The Shining

With a symbolic, ominous title such as The Shining, one would expect to feel paranoia and fear overcome them after reading the novel. On the contrary, The Shining was nothing more than a deep description of the dysfunctional characters and less-than- nuclear family, the Torrances. Stephen King, also known for writing Carrie (1974) and Pet Cemetery (1983), goes into so much detail about the characters that it detracts from the plot line itself. I would continuously forget that I was reading a horror novel rather than a biography. At points, the background information he gave aided in the understanding of the characters and at others, wasted paper that could have spared the life of a tree.

The basic plot of this novel is about a family moving to an isolated hotel where the recently unemployed father is working as a caretaker. The hotel is haunted by the ghosts of its previous tenants that are out to drag the Torrance family with them into the bowels of the supernatural. King was smart in placing the ghostly encounters throughout the novel to urge the readers to continue, but after a while it became very annoying. I was continuously waiting for something epic to happen, something that would send chills down my spine and deprive me from sleep for weeks, but instead I was constantly let down. Not to mention that his somewhat vulgar descriptions of situations made me cringe, and not in a good way. A scene that was meant to be terrifying turned out to be disgusting.

One of the few things I did enjoy in this novel was the diction and terminology King used amidst his descriptions; words were rarely repeated. That along with the well- thought out character histories were the only things that I truly liked. All in all, I would not recommend this novel for a scary read. Readers will only be let down by its never ending descriptions and continuous switching between view points.