I have been avoiding Stephen King’s The Shining for years. I knew the gist (a hotel, a kid, crazed murder, redrum spoken in a grating drone), mostly from peeks at the film, but I’d never read it nor seen the movie. I like Stephen King (it was his Dark Tower series that hooked me), but I am not actually that big a fan of that which scares. I have an overactive imagination and am susceptible to keeping myself up at night. Despite all that, the time I had come and so I hunkered down and prepared to be horrified.
The Shining tells the story of Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy, and, most particularly, his exceptional and gifted son Danny. Jack is at the end of his rope, having truly messed things up royally for his family after attacking a student at the preparatory school he was teaching at in Vermont. A recovering alcoholic with a bitter temper, Jack hopes he can mend his past transgressions and begin anew with the one opportunity opened to him: as the winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel high in the mountains of Colorado. As the isolation of the winter and building snow progresses and mounts, the hotel’s sinister history becomes clearer and its hold on the family much more disturbing and malevolent.
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