(BOOK REVIEW)

About the Book

Jack Torrance is a fine man. He loves his wife and his son Danny with all his heart but he is a product of an abusive father, and has a tendency to lash out when angry (and drunk)–even at those he loves. His violent outbursts cost him his teaching job, and almost cost him his marriage.

He takes a job at The Overlook, a hotel set high in the Colorado mountains, as a caretaker during the winter months while the hotel is closed, hoping the time of seclusion will help him and his family to reconnect and rebuild.

Danny is only five years old but in the words of old Mr. Hallorann he is a ‘shiner’, aglow with psychic voltage. When his father becomes caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, Danny’s visions grow out of control.

As winter closes in and blizzards cut them off, the hotel seems to develop a life of its own. It is meant to be empty.

So who is the lady in Room 217?  

And who are the masked guests going up and down in the elevator?

And why do the hedges shaped like animals seem so alive?

And what is REDRUM?

Somewhere, somehow, there is an evil force in the hotel – and that too is beginning to SHINE…

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Monsters are real, and Ghosts are real, too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win.

Stephen King

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What I think…

Before anything… I wanted to include an excerpt from F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

Rachel: Hmm. (she opens the freezer) Umm, why do you have a copy of          The Shining in your freezer?

Joey: Oh, I was reading it last night, and I got scared, so.

Rachel: But ah, you’re safe from it if it’s in the freezer?

Joey: Well, safer. Y’know, I mean I never start reading The Shining, without making sure we’ve got plenty of room in the freezer, y’know.

Rachel: How often do you read it?

Joey: Haven’t you ever read the same book over and over again?

Rachel: Well, umm, I guess I read Little Women more than once. But I mean that’s a classic, what’s so great about The Shining?

Joey: The question should be Rach, what is not so great about The Shining. Okay? And the answer would be: nothing. All right? This is like the scariest book ever. I bet it’s way better than that classic of yours. 

Joey’s view about the book pretty much sums it all up. But since it’s about my views, so, a classic horror by one of the bestselling writers in the world. Why I picked this one was just to know whether reading a horror story can give you the chills, since movies doesn’t scare me much and personally I give more importance to books. ‘The Shining’, considered as the scariest book ever, I went for it.

I got my answers when I read the book. You are not scared but you feel the fear. You quiver when there is even a slightest movement or sound when you are reading it. There were multiple times when that happened with me. But I enjoyed that too.

Stephen King takes you inside the minds of the characters, with his art of storytelling. You feel everything the characters go through, the fear, the tension, the panic, the relief – everything.

The story draws you in and it is impossible to put down. Threatening and unsettling yet you keep on reading. It possesses all the necessary frightening elements that will send shivers down the spine.

But it is not just a horror story and that’s the brilliance of it. The story is somewhere in between the supernatural and psychotic.  It tells us that there is a Monster inside us and also an Angel and either of them can win. Often the Angel wins, in spite of all odds, which is another truth. Stephen King has thus made the story more realistic i.e. complex and thus difficult than making it simple. He could have made a competent story with a killer motivated to his crimes by supernatural forces but chose a killer that might be doing it because of personal grief and past experiences as well as the ghostly forces.

Basically, a must read novel for anyone but to those who scare easy, it’s just a story and not real, remember that and read...

To buy a copy click on the cover of the book above. ^_^

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