Snehil Tripathy

The Shining is the second Stephen King I am reading. The first was It - a great book that was too but certainly not a starter. As for this one, Shining is fabulously written, especially the first few chapters when the story of Winnifred 'Wendy' Torrance and Jack Torrance are simultaneously told although the time is same and place different. Shining has a highly modern approach to the haunted house - for instance, SK makes it into a hotel not a house. Furthermore, the place is inhabited by ghosts who are in dire need of powers like that of Danny Torrance and Richard Hallorann. They both have a certain kind of psychic powers that enables them to see the future and the past. Hallorann calls this as the Shining. All in all the book has excellent descriptions, fabulous decisions in context to the atmosphere created and amazing characters. Jack is the best one by far as he is quite a lot complex. He loves his son Danny but is also an alcoholic and a habitual failure - this makes him really short tempered. The hotel ghosts use his anger only to make him help them extract Danny's Shining. Wendy too is complex as she fears that Jack would someday hurt Danny due to his uncontrollable anger and also loves him.