The Shining
A hotel empty for winter. A family alone inside it. The father slowly becoming the most dangerous thing there.
What the Hotel Wants
Stephen King's 1977 novel follows Jack Torrance, a struggling writer and recovering alcoholic who takes a winter caretaker job at the remote Overlook Hotel in Colorado. His wife Wendy and their five-year-old son Danny, who possesses a psychic ability called the shining, accompany him. As snowdrifts seal them in, the hotel's accumulated malevolence begins to work on Jack's weaknesses with patient, supernatural precision. The horror comes not from ghosts but from a family watching a father disappear.
Reading The Shining
Isolation
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Part
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
"Stephen King
King has said he wrote Jack Torrance as a self-portrait of his own fears about addiction and parenthood at the time. He was sober only briefly during the writing and later remembered completing it in an almost dissociative state.
Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film adaptation is considered one of the greatest horror films ever made. King famously disliked it for stripping the human drama he considered central. He later produced a television miniseries closer to his vision.