I cannot remember how it came about, but for our nightly reading, Nick chose The Shining by Stephen King. I think. Maybe it was me, but he agreed. If you’ve seen the movie, directed by Stanley Kubrick, you’ve likely heard that King was not happy with what Kubrick did to the story and his characters. Thus, I’m here to tell you the book is quite different from Kubrick’s famous film.
The Shining introduces readers to the Torrance family: Jack and Wendy, and their five-year-old son, Danny. Jack lost his job as an English teacher in Vermont after physically assaulting one of his students in the parking lot because the teen vandalized Jack’s car. It’s not like he simply snapped that day; Jack’s family was on the brink because his alcoholism was tearing them apart. In fact, readers learn that one night when Jack was drunk, he pulled his son away from some school papers and broke his arm. It’s not until a car accident that led Jack to accidentally think he and his drinking friend ran over a child on a bicycle that they both give up alcohol.
The drinking friend is well connected in various business entities, so he recommends Jack apply for the job of winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. Jack is hired, meaning he, Wendy, and Danny have to spend half a year isolated because the hotel is so remote that no one can access it once the harsh, Rocky Mountain snows start. To keep degradation at bay, Jack’s main jobs are dump the boilers and do repairs as issues happen.
Kubrick’s movie implies Jack is untrustworthy from the first scene; however, King’s novel shapes the Torrances as a loving family affected by addiction. Jack’s job provides him with not only income but dignity. Truly, much of the narrative is about living sober while plagued with regret and doubting family members.
Yet this wouldn’t be an early King novel if it didn’t add the supernatural. Danny has something called “shining,” which attracts ghosts and allows him to see them. At five, he’s terrified by them. He also has some kind of “imaginary” guide he calls Tony, who warns Danny against danger. Unfortunately, the Overlook Hotel has had its share of deaths, so while Danny (and Wendy!) teeter on leaving the Overlook before the snow comes crashing down, Jack reminds them they have no other options for survival.
The parts with Wendy are beautifully frustrating. She can’t seem to make decisions herself, so she’s listening to a boy of five to help her decide what to do. While she’s a loving mother, she relies on her child like he’s an adult because she feels trapped without her own money, a common problem for women in the 1970s, or safe family to live with if she leaves Jack.
The Shining is a wonderful look at how families navigate addiction. If someone in the family is an alcoholic who isn’t drinking, can the other members start trusting what he says? Or trust that they’re safe around him? King mashes up these questions that affect millions of people and add a little kid that is a beacon for things that go bump in the night.
Grab the Lapels 
You make it sound almost sensible, but I won’t be taken in. I don’t need ghosts to fill out a family drama.
I have tried a Stephen King, years ago, and I know he’s a respected literary figure, but his books are not for me.
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One thing that never fails to terrify me is domestic violence, and that’s a big chunk of what’s in The Shining. Stephen King implies that the father was improving and loves his family, but he suffers from alcoholism, which makes him violent toward them. And then, he also implies that the ghosts in the house exacerbate his alcoholism, pushing him over the edge, suggesting that it’s not really the father behind the horror. However, I wouldn’t try to convince you on a book like this. I do know that Stephen King is a solid writer in general, knowing what makes a good story, characters, description, etc. Therefore, I would point you in the direction of his detective novels. I haven’t read any of them, but I do know that in recent years he has veered out of the horror genre and taken up mystery.
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I wasn’t paying attention – this a novel by a guy! Your first guy review?
I’ll do some research and see if I can get a Stephen King crime from the library.
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I have a couple by guys up now, but not many. I made an announcement that I was including all authors a little while back. It looks like the main crime novels are The Hard Case Crime trilogy. Check out the synopsis and see if it’s for you!
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I have never read the book, I saw the movie and it still haunts me! One of my favorite episodes of the TV show Friends is when we find out Joey keeps The Shining in the freezer because it scares him so much 😀
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Haaaa, I did not know that about Friends. I know King hated Kubrick’s movie version, but I’m not sure that they’re so very different. I think we’re supposed to feel bad for the dad in the book because King suggests that the hotel makes him drink again, and he’s fine if only he doesn’t drink….. but he still was awful before the hotel got to him despite loving his son deep down. I’m not convinced loving someone deep down and still harming them counts for anything. Perhaps making Jack Nicholson’s character a monster from beginning to end offended King because the novel is basically about him.
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I’m not a horror or sci fan fan so she only book by King I’ve read is On Writing which should be required reading for anyone wanting to be an author! It would (hopefully) reduce the number of badly written books seeing the light of day.
Time to get off my soap box
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When I was teaching fiction writing, I would assign both King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird. I like that King encourages people to read all books, even bad ones, because when you can look at a crap novel and know you can do better, you have to at least know why you can do better, which improves your skills.
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I’ve read this! I’ve never seen the movie but I read this when I was maybe 15. I remember sitting on the kitchen floor, home alone, with all the lights on and my back firmly against the wall because I was so freaked out but wanted to know what happens! The woman in the bathtub is still very firmly ingrained in my memory, unfortunately. I feel like it was the supernatural aspect that stuck out to me most as a teenager but the story also makes a lot of sense as one about addiction.
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I think it helps to have seen the movie because it gives you a strong sense of what the hotel looks like. The woman in the tub seems much more menacing in the movie, to me, because she’s just there, harming and tricking people, whereas in the book she’s presented as a woman who died in the tub.
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Interesting. I’ve never seen the movie but it seems like you can’t escape images and ideas from it in popular culture.
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The “here’s Johnny” line has been parodied so many times that I swear everyone knows it. The line itself is an allusion to Johnny Carson, so the appeal goes back in generations and forwards when shows like Family Guy spoof it, etc.
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This is still one of my favorite King novels, and I’d love to find time to re-read it. I always heard King wasn’t happy with the movie. My son just toured the Stanley Hotel (place the Overlook was based on) last month – I’m so jealous.
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There is an amazing video on YouTube that analyzes the use of space in the movie, showing how big the hotel has to be according to reality compared to how Kubrick makes you think it’s much larger. It’s fascinating stuff that shows what an amazing filmmaker he was.
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I really need to watch that.
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I really enjoyed your review of this! I think everyone knows a bit about the plot of the film or the book (if only from Joey having to put it in the freezer in Friends, and then having to do the same with Little Women…) so it’s interesting to hear more about it. Adults relying heavily on their young children is one of those things that drives me potty in real life, so I would probably be less gracious towards Wendy than you are. Even though I am not a horror reader, I do love the way that genre fiction can explore themes in a different way from straight fiction and it sounds like this is a great example of that.
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I must have worked some magic in this review because folks seem rather excited about it despite not being horror readers. Also, you’re the second person to mention the Joey scene from Friends, which I have not seen. I love that he adds Little Women, and I can guess why.
I can imagine how frustrating it is for a pediatric nurse to see parents leaning on children for support and decision making. I knew a girl in elementary school who would drive her dad home because he was drunk.
Thanks for appreciating how horror can explore important themes; it’s not all violence and stalking killers, and I think horror can be a safe place for people to explore what it scary in real life because the page is a practice space. On the other hand, I’ve met a couple of folks recently who stopped reading horror because something frightening had happened in real life, so horror fiction has become too much.
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This is so fascinating, I had no idea this novel had this history. It sounds like King actually wrote a very thoughtful novel, but of course, that’s difficult to translate into the screen and make so popular for a wide audience. This is a super long book too, isn’t it?
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All of King’s books are super long, but they’re not difficult, so people tend to read them fast, like in a couple of days. Some of our most famous directors took amazing source material and changed it, and I’m not sure why. I love the story of how Alfred Hitchcock wanted to change a lot about Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, and the only reason the film is as close to the novel as it is is because the producer, David O. Selznick hung around on set constantly to prevent changes.
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You did do some magic in this review, partly because you explained how relevant the themes are and partly because you teased out the differences between the book and the film. I have to say I’ve not read or seen it, and despite what loulou says, I have no idea what it’s about. I haven’t seen the Joey scene in Friends. I saw one King horror film once – in the 80s – Cujo. Just hated it. But I have seen the film adaptations of three of his short stories (in Different Seasons) which are not “horror” genre and I loved them, though one of them in particular, Apt Pupil, was horrific, chilling.
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He’s branched out into other genres starting with fantasy, if I remember correctly, because his daughter wanted a fantasy story when she was little. Since then, he has done detective novels, but I’m not sure what else. Cujo makes me laugh because they used several real Saint Bernards for the film, and they were so excited and happy that the crew had to tape their happy, wagging tails to their legs!
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[…] begin to tell you how pleased as punch I was that so many of you were intrigued by my review of The Shining by Stephen King. In case you didn’t know, King wrote a sequel to that classic 1977 novel, but waited until […]
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