Six months after starting (I skipped a month after mom died), I’ve come to the end of Stephen King’s serial novel, The Green Mile. I’m impressed, though this final chapter seemed anticlimactic. I haven’t read much Stephen King or horror, but I suspect anticlimactic is how I’ll read most horror. I expect awful things, then I close the book and nothing’s happened. The characters are just characters, and the words are just ink on pages. Despite good writing, I’m not sure I’ll ever feel lasting horror from a book.
For Coffey on the Mile, there’s little in the way of standard horror anyway. Rather than dread a what is to happen, King’s book makes an effort to relieve the reader of any dread of bad things. The characters, particularly Paul Edgecombe, have to face a sin they are about to commit, but it’s dread of a different kind. The victim provides absolution in advance. That may not be much solace for a real person in the situation, but I think it removes most of the horror that a reader would anticipate.
I liked the book. I liked the serialization. And strangely, or not so strangely, that’s all I have to say.
Title: The Green Mile: Part 6: Coffey on the Mile
Author: Stephen King
Series: The Green Mile; 6
Imprint / publisher: Signet / Penguin
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 138 p.
Publication date: August 1996
ISBN-10: 0-451-19057-2
