The Green Mile by Stephen King

I was reading an issue of Entertainment Weekly when I came across an interview with Stephen King. Back then I knew King mostly because of the adaptations of his books, and I was a big fan of The Dead Zone (The movie, Walken was perfect, Martin Sheen playing his second best President).

He talked about the concept of the serialised novel, how Dickens had written his stories and what King called the ‘high wire act’ of publishing part 1 before you had written the whole story. Fascinating. 

Then I didn’t buy it when it was published. I don’t know why. 

I did buy the collected edition as a paperback a year or so later. 

That was when it kicked me in the gut. 

What a story. The narration sets the perfect tone. Paul is an everyman, an ordinary guy facing extraordinary circumstances. It feels like a real workplace, with detailed well drawn characters on the crew. 

Then we meet John Coffey and we see how brutal and horrific man can make the world and what we will do to one another. The horror.

John forces Paul to look beyond the small, closed world he lives in to question what is right and what is just. 

The framing sequences in the old folks home then show how man just hasn’t changed much since then. Brad Dolan, the bullying assistant at the care home, is an echo of Percy Wetmore, the eager prison guard with no conscience. 

Paul has choices to make and we spend every moment with him as he does. 

Watch the movie, it is great. I will always remember the feeling of sheer anger when the last chapter in the book, that starts ‘1956 Alabama in the rain’ wasn’t in the film. The bookends were truncated for the film, and Dabbs Greer as the older Paul tells us about what happened to everyone else in the story in the many years since. I can see why they changed it. The tone is different. Book Paul is angrier. Movie Paul is more accepting.

The book rips your heart out. I wont spoil, but if you have only seen the movie buy the book. Read it. Its heart wrenching at the end. 

And I cant even speak about Mr Jingles in the book. 

This is another book I read annually. For a while I read every new King book, but I fell away after a while. I have a few in my TBR pile. (I will finish The Gunslinger, I promise) 

I read The Institute last year. Nothing has hit me quite like The Green Mile though.

Ps.  King writes a great introduction, and the collected paperback has a doozy.

Pps. The photo above is of a compete collection of the original ‘chapbooks’. I was in a charity shop looking through the books and had a couple in my hand. A kind lady in the store told me they had just taken a donation and would I be interested in taking a look. There they were. And now they are mine.