Review: The Shining by Stephen King
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Review: The Shining by Stephen King
The story is not without flaw, and King doesn't always know when to be subtle and when to be brutally explicit, a problem reminiscent of the roque mallet that features so prominently in the story with one end rubber and the other end hard. King's trademark habit of rambling in brackets to remind us of something else that is scary and related to the currently scary thing happening sometimes feels like the prose equivalent of pounding music in a movie to remind us that a certain scene is supposed to inspire terror when the absence of such cues would probably make it more scary as they would make me feel I'm facing the terrifying thing on my own without the narrator to hold my hand and tell me what I should feel about it. Another slightly distracting feature of King's prose in "The Shining" is that while his writing is frequently beautiful you can tell that he had the thesaurus handy, and it even invades the dialog with Jack Torrance using the word "dray" when being playful with his wife and son. Even with a character who is supposed to be a writer this somehow strained credibility for me. And one of the strongest aspects of the novel for me in the middle weakened the conclusion in my opinion - the scariness of not knowing how much of Jack's transformation to evil murderous maniac is because of the hotel and how much is caused by his own inner demons seems completely obliterated by the way his behavior is handled towards the end of the book. King says in "On Writing" that the scariest villains are those with believable motivations that you can almost relate to and it's quite creepy the way Jack's inner rationalisations which eventually lead him to violence almost seem reasonable, and how the same character we might have seen as sympathetic at the start doesn't seem to have had to change all that much to become the bad guy. But by the end he's painted as a decent guy possessed by a demonic hotel and you almost get the sense that the ending was written before the earlier sections detailing Jack's thoughts as he loses his way. But while flawed this is still a horror novel you need to read, and also a painful mediation on how some of the very things that make a man needed by his family - focus on career, discipline, determination and single-mindedness - can backfire and tear a family apart.
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Wow, all of his novels in one year and they're kinda known for being long - impressive.Stacie_C wrote:No problem! And read Doctor Sleep, it was amazing! I definitely recommend it. King picked up the story as if he never left it. Doctor Sleep felt very "old" King, I guess is the best way to say it. I read all of his novels this year so if you would like any other recommendations by him just let me know!
-- 01 Jan 2014, 16:31 --
yeah agree -notable exceptions for me were a scanner darkly and charlie and the chocolate factoryKelliem wrote:I am a huge Stephen King fan! I am currently re-reading The Shining because my son bought me Dr. Sleep as a gift and I wanted to start at the beginning. I definitely think the book is better than the movie and agree with you Stacie_C that some things in a novel can never be done on the big screen. I think I am almost always disappointed in the movies made from books that I have read.
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If you were to google "rage stephen king pdf" and click on the first search result you might be able to read it, not that I would ever recommend you do such a thing.Stacie_C wrote:Thanks! Yeah I only read the novels. I'll probably tackle some of the collections and non-fictions this year. The only novel I couldn't get my hands on was Rage. That one is out of print...
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I am surprised you think the movie is boring on the surface - I think it's pretty scary even if you don't understand the symbolism - maybe more soLDGZombie wrote:I enjoyed the book but i am a bigger fan of the movie. I think this is one of those like the movie Mulholland Drive. It seems to be kind of boring on the surface but when you get into it, its almost like there's a whole other story going on. I felt like Jacks alcoholism and family was one story, then the hotel was another and as it went on, the stories started combining.
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