After years of watching and loving countless adaptations of his work (including the Stanley Kubrick version of this very book), this is my 1st dive into the prose of Stephen King.
I think it’s been made obvious by this point that if I’m reviewing a book I dug it, so no suspense there.
But, at this point, after hearing for decades that King is one of the greatest writers around, this is my chance to finally find out the answer to a question that has kept me from reading his work: Can he possibly live up to that mountain of hype?
Consider this your 42 year old ***SPOILER ALERT***
The first thing I was struck by while reading this is how different the movie is from this book.
Which is something I knew going in, but was still a bit shocked by.
It feels like somebody sat 2 writers down, gave them the same thin description, and had them craft their own versions of the same story.
The book is the story of a man on a sad & slow descent into sorrowful madness, while the movie is balls out batshit crazy almost from the start.
It’s strange and makes them feel like two entirely separate entities that have to be judged as such.
It feels a lot like Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince actually, with all of the backstory being savagely ripped out of the movie versions of both.
As far as The Shining goes, I only saw the movie once and I loved it.
I feel mostly the same about this book.
I say mostly for two reasons.
1. Would be because there are a few places in this book (specifically in the middle three hundred pages or so) that I feel dragged a bit because they got a bit too monologue-esque in the way he focuses on one character for such a long period before shifting to another character for a long period.
I feel these chapters would benefit from a bit of crosscutting between characters/storylines the way the chapters in the latter fifth of the book do.
In that last one hundred or so pages, I found it incredibly difficult to put this down, in fact I read the last seventy five or so pages in just about two hours while it took me three weeks to read the middle bits.
2. Being closely related to 1, chapter length.
Nothing slows me down like bloated chapters.
Once it starts hitting seventeen pages or there abouts, my focus starts to drift and it takes far more effort to concentrate on what I’m reading.
Thankfully, that last seventy five pages had quick and snappy chapters as well.
From what long time King fans have told me, that’s something I’ll have to get used to if I continue reading his work.
And make no mistake, I plan to read more of his work eventually.
To answer the question I posed at the beginning of this review: Yes, he can!
Which is honestly shocking, because few things can live up to that much hype.
I mean, for fuck sake, the cover has a pull quote from the LA TIMES calling him a master storyteller.
But he damn well earns the moniker.
The slow burn to madness in Jack Torrance is gutwrenchingly inevitable, but still amazing to watch unfold.
Danny growing in both age and ability over the course of the story is also smooth as silk, deftly handling what could easily come off hamfisted.
His bond with fellow Shiner, Dick Hallorann, also comes through the page with ease.
The bottom line is this was more than worth the wait.
I’ve said many time that I’m more into the journey than the destination, and I’m happy to report Stephen King sure knows how to spin a hell of a journey.
Given the detail he wove into this, it almost seems like his work should strictly be adapted into TV miniseries rather than movies.
The dozens of little seeds that are planted along the way and grow into wonderfully paid off moments make it all come together, to quote the LA TIMES, Masterfully.
I may need some time to catch my breath before I tackle another tome from King, but I’m definitely looking forward to the trek.
Who wouldn’t want to know how little Danny turned out?
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Special thanks to @ACFerrell1976 for her editorial assistance.
