Country: USA
Genre: Drama/Fantastic
Pages: 536
Writer: Stephen King is now more than a writer. He's known in American folklore as the guy that tells scary stories. Despite being story driven and not interested in displays of style, the more he's growing older, the more priorities change for King. More adult settings and problematic started showing up in his books. The beauty of Stephen King's writing is that the more he writes, the more he's developping a focus and an accuracy that makes for stories that are harder and harder to forget. The Green Mile might just be the pinnacle of that. Long gone are the days of Pet Semetary.
Paul Edgecombe is old. Really old. He lives in a retirement home called Georgia Pines. To fight his scare of senile dementia, he decided to start writing a memoir about his life. On a daily basis, he escapes the dreadful building where people die slowly in front of daytime talk shows and sets shop in a nearby shed where he hammers away at the typewriter. Countless years Paul has lived, but only one comes back to haunt him, 1932.
Back then, Edgecombe worked as a cell block supervisor at Cold Mountain Penitenciary. He's working in Block E, the local euphemism for death row. The guardians on Block E are a tightly knit crew. Paul, the boss. Brutus (A.K.A Brutal), the big guy. Harry, the old and wise. Dean, the young trainee. All of them work as a unit in order to keep the prisonners calm until their date with the electric chair. The only problem within their team is the new guy, Percy Wetmore. Working "the green mile" because of his political connections, Percy doesn't like to be bossed around. He wants to do as he pleases and more than anything, he wants to see someone fry on Old Sparky (Cold Mountain's chair) from up close.
The close equilibrium of Block E is turned over when a gigantic inmate named John Coffey lands on the block. Accused of a terrible crime, he will soon convince everybody on the block that he's far from being your normal death row inmate. John Coffey might be dumb, but he has this amazing power to heal by dragging the pain away from people and ingesting it. This great power is also his great curse. John Coffey's life is a perpetual sacrifice to the wellness of others. By being his larger-than-life (hey! No Pun here) simple self, Coffey will make Paul Edgecombe and his employees reconsider their output on life. Life on Block E will never be the same.
Stephen King's style developped with time. From a story oriented, no-flare writing, the American horror master developped a knack for poetry through his characters and their actions. A very humble writer, King never rises above his story and dissolves into his creation. Despite the fact that it's a novel written from a first person perspective, Edgecombe remembers his friends and employees with such a fondness that he, himself feels erased a little bit from the narration.
It's one of the rare novels that works with a support cast stronger than its narrator. John Coffey is silent for most of the first 300 pages, but somehow, you feel his soothing presence over the mile. It's not the first time King makes a silent character talk louder than everybody else, but it's as endearing as ever. John Coffey is understood through the changes he creates in everybody's life. That's mastery right there, creating images instead of a bland series of fact.
Paul Edgecombe is a strong, but kind and compassionate leader to cell block E. You can never witness it on the job, but instead through his evenings with his wife Janice. The relationship between them is complex and passionate. It's also a very positive one. Throughout the novel, John Coffey will help shaping Janice as a loving wife, which is a delight to read.
Brutus "Brutal" Howell and Percy Whetmore are the two leaders of the supporting cast. Dean Stanton and Harry Terwilliger being a little hollow. Howell is a strong man with strong beliefs that not even the law could stop. Whetmore, on the other hand is a good representation of everything wrong with our system today, giving him an interesting cat n' mouse dynamic with "Brutal". You will hate Percy Whetmore enough of his own, but you will hate him more when he tries to take advantage of good people like Edgecombe or Howell.
John Coffey, the star of the show, is most of the time in the shadows, pulling the string with his aura. Even when he's not mentionned, you feel him. You know he's around. When he speaks, his simplicity, his kindness will touch you, because of where he is and how he had lived despite being such a caregiver. I'll stop here, but there are other great characters: inmates Delacroix, Wharton, warden Moores, his wife Melinda....
The Green Mile is a novel that stands out from a writer that already stands out from the pack. I would go as far as calling it a Great American Novel. There is a fantastic element to the novel, but The Green Mile is not about what every other King's novels are. It's about ordinary men, seeking for a chance to transcend their condition in order to accomplish something that will challenge time and death.
I am very happy to have taken the time to read The Green Mile and I encourage you to do so. It's ranking above his greatest works, such as Dreamcatcher and Bag Of Bones. It's a work of melancholy and subtlety that few authors can achieve.
