Author: Stephen King 
Title: The Shining
Narrator: Campbell Scott
Publication Info: Random House Audio (2012) [originally published in 1977]
Other books read by the same author:
- The Bachman Books
- “The Body”
- The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger
- Pet Sematary
- The Eyes of the Dragon
- Skeleton Crew
- The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three
- Misery
- The Dark Half
- Four Past Midnight
- The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands
- The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
- Faithful
- “Guns”
Summary/Review:
Having finally gotten around to watching the movie, The Shining, last fall, and finding it didn’t live up to the reputation, I really wanted to read the book it’s based on. After all, Stephen King dislikes Stanley Kubric’s adaptation of his book, so perhaps I’d like the book better. I’ll have to say that as an adaptation, the movie doesn’t stray too far from the source material. There are obviously a lot of details that the movie leaves out, as is vital in filmmaking, and Kubric did the same thing he did with 2001, where he makes ambiguous some things that are explicit in the book.
What movies cannot do well is to express the interiority of the characters, and this is an aspect of the book I liked the best. King is especially good at getting into the minds of Danny and Jack, but doesn’t do it as much with Halloran and Wendy.
Jack is more of a normal person at the beginning of the book – an alcoholic with anger issues, yes – but not the half-crazed character that Jack Nicholson plays. Wendy is less of a dishrag and much more resourceful, and she even uses Danny’s shining abilities to help plan their escape. Danny is the best part of the book as King does a great job of portraying a child dealing with things that someone much older would struggle to handle. The book works well as straight-up horror but also symbolic of the destructive power of toxic masculinity.
Rating: ***
Panorama of the Mountains 