THE SHINING: THIS INHUMAN PLACE MAKES HUMAN MONSTERS
If you have seen the movie or the Simpson’s movie parody, you may think you know the story of The Shining. You might think you know what you’re in for, notwithstanding the fact that movies always vary a little from their source material.
You have no idea what you’re in for.
The similarities between The Shining book and The Shining movie are: the Torrance family is left alone to care for the Overlook Hotel during the closed winter months. There is something wrong with room 217. Danny has ‘the shining’, an impressive telepathic power.
That, my friends, is it.
If you wish to enjoy The Shining book spoiler-free, then this is all you need to know before going and picking that book up.
“Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win.”
HEDGE LIONS
Honestly, I don’t know where to begin with this. I am still reeling from the multitudinous ways that the movie set me up with such completely different expectations about this book. I expected something…dull, frankly. A slow creep with a few ghosts until Jack goes crazy and tries to kill everyone. I expected the woman in 217. I did not expect the unknown monster in the playground, or the man in the dog costume.
I did not expect hedge animals that made me stop, wide-eyed, thinking “Oh shit WEEPING ANGELS, don’t look away.”
I did not expect hedge lions.
In short, I was no acquainted with the Overlook Hotel at all. The Overlook Hotel is a character in and of itself within the book and it is a creature of impressive malevolence, hate, and fear. Knowing that each of Stephen King’s books coexists in the same multiverse, when the Overlook Hotel is referred to something as an ‘it’, that made my skin crawl just a little bit.
The Shining is the book that has, truly, shown me what it’s like to breathe horror unto the mundane. Just in time, really, as there are more than a few frightening moments in my upcoming novels.
5/5 stars
L.J.
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