More than 25 years after its original publication (and more than a decade since I last read it), The Shining still more than holds its own as one of the scariest books Stephen King has ever written - and when you have a body of work like King does, that's no small accomplishment. The horrors within the Overlook have lost none of their intensity over the years, and King does a beautiful job slowly immersing the reader in that world, letting the pressure build until all hell breaks loose. But what strikes me more on this read is that the heart of The Shining isn't the Overlook - it's the family that's staying there, and especially the mind of Jack Torrance. Reading The Shining once you have a wife and child is a wholly different experience, and King's evocation of a frustrated man who both feels utterly trapped by his family and yet loves them unconditionally is brilliant - a depiction that both makes Jack deeply flawed and yet completely understandable. More than that, though, King's pacing is beautifully handled. Just as he would do years later in the short story "1408," King perfectly times out Torrance's gradual breakdown, handling it so subtly that his unthinkable choices over the course of the book seem logical, if not even understandable. A book that had any of those elements - the flawed father, the mental breakdown, the horror-filled hotel - would be a good read. But a book that pulls together all of those elements, and interweaves them so gracefully while letting each one illuminate and underline the others...well, a book like that would be a great book. And make no mistake, The Shining is a great novel, one that's both chilling beyond belief and utterly, completely human at all times, and one that finds its greatest terrors in the combination of those two worlds.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe