The Green Mile by Stephen King
The Green Mile by Stephen King
All. The. Emotions! This was my first Stephen King book and I never expected to feel such a roller coaster of emotions from reading his stories. Terrified, absolutely. But gut-wrenchingly tender moments, heart-breaking moments, sympathy and pain? No, not so much.
The Green Mile is a nickname acquired because of the color on the floor in a prison's death row; where the inmates take their last long, long walk to meet with “Old Sparky", the electric chair. Our narrator, Paul Edgecomb, is the supervisor of death row and begins his story when John Coffey is sentenced and begins his wait for his own walk down the Green Mile. But how can a man like Coffey, who seems simple minded and is scared of the dark, be capable of murdering two young girls in a such horrific way?
This novel isn't just about whether a man is guilty or innocent. Instead, it is a character-driven story focused on the daily events of death row, raising different moral and ethical questions. King gets you invested in several of the beautifully written characters and you begin to truly care about almost all of them.
King also wonderfully interweaves the present day and past narratives. At times, you may be reading two separate storylines, but at other times these narratives are one and the same which adds to the power behind the overarching plot.
There are some supernatural elements in this book, but they are a bit more magical realism. It only added to the very real situations and characters in the novel and never felt forced or unnatural.
Synopsis: Welcome to Cold Mountain Penitentiary, home to the Depression-worn men of E Block. Convicted killers all, each awaits his turn to walk the Green Mile, keeping a date with “Old Sparky," Cold Mountain's electric chair. Prison guard Paul Edgecombe has seen his share of oddities in his years working the Mile. But he's never seen anyone like John Coffey, a man with the body of a giant and the mind of a child, condemned for a crime terrifying in its violence and shocking in its depravity. In this place of ultimate retribution, Edgecombe is about to discover the terrible, wondrous truth about Coffey, a truth that will challenge his most cherished beliefs... and yours.