Stephen King: The Green Mile

Hi

I got this one very recently but I wanted to dive in right away!
The Green Mile won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel and was nominated as Best Novel for the British Fantasy Award and the Locus Award.
This novel was originally published as a six volumes serial novel with King writing every next part by a deadline.
My copy has 435 pages and I got it at the Boekenfestijn.
You can find all my Stephen King reviews here.

 “At Cold Mountain Penitentiary, along the lonely stretch of cells known as the Green Mile, killers are depraved as the psychopathic "Billy the Kid" Wharton and the possessed Eduard Delacroix await death strapped in "Old Sparky." Here guards as decent as Paul Edgecombe and as sadistic as Percy Wetmore watch over them. But good or evil, innocent or guilty, none have ever seen the brutal likes of the new prisoner, John Coffey, sentenced to death for raping and murdering two young girls. Is Coffey a devil in human form? Or is he a far, far different kind of being?”

The novel is simply amazing and I couldn’t put it down (almost being late at work because of reading late at night).
It is very beautifully written, every scene is vividly sketched and the story is told by a real master. This means that it’s almost perfect. Not too humorous for this type of novel, not too emotional for a non-dramaqueen like me and not too suspenseful to be a real thriller.
Aside from Paul; the characters were a bit superficial but it didn’t bother me at all. The story didn’t need it.
It is gripping and heart-breaking and I could feel for every one of the ‘good’ characters. I laughed when they made jokes, I hated Percy with them and I felt the way they did about John.

I loved it. You really need to read this!

Happy reading!
Helena