Krishna
This too is one of King’s great books. We have reviewed many Stephen King novels here. For just two examples, consult Under The Dome or Gerald’s Game.
The book starts normally, even lazily before it picks up speed, like some other of Stephen King’s novels. Once it accelerates, there is no stopping it!
Jack Torrence is being interviewed by Ullman for a post in a hotel. Ullman admits that he does not think Jack up to the job but will hire him because of a recommendation from a big benefactor. He also admits that many in the hotel do not like him, Ullman. Jack wants and needs the job of the Winter housekeeper in the hotel.
The janitor Watson seems to hate Ullman but shows the ropes to Jack. Jack learnt that the family who stayed before him died gruesomely one winter. The man killed his whole family and committed suicide.
Meanwhile Danny seems to have flashes of blackouts where he sees things – with the help of Tony, his imaginary friend. For instance he knew where the movers put his dad’s suitcase, even thought it was locked and he never visited the place. He also sees visions of his dad having a bloodied mallet with him – thus the story leaps into the supernatural.
During one of their bouts of drunk driving, he and Al (a drinking buddy but the son of a very rich man) knock a bike that was parked in the middle of the road. Even though they did not find the body in the dark, they are shocked enough to give up drinking and this incidentally saves Jack’s marriage as well – at least temporarily.
David, meanwhile can see into the minds of his parents and knows when his Daddy is thinking of The Bad Thing. (The accident, and Jack’s firm belief that he and Al may have murdered someone that night)
They go to the hotel and Wendy realizes that they will be snowed in for pretty much six months with no exit and no way for anyone from outside to reach them!
The fall is gorgeous and the family is alone in the hotel. And Jack’s play seems to be coming along fine, much to the satisfaction of him and Wendy’s. While fixing the roof, he is stung by a wasp and has his fingers swollen.
Meanwhile Danny is being told by Toby that there will be two major horrors awaiting him in the hotel : a boiler explosion and a croquet mallet being swung in extreme anger that causes bleeding – or more. He is not aware of what it is.
Danny is taken to a doctor (when he is stung by multiple wasps in a nest that Jack, wrongly believing it to be free of wasps, gave him). He tells the doctor about Tony as well as what his mother, sitting outside in the waiting room, is really thinking at that very moment.
Later, when they are snowed in, Danny goes to the forbidden room and sees a dead woman come to live. Contrary to what Holloran, the janitor, said to him, she seems to be more than ‘just a picture; they can’t hurt you’ message he got. He goes catatonic in shock and when his parents (after a vicious quarrel and mutual suspicions laid aside) find him, he decides to tell them everything.
He shocks Jack by saying what he saw in the grand suite when Ullman took him on a tour – it exactly matches the picture in the old newspaper cutting in a scrap book that Jack saw earlier. He also mentions the hedge animals and Jack had had a very real looking experience – which he put down to a hallucination – earlier of all those animals creeping up towards him!
Jack also does a stupid thing by calling Ullman and telling him he knows the hotel’s history and threatening to write a tell all book. Which invites a call from Al, his old friend saying that if he did, it would be the worst. Jack has to grovel to Al promising he will NOT write that book. This increases his determination to write it in revenge of all, when he is finally out of this post.
When he learns that Wendy heard it from Danny, when both were nowhere near the phone where the phone call was made, he is stunned. Both his parents how believe that their son is gifted with extrasensory perception, which Danny calls ‘the shining’ after Halloran named it thus when he was earlier talking to Danny.
Slowly, the house seems to control Jack. When Wendy pleads with him to take them away, Jack actively sabotages the ski machine by throwing away the battery.
Danny has another huge scare when the hedge animals come after him one day and he even guesses that Jack had experienced it too.
In addition, one night, the elevator seems to simulate party goers by automatically going up and down and, as Wendy discovers, confetti is found in the elevator – it was clean the very previous day. Jack also starts getting weird signals. He sees that the fire extinguisher (hose) seems to change position, and when he goes into room 317 after Danny’s experience to investigate, he seems to sense the old lady in the tub.
He is extremely reluctant to leave. It is not just the rational fear that he would not get a job if he left this one, but also some inner reluctance to part with the hotel.
Things really reach fever pitch. The hotel supplies Jack with virtual drink and he converses with the dead ghosts, even the man who was his predecessor and who died earlier, after killing his whole family. He is irritated and puzzled to learn that the ‘manager’ of the hotel (not Ullman) is interested more in Danny and his powers than his own.
Meanwhile, Danny’s mental ‘shining’ pleas for help reach Halloran and he hurries to Denver and then, by car, to Overlook. This, Jack is told, alarms the manager and Jack is advised to get rid of both his wife and son who are unruly and not obedient at all and it is a man’s duty to discipline them.
Meanwhile, Wendy tries to reach the kitchen to get some food but goes around looking for Jack. She finds him in a drunken stupor on the ground but he gets up and very nearly chokes her to death. She manages to escape – barely – by hitting him on the head with a bottle. After an initial reluctance, Danny helps her pull Jack into the pantry and bolt the door lock – realizing that the ‘hotel has taken over daddy’ and the hotel does not want them to leave alive.
The previous (dead) butler seems to open the door and let Jack out – which is one of the weird scenes here and so out of character from other stuff – moving animals, bar filled with guests and inexplicable appearance of drinks that Jack can actually drink – that it surprises you. All the others can be dismissed as mind games or self deception but actually having a door opened that you can get out?
Anyway, what follows is a crazy and brutal attack by Jack on Wendy (cracking her ribs and more) before she somehow manages to bury a knife into him. But when he still gets up and comes after her, you are transported into pure Stephen King land. (You can question how you buy the dead man walking when you protest against another dead man opening the door and I’d say ‘you do have a point’ but this one is pure Stephen King territory, in my mind).
Halloran scrambles with trouble after trouble and moves inexorably in the middle of a crazy snowstorm and whiteout conditions – almost as if Overlook does not want him to come – and reaches the hotel.
The ending is spectacular and I will leave it at that. This is another fully enjoyable Stephen King book.
9/10
– – Krishna