The haunted hotel [of The Shining] is a stock sort of device, left over from the days when people were still writing straight ghost stories. The struggling family offers the pathos that no doubt is in part responsible for the book's popularity—real characters, beautifully handled for the most part, though some of the development toward the end is a bit too hasty. Even the child with the "gift" is a common theme of Stephen King's…. But herein they are combined, redeveloped, slowly woven into a dark, unfamiliar tapestry—something dreadful and inevitable and ultimately terrifying….
King's creation of atmosphere is masterful—the first irrational hint I had that anything unusual might happen terrified me as fully as the later, more logically-constructed episodes. In fact, where the novel falls short is in the fact that the conclusion is not nearly as frightening as the mood that has been predicting it. King takes the stance that he should give the reader a hint of the ultimate horror early in the game, and then—when they're sure to be afraid that it's actually going to happen—give them exactly what they've been nervously waiting for. It's a technique that works rather well, though in this case the intimations of doom are more frightening than the doom itself. (p. 34)
Marc Laidlaw, in Nyctalops (copyright © 1978 by Harry O. Morris, Jr. and Edward P. Berglund; reprinted by permission of Marc Laidlaw), Vol. 2, No. 7, 1978.
