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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Populäraste recensionerna från andra länder
Jane
Yes its creepy. Yes it scared me. Yes I loved it.
Recenserad i Indien 🇮🇳 den 12 november 2017
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.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
Michael P Crouch.
Read War and Peace instead.
Recenserad i Storbritannien den 30 september 2019
Adnan Soysal
Genealogy of Psychology
Recenserad i Storbritannien den 13 september 2020
Genealogy of Psychology
Recenserad i Storbritannien den 13 september 2020
This is my sixth (and the last) book of Stephen King in row.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.
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