7 July 2019
The Green Mile (King, 1996) is a 6-part serial of books revolving around the execution of a giant black man for the death of twin white girls in Georgia, 1932. The book was made into a film in 1999 starring Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan and got praise from King about an adaptation he enjoyed (I haven't seen the film so can't speak to that yet).
Each paperback ran about 90 pages (the last book a but longer), and have introductions by the narrator that make the books slightly independent reads if you really wanted. To me each book set a slightly different tone, whether it was a more humorous book 2, and dark book 4, or an more drama-filled book 5.
The characters were all pretty solid - by the end of the book all the characters feel pretty real and with personality - something I've not always gotten from King's books (Doctor Sleep being a recent example). A few of them (like the antagonists in the story) are occasionally a little thin and simplistic, but they're meant to be annoying.
The story has twists that remind me of the Shawshank Redemption [film], and I guess it helps that it was in the similar timeframe. There's also an element of the supernatural within this book that I found really fascinating and unexpected, and although it's by no means the main element to the story, I found it to be an interesting one. This subdued supernatural element has been in his more recent books like Elevation or The Bill Hodges Trilogy Boxed Set: Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch and I like it a lot in his writing.
I obtained the series as a bundle of the 6 paperbacks, and tried to annotate progress in the progress section. I think parts 3 and 4 stand out the most, though part 6 is also really good. 5/5