Book Bearings
The Green Mile
- 465 pages · about 8 hours
- First published 1996
- 91 editions
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1 About this book
The Green Mile is told by Paul Edgecombe, who in 1932 was the supervisor of death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary, a block the guards call the Green Mile after the color of its floor. That year a new prisoner arrives: John Coffey, a huge, gentle man condemned for the murder of two young girls. Coffey shows a gift for healing that Edgecombe cannot explain, and the guards begin to wonder what kind of man they are holding. Writing decades later in a nursing home, Paul sets down what happened on the Mile that year. Stephen King first published the novel in 1996 as a serial in six short volumes.
- Horror
- Murder
- Mystery
- Murderers
- Death row inmates
- Prisons
- Executions and executioners
- Sisters
2 What to expect
A prison novel with a supernatural thread, narrated by an old man recalling his year in charge of death row in a 1930s Southern penitentiary. It is about guilt, mercy, cruelty and the death penalty, more a drama than a horror story, with executions described in hard detail. It was written as a six-part serial, so each part recaps a little and closes on a hook, and the mood is sorrowful.
Good for readers who want: an emotional drama, a prison story with a touch of the supernatural, and a story that stays with you.
3 About Stephen King
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Stephen King
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