Kressel Housman's Reviews > The Shining

Call me a snob, but I never read Stephen King until I heard an English teacher on a radio interview say, "Good readers don't always have to read good books. Sometimes, they're in the mood for Stephen King." So I read The Shining, and I think the teacher was unfair to him. The portrayal of the kid seeing into his parents' minds was excellent characterization. Later, one paragraph describes the boy's power and its effect on the house as a key turning a music box. I'm not really doing the metaphor justice, but I'd go so far as to call it literary.

Okay, the book's not literary overall. The symbol of the wasps' nest was overdone, and I didn't like that all the ghosts in the hotel were the results of Mafia murders. I prefer a little more intrigue in a ghost story, more psychology, as in the portrayal of the kid and his parents. But as horror, it worked. I was sitting in my house reading when I suddenly heard a man's voice seemingly out of nowhere. I jumped like it was a ghost, but of course, it was just a man passing by outside. So I concluded that horror's not my genre. But the book sure did beat the movie.