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...