As soon as I got this book in hand I quickly realized that it could be a great novel. What is told on the cover struck me from the start. It 's a simple but ingenious premise.
Imagine a classic tale of kidnap and ransom, one of those stories you've seen reproduced in a thousand different sauces, which in the end they all taste the same.
Imagine that your wife is kidnapped by the usual mysterious group. A man calls you and tells you that if you give him two million dollars to kill her. The problem is that you do not have them two million dollars, let the gardener, and if it is true that you jump through hoops to make ends meet, it does not have enough money that you can throw in risky purchases. Imagine having two million dollars, a figure that you have only seen in movies.
Hey, you're not listening to me. I do the gardening.
Mitch Rafferty says the man who kidnapped his wife. Where to find them, he, two million dollars. Quiet Mitch, you invent something. Wait for further instructions and your wife will see her.
Here.
To me this was enough to extract texture. This simple idea has convinced me to buy it. In its extreme simplicity is genius: blackmail you and ask you for money you did not.
E 'something illogical, right? Then why did they do? Based on
This question moves the first part of the story. Mitch will be there waiting for shocking revelations and reversals in the face that would never have imagined. In a short time is sucked into a paradoxical situation involving his family and horrible is going to undermine the good that has managed to build a life of sacrifice.
Koontz manages to perfection the course of history, places the twists in the right places, like a wise hunter who has the traps. And when you fall into that trap one is electrocuted.
I think I can say that, by eye, there's a plot twist every fifty pages and pages of whereas this book has about 350, is by no means an average of neglect.
However, the twists are never simple accessories, not just the tricks of a magician of mystery, but they always have a function to the story.
Everything is combined with a simple but effective style that sometimes gets lost a bit 'too much in the boundary descriptions which, though short, off the accelerator instead of just when you are praying that everything goes as quickly as possible.
The characters are really interesting. We understand that behind every one of them has been done a remarkable job of finishing.
Dialogues are functional to the story, sometimes a bit 'dry humor rarely contain quality, but never feels the weight of a conversation useless or misleading.
The author then turns a bit 'in the background, let me speak to both the history. And it is good, because it is the best way to keep a player glued to the pages.
No chatter, no purely incidental reflections on life, everything you see has a meaning, all you feel is important. Sometimes
Koontz, precisely because of this stylistic choice, it seems a bit 'cold and maybe some readers will be disappointed by this. But I think the plot is sufficiently compelling to be funny to anyone. Among the mourners
notes put a hasty end, and a bit 'too sickly sweet.
I do not like the fact that some problems remain unresolved. It 's too easy to create the mess and then put him in a bubble. The illusion provides the basis for a novel that every action the player performs on the card has an impact on the world around him, everything according to the assumption that what we are reading is a real and not fictitious.
Ok?
Good.
Then, in the real world, people die if the police investigate. If the clues lead the police in a particular direction, then the police go in that particular direction.
In this case it is not. Or rather, it could also be so, but not seen, and the end result is a sense of incompleteness.
At least that was my reaction.
For the rest, nothing to report.
Maybe a couple of coincidences a bit 'forced, but Koontz is able to vendersele well. Hats off for that.
For the second time I was very struck by this author and I think that I will continue to read his books.
PS The title (same as in English, The Husband ) is horrendous.
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
To make comparisons between this book and Kubrick's film masterpiece of the risk of being influenced and being not very flattering review of the work of King. And at the same time, are in the open all the little inventions of the film, those who have special permission to film memorable scenes like the famous manuscript of Jack that endlessly repeats an old English proverb, for example.
This book, in my view, not a masterpiece like the movie, but it is still a good horror.
E 'done a great job on the characters, which are few, but returned and described to the tiniest detail. Each of their weakness, their every small personal hatred and fear are all highlighted by a King who dig deep in their lives, drawing on the great cesspool of hatred and insecurity.
Jack Torrance is a former alcoholic (his father), a failed teacher who is trying to rehabilitate himself as a writer and that hides within it a great violence and anger that can not always control. His wife, Wendy, is a woman who has long suffered the tyranny of the mother who brought him a gift at the same time a great courage and great determination, but also the fear of becoming like her (which is expressed with terror ' envy she feels for her son's close relationship with his father). And finally, Danny, a child who has a powerful "Aura", a power that enables him to communicate telepathically with others who have to read people's minds and to be able to see things before they happen.
The family of Jack finds himself in financial straits and he decides to accept the post of winter caretaker at the old Overlook Hotel, a hotel that has had a tumultuous history, but which represents an opportunity for him to do something good and to keep afloat in the economic situation.
And so the little family party and discovers a few months of being in a place possessed by a demonic force, which for years has absorbed all the evil that has happened inside and that is able to unleash his will. What's more, the Torrance find themselves trapped in the snow, unable to escape from that hotel cursed. The floor plan shows
Overlook his face hidden (beautiful in this regard, references to the story by Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death , with the obsessive repetition of that "Down the mask! Down the mask!" ) and took possession of Jack Torrance, relying on his old habit, alcoholism, and his sense of guilt, on the failures of a lifetime. The office as a clock and freed him to go wild for the corridors. And then
hedges that are animated and can kill. Children buried in the snow trying to grasp Danny, a woman who committed suicide who holds out his hands swollen and purple to anyone entering the room 217. The sudden find themselves in a nightmare, truly, really, in which the ghosts are not just "pictures in a book, but they bite, scratch and kill.
The construction of the novel is admirable. Everything happens just as it must happen. The tension increases as they move through the pages and at every new turn you can see where the story wants to go to finish, without ruining the ending of the book, you save more for the style that made for a surprise.
Some parts I found them all too redundant, especially those relating to the past and the character of the different characters, but it is a verbosity that can be understood well. If King had shortened a few moments of stillness over the story, the novel would have certainly helped.
The rest of the way of the King I found it really appropriate to the narrative. It changes from moment to moment from real to imaginary, from present to past, you enter in the thoughts of the characters and we find ourselves spectators of what is happening. I, from this point of view, I found it perfect.
The weakest point of the story is the predictability of the story. Although he has not seen the movie, I suppose not many people have had problems to guess the ending. The fact remains however that this is certainly a pleasant point for the book, but too many times it seemed that the story should proceed a bit 'too regularly, as if they moved on tracks, perhaps even in the areas where greater uncertainty in the future would have increased the sense of anguish reader.
The images are always powerful and well done. The horror fielded by King floats between the tip of horrific visions in the event of real monsters and living corpses. And all this is really wonderful when it happens suddenly and, on rare occasions, unfortunately, unexpected.
A King novels with more behind would hold the accelerator at the right time and maybe would have invented an unexpected turn for the story, what really is missing in this novel.
bed so, The Shining remains a good horror, which is among a sufficiently full and more than one vote.
Personally, I've found a vital lesson on building the characters and the tension.
Some pictures and a few sentences of this book will remember for a lifetime. Phrases like: