The Shining (Stephen King) - My first and last in the horror genre

This title was recommended to me as a must read King, and, in the spirit of Spooktober, I finished it literally on the last day of the month. I was told I would be scared witless, that it has unexpected twists, that it is the ultimate in the horror genre and many such things. Apologies if you are a Stephen King fan, but this turned out to be damp squib for me - both in terms of how terrified I felt and in terms of the storyline per se.

The Shining is about a 5 year old boy Danny and his parents Wendy and Jack. It is a loving but dysfunctional family, what with Jack's issues with alcoholism and anger and Wendy's self worth issues (both flawed characters as a result of childhood trauma). Be that as it may, they do try to give Danny a happy childhood while trying to work through their issues (or do they?). Money is not in plenty and after Jack loses his comfortable job as an English teacher in the local school, he accepts a position as the winter caretaker of The Overlook, a hotel that is functional for 6 months of the year but has to close down for the winter as it gets snowed in and inaccessible. So the deal is that the small family will shift to The Overlook, be cut off from humanity for an extended and unpredictable period of time (till winter lasts) and take care of the basic maintenance of the hotel. Did I mention that Jack is an aspiring writer? So he reckons that he can spend this time staying away from alcohol (because none is available), spend time with his family, make up for the drunken misbehaviour, and also put in some solid writing. Wendy feels that if this is good for Jack, it is good for her and Danny too. Danny feels, well, we'll come to that later.

Now Danny is a child who has The Shining - this we are told is a special talent/ability some people have, due to which they can see through people and actually read their thoughts. At a basic level, these are people we would refer to as empaths, those who can read other's emotions and make out what's going on in their minds. At a higher level, they can actually enter someone's mind and know everything they are thinking. They are also able to sense other worldly things like spirits and ghosts. As a child with this ability, Danny can read his parents' minds and read their fears, concerns and desires. He can also sense the ghosts of the past which are aplenty in The Overlook. And this hotel is filled with more than its fair share of such unsavoury instances and incidents that have left a trail of dead bodies that no one likes to talk about - from deranged guests killing themselves or dying unfulfilled to mafia and revenge killings - The Overlook has seen everything and is now waiting to show it to whoever cares. 

The whole book is now about how these flawed characters cope with the forced isolation, how The Overlook starts taking control of the narrative and their minds, how their deep fears surface and start becoming real and how they (actually mainly Jack) give in to and get consumed by the demons inside and outside.

There is nothing wrong with the book per se - the characters are well developed and quite hateful (esp Jack), the plot is intriguing, the twists come in the right places. But was it scary? Not for me. Some parts, in fact, were not believable for me. There is one part in the book where the child Danny comes to the parents scared shitless with strangulation marks around his neck. His parents, instead of losing their shit like normal parents and trying to find who did this to their son and then trying to escape from the place asap, get into an argument blaming each other for this. And in the next few pages, acknowledge that they were just accusing each other to get to each other and they kiss and make up. But guys, someone tried to strangle your son!!!!! Find the person or get away from here - nothing is more important than your son's life!!!!!