The Shining was the first Stephen King novel I ever read and it is the book that got me hooked. I have always enjoyed reading and there have been many books that thoroughly engaged me. However the Shining was an entirely different experience for me. It was the first book I literally could not put down, could not stop turning the pages, and the first book that went beyond simply scaring me. The Shining terrified me in a way no book before ever had. I think it is his best book to date. In The Shining Down and out author Jack Torrance moves his wife and five year old son to a huge, hulking Rocky Mountain hotel where he has landed a job as a winter custodian
As the snow piles up and the roads become impassable, the hotel's legion of ghosts become bolder and bolder, because they would like Jack to join them. The book is structured as a five part tragedy, and it was originally conceptualized as a play.
The Shining is one of King's most literary Novels. Each section has several titled characters and King pulls you through the story with amazing deftness and skill. Since The Shining is a brilliantly rendered, contemporary Gothic Horror novel, it is one of the few Stephen King novels that professors of literature are not adverse to teaching in class. The Shining is also one of King's works that most experts and fans believe will still be read fifty years from now.
King's strong use of interior monologues for Jack Torrance reflects the claustrophobia of being locked up in a hulking, haunted hotel all winter. As Wendy and Danny are trapped in the Overlook Hotel, so are Jack and we (the reader) trapped in the nightmare landscape of Jack's mind. This is a very effective device and one that King uses for maximum chills.
As Jack explores the hotel's basement. King interweaves the history of the Overlook Hotel into the story, dramatically illustrating the hotel's sordid past and setting us up for Jack's complete surrender to the evil powers running the show.
Also, King's use of "redrum" as a totemic portent to Danny by his alter ego Tony is clever and has become an often cited part of pop culture.
The Shining was Stephen King's first bestseller and today, more than twenty years later, it is still in print and has been translated into dozen of languages.
