Ruby's review of The Green Mile by Stephen King
As an author myself, Stephen King's novels might be considered essential reading. I'm ashamed to say this was a first for me, but it won't be the last.
Like everyone, I've seen the film of The Green Mile. Unlike everyone, I've not heard the film as I was in denial about my hearing loss for the past two decades. All the films I've watched have been looked at and not heard, so my attention wandered. I remember the mouse resurrection and that's about it. My recollections of other King stories in film are similar - Carrie and the burning sports hall, The Shining and Crazy Jack with the axe.
There was an inertia I needed to overcome in even buying a Stephen King novel. I hate to walk with the crowd, Contrary Mary that I am. Eventually I picked up The Green Mile to complete a 3 for €10 offer in a shop in Dingle, Kerry. The title didn't even register with me at the time.
Then I opened the book, began to read, recognised the premise of large, unnatural John Coffey on Death Row and was hooked.
King uses Paul Edgecombe as first person narrator to great effect. The full horror of the death penalty is the overriding theme throughout. This is Death Row and execution is by electric chair so there are necessarily graphic scenes but they're gratifying without being gratuitous.
Most of the book takes place within E Block at the Cold Mountain State Penitentiary. It's claustrophobic. The sweat and tears of prisoners and guards alike flow before the reader's face and sometimes down the reader's face. Each character comes to life, and some to death, in full 3D technicolor and the story is all about their interaction. The plot is bare bones, the reader wishing that the characters would catch up with what the reader has already divined, praying for the salvation that comes for some and not for others.
Coffey's character is truly supernatural and would bring anyone close to Believing. I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed that Coffey let the gang off the hook in the end.
The wrap-up in the retirement home was very moving - to find love again at the end of the road, an absolution for wrongdoing and acknowledgement of human frailty in the face of death.
Once or twice I was perplexed by repetition at the start of new chapters but the author's afterword explains that the story was originally issued in instalments, so that's why recaps were built in.
This is the kind of book that I could read again immediately, but my wife has already swiped it out of my hand! So I'll have to go scour my bookshelves for The Shining or Carrie.
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