to a month and a half. There is a snowmobile in the equipment shed also.”
“Then the place really isn’t cut off.”
Mr. Ullman looked pained. “Suppose your son or your wife tripped on the stairs and fractured his or her skull, Mr. Torrance. Would you think the place was cut off then?”
Jack saw the point. A snowmobile running at top speed could get you down to Sidewinder in an hour and a half... maybe. A helicopter from the Parks Rescue Service could get up here in three hours... under optimum conditions. In a blizzard it would never even be able to lift off and you couldn’t hope to run a snowmobile at top speed, even if you dared take a seriously injured person out into temperatures that might be twenty-five below—or forty-five below, if you added in the wind chill factor.
“In the case of Grady,” Ullman said, “I reasoned much as Mr. Shockley seems to have done in your case. Solitude can be damaging in itself. Better for the man to have his family with him. If there was trouble, I thought, the odds were very high that it would be something less urgent than a fractured skull or an accident with one of the power tools or some sort of convulsion. A serious case of the flu, pneumonia, a broken arm, even appendicitis. Any of those things would have left enough time.
“I suspect that what happened came as a result of too much cheap whiskey, of which Grady had laid in a generous supply, unbeknownst to me, and a curious condition which the old-timers call cabin fever. Do you know the term?” Ullman offered a patronizing little smile, ready to explain as soon as Jack admitted his ignorance, and Jack was happy to respond quickly and crisply.
“It’s a slang term for the claustrophobic reaction that can occur when people are shut in together over long periods of time. The feeling of claustrophobia is externalized as dislike for the people you happen to be shut in with. In extreme cases it can result in hallucinations and violence—murder has been done over such minor things as a burned meal or an argument about whose turn it is to do the dishes.”
Ullman looked rather nonplussed, which did Jack a world of good. He decided to press a little further, but silently promised Wendy he would stay cool.
“I suspect you did make a mistake at that. Did he hurt them?”
“He killed them, Mr. Torrance, and then committed suicide. He murdered the little girls with a hatchet, his wife with a shotgun, and himself the same way. His leg was broken. Undoubtedly so drunk he fell downstairs.”
Produktinformation
- Utgivare : Random House US; 1:a utgåvan (1 Januari 2012)
- Språk : Engelska
- Massmarknadsbok : 659 sidor
- ISBN-10 : 0307743659
- ISBN-13 : 978-0307743657
- Rangordning för bästsäljare: #44,224 i Böcker (Visa Topp 100 i Böcker)
- #74 i Spökhistorier
- #142 i Övernaturliga thrillers
- #4,476 i Litteratur
- Kundrecensioner:
Kundrecensioner
4,8 av 5 stjärnor
4,8 av 5
14 012 övergripande betyg
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G. Robinson
5,0 av 5 stjärnor
Almost perfect.
Recenserad i Storbritannien den 29 september 201830 människor tyckte detta var till hjälp
Rapportera missbruk
Översätt omdöme till Svenska

Michael P Crouch.
2,0 av 5 stjärnor
Read War and Peace instead.
Recenserad i Storbritannien den 30 september 2019
Having watched Stanley Kubrick's film 'The Shining' several times I was persuaded by all the enthusiastic revues (the Book's better than the Film) to read the Stephen King novel it's based on. Lets be clear about this, I'm not adverse to long novels, I read Leo Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' (1400 pages) in my twenties, (a long time ago) but whereas Tolstoy's novel covered a vast amount of material, plus very interesting characters, King's book is exasperatingly 'long winded' more than half it's length could of been trimmed to better effect. I had assumed the 'scary bits' in the movie were taken from the book, when in fact none of them were, topiary animals coming to life 'aren't' scary, though Mr King obviously thinks they are, reviving them again and again throughout the novel undermining what tension there is in the book and culminating in a ludicrous/hilarious encounter between Hallorann (arriving at the 'Overlook' to confront a very 'real' madman) and a 'HEDGELION !!!' Fire extinguisher's aren't scary either in fact unforgivably King's book isn't particularly frightening. So I'm going to state (blasphemously) that the film IS better than the book !! ......... try hedgehogs next time ...

Jane
5,0 av 5 stjärnor
Yes its creepy. Yes it scared me. Yes I loved it.
Recenserad i Indien 🇮🇳 den 12 november 2017
My first Stephen King read. And I don't think I'll be reading another one anytime soon. Because this book gave me the creeps.
There have been so many books that left me disappointed despite being hyped and loved. And only very few that did live upto my expectations. Clearly, THE SHINING falls in the latter category. I had never read a horror-thriller book. I was always curious about how a book had the capability of evoking creepy disturbing thoughts in your head and leave you scared. THE SHINING made me experience all that. And that's why I loved it so much.
There have been so many books that left me disappointed despite being hyped and loved. And only very few that did live upto my expectations. Clearly, THE SHINING falls in the latter category. I had never read a horror-thriller book. I was always curious about how a book had the capability of evoking creepy disturbing thoughts in your head and leave you scared. THE SHINING made me experience all that. And that's why I loved it so much.


Jane
Recenserad i Indien 🇮🇳 den 12 november 2017
There have been so many books that left me disappointed despite being hyped and loved. And only very few that did live upto my expectations. Clearly, THE SHINING falls in the latter category. I had never read a horror-thriller book. I was always curious about how a book had the capability of evoking creepy disturbing thoughts in your head and leave you scared. THE SHINING made me experience all that. And that's why I loved it so much.
Bilder i den här recensionen


Adnan Soysal
3,0 av 5 stjärnor
Genealogy of Psychology
Recenserad i Storbritannien den 13 september 2020
This is my sixth (and the last) book of Stephen King in row.
I am bit tired of reading endless side stories and characters with empty dialogues with the same Middle Class American English.
They are absolute disengager. (examples: IT, THE STAND (uncut version) )
However, this novel is sort of free of them because it is taking place in a closed environment among a few people.
There is not much space to introduce unrelated characters with loads of side dialogues, descriptions.
SK's narrative is good when he sticks to a one line of story flow, which is usually in a suspense sphere, and a few characters.
When I watched The Shining (an adaptation movie), my initial view was that it was horror / thriller movie that makes your hair stand on.
But when I read the book, I felt that movie was missing very important moral story; Genealogy of psychology.
Moral story of the book is what parents are doing to their kids is what their own parents did to them.
This is wonderfully put by Wendy's (Danny's mother) thought
In fact, weird suspense coming from of Jack's (Danny's father) abusive character starts from the right beginning before they move to the hotel.
Same goes for his mother's troubles coming from her own mother.
In fact, Jack's abuse reaches its climax at the hotel.
His is possessed by the "evil" spirit of the hotel.
But maybe, Jack was long ago possessed as a result of his trauma by his father.
Maybe he was going to the same thing on another place.
I think SK's success in horror come from the his narration of his dream/nightmares instead he is writing a horror fiction out of blue air. (That would feel always artificial)
Horror dreams are always weird, awkward, unclear, aren't they?
And that's is also what you feel in SK's novels. I think The Shining could be best example of it.
And I think what makes SK's books selling millions is that his weird, awkward dreams coupled with his ferocious story telling.
I am bit tired of reading endless side stories and characters with empty dialogues with the same Middle Class American English.
They are absolute disengager. (examples: IT, THE STAND (uncut version) )
However, this novel is sort of free of them because it is taking place in a closed environment among a few people.
There is not much space to introduce unrelated characters with loads of side dialogues, descriptions.
SK's narrative is good when he sticks to a one line of story flow, which is usually in a suspense sphere, and a few characters.
When I watched The Shining (an adaptation movie), my initial view was that it was horror / thriller movie that makes your hair stand on.
But when I read the book, I felt that movie was missing very important moral story; Genealogy of psychology.
Moral story of the book is what parents are doing to their kids is what their own parents did to them.
This is wonderfully put by Wendy's (Danny's mother) thought
In fact, weird suspense coming from of Jack's (Danny's father) abusive character starts from the right beginning before they move to the hotel.
Same goes for his mother's troubles coming from her own mother.
In fact, Jack's abuse reaches its climax at the hotel.
His is possessed by the "evil" spirit of the hotel.
But maybe, Jack was long ago possessed as a result of his trauma by his father.
Maybe he was going to the same thing on another place.
I think SK's success in horror come from the his narration of his dream/nightmares instead he is writing a horror fiction out of blue air. (That would feel always artificial)
Horror dreams are always weird, awkward, unclear, aren't they?
And that's is also what you feel in SK's novels. I think The Shining could be best example of it.
And I think what makes SK's books selling millions is that his weird, awkward dreams coupled with his ferocious story telling.


Adnan Soysal
Recenserad i Storbritannien den 13 september 2020
I am bit tired of reading endless side stories and characters with empty dialogues with the same Middle Class American English.
They are absolute disengager. (examples: IT, THE STAND (uncut version) )
However, this novel is sort of free of them because it is taking place in a closed environment among a few people.
There is not much space to introduce unrelated characters with loads of side dialogues, descriptions.
SK's narrative is good when he sticks to a one line of story flow, which is usually in a suspense sphere, and a few characters.
When I watched The Shining (an adaptation movie), my initial view was that it was horror / thriller movie that makes your hair stand on.
But when I read the book, I felt that movie was missing very important moral story; Genealogy of psychology.
Moral story of the book is what parents are doing to their kids is what their own parents did to them.
This is wonderfully put by Wendy's (Danny's mother) thought
In fact, weird suspense coming from of Jack's (Danny's father) abusive character starts from the right beginning before they move to the hotel.
Same goes for his mother's troubles coming from her own mother.
In fact, Jack's abuse reaches its climax at the hotel.
His is possessed by the "evil" spirit of the hotel.
But maybe, Jack was long ago possessed as a result of his trauma by his father.
Maybe he was going to the same thing on another place.
I think SK's success in horror come from the his narration of his dream/nightmares instead he is writing a horror fiction out of blue air. (That would feel always artificial)
Horror dreams are always weird, awkward, unclear, aren't they?
And that's is also what you feel in SK's novels. I think The Shining could be best example of it.
And I think what makes SK's books selling millions is that his weird, awkward dreams coupled with his ferocious story telling.
Bilder i den här recensionen


Richa Mehndiratta
4,0 av 5 stjärnor
#ReadavorousReview
Recenserad i Indien 🇮🇳 den 3 oktober 2019
To begin with it took me three weeks to read this novel. I was scared to bits and I still am. NOT recommending this book for the weak hearts!
The book begins with the introduction of the “Torrance family” that has Jack, Wendy and their five year-old son Danny. Jack is talented but not successful as a writer. His alcoholism and temper made him lose his job and has nearly destroyed an ability he had to earn a living. He gets his last chance, through the offices of an old friend, which is to work as a caretaker in the “Outlook Hotel”.
During the winter months, the hotel gets covered in snow and is inaccessible, Jack and his family sign the four months contract of complete isolation. As an added warning by one of the employees, Jack was told that the previous caretaker Grady had gone crazy with cabin fever and killed his wife and two daughters and then himself. Knowing that he has no other options, Jack agrees to take the job in the hopes that when spring comes, his play will be completed and the family will be able to make a fresh start.
A famous horror novel, “The Shining” has the ability to scare its readers. The book is not very violent, but there are many jump scares and disturbing accounts, many of which may be too frightening for the fresh readers. It deals with themes of demonic possession and maintains an unsettling atmosphere throughout.
Lastly, I’m a big fan of horror movies and novels, but this is quite possibly the scariest I’ve ever read. This is not a gory, jump-scare heavy, fright fest, it’s a slow burn movie that doesn’t need those things to scare you.
#A Great Masterpiece! No wonder Stephen King is a “PRO” in horror writing!
The book begins with the introduction of the “Torrance family” that has Jack, Wendy and their five year-old son Danny. Jack is talented but not successful as a writer. His alcoholism and temper made him lose his job and has nearly destroyed an ability he had to earn a living. He gets his last chance, through the offices of an old friend, which is to work as a caretaker in the “Outlook Hotel”.
During the winter months, the hotel gets covered in snow and is inaccessible, Jack and his family sign the four months contract of complete isolation. As an added warning by one of the employees, Jack was told that the previous caretaker Grady had gone crazy with cabin fever and killed his wife and two daughters and then himself. Knowing that he has no other options, Jack agrees to take the job in the hopes that when spring comes, his play will be completed and the family will be able to make a fresh start.
A famous horror novel, “The Shining” has the ability to scare its readers. The book is not very violent, but there are many jump scares and disturbing accounts, many of which may be too frightening for the fresh readers. It deals with themes of demonic possession and maintains an unsettling atmosphere throughout.
Lastly, I’m a big fan of horror movies and novels, but this is quite possibly the scariest I’ve ever read. This is not a gory, jump-scare heavy, fright fest, it’s a slow burn movie that doesn’t need those things to scare you.
#A Great Masterpiece! No wonder Stephen King is a “PRO” in horror writing!