When tension is wrung out of seven pages of rambling description, you are on to a winner. That is the opening of The Green Mile, the only serialised novel by Stephen King, and my first outing into the writing of the horror master.
The book deals mostly with the summer of 1932 in Cold Mountain Penitentiary, when John Coffey came onto E Block condemned to die in the lap of Old Sparky. It isn't long, of course, before Paul Edgecombe, the block's superintendent, begins to question Coffey's guilt.
Perhaps the most striking thing in the novel is how intensely real the characters feel. They may be eccentric, but they never seem untrue, just starkly opposed to their morbid setting. From what I've read about King, his characters can simply be larger than life robots, only around to create scares, but that can't be said of this book. Every character is quietly haunting in their own right.
The serial format raises a few interesting points. Firstly, the audience has to be refreshed on the plot between volumes, so there are often a few paragraphs, or even pages, of overlap between parts. This did slightly disrupt the flow of the story, but, unless you are reading it in large chunks, the interruption is quite minor. It also meant that each part had to be readable almost as its own story, which forced King to have a balance of action and contemplation in each part. Theoretically, this created a perfectly plotted novel, with regular rises and falls in tension, and helped cut back on rambling descriptions. Finally, the compilation into one volume relies a little more on patience from the reader, as the plot is comprised of apparently minor events for a large section of the novel.
Personally, I found the first hundred pages or so a little convoluted, seemingly jumping from the present, to the past, to events I had no context for yet. However, this cleared up over time as the reasons for certain details emerged.
I would thoroughly recommend this to anyone who is yet to enjoy any Stephen King. Even quiet moments are compelling, filled with characters to love and hate, and often packed with slowly rising tensions. Although the ending is a little sentimental, it seems well suited to the fate you will feel the characters deserve.
Again, highly recommended.
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Book Reviews
Non-FictionCarried over from my Tumblr, this is a personal project tracking what I read through time, largely because of my awful memory. These aren't long reviews, but the books are varied, and the opinions are honest, so I hope you enjoy.
