Part One: Prefatory Matters

It quickly becomes apparent that where King tried to portray a realistic small town with a supernatural twist in 'Salem's Lot, here he is aiming to portray a realistic small family going through tough times (with a supernatural twist, of course). In the first few chapters we are introduced to Jack, Wendy, and Danny Torrance. Jack is an ex-alcoholic who is out of work because sometimes he loses his temper and hurts people. He and his family have moved to Colorado (just like King and his family did) so that he can become the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, which King says at the start of the book is not based on a real place but of course it actually is based on a real place, a big old hotel he and his family stayed at for awhile when they were in Colorado. The hotel has a bit of a creepy past, and a past caretaker once murdered his family and committed suicide, while another old lady committed suicide in a bathtub, and several old people have died there over the years. It's a good thing I'm oblivious to foreshadowing or I might be worried about all that.

Jack is a writer, so for the second book in a row we have a writer as a main character. I guess there's nothing wrong with sticking to what you know. King himself was addicted to a great many things at this time of his life, alcohol among them, so Jack as a character is closer to King himself than any other character he's written so far.

Wendy is worried about her family's future, how her son is going to grow up, and how her husband is going to make things work out. He once broke Danny's arm by accident when he was angry at him (something King has confessed was based on himself, not something he did but something he'd thought of doing when he was upset at his own young son).

Danny is five years old and has psychic powers that let him tell what other people are thinking, particularly his parents. He also gets premonitions of the future and an imaginary friend named Tony shows him glimpses of things he might need to know. I wonder if Tony is a projection of Danny's subconscious or some actual being that communicates with him. Right now I'd guess the former.

At any rate, this is also the first very young character King has written, and Danny's point of view feels very realistic. The vocabulary isn't always the sort a five-year-old would know, but the thought progression and the things that he senses and cares about all feel like a real five-year-old boy.

Danny has a dark premonition about bad things happening at the hotel, with someone (there are hints that it's his father) destroying things and chasing after Danny with a bloody mallet. So it turns out I was partly wrong in the first book when I said that King didn't usually tell you the ending at the start, because he's kind of done it in three books running now, but at least here he doesn't outright tell you anything, he just hints at it and keeps things kind of vague. Anyway, we also have the introduction of the ubiquitous REDRUM, something most people have probably heard of even if they've never read the book or watched the Kubrick film. Danny envisions the word written in a mirror, which should really be your first clue to read the word backward. I'll admit that when I first read the book, many years ago, I didn't get that, and thought it had something to do with Jack's alcoholism.

We get to see the family issues and history, good times and bad, from all three points of view, which is quite well done as setup for the rest of the story. By the time we get to the hotel, we're fully immersed in who the Torrances are, and how they're hanging on despite some rough going.