The Green Mile by Stephen King (MOBI)

Description

The #1 New York Times bestselling dramatic serial novel and inspiration for the Oscar-nominated film of the same name starring Tom Hanks, the “literary event” (Entertainment Weekly) of The Green Mile is now available in its entirety.When The Green Mile first appeared, serialized as one volume per month, Stephen King’s The Green Mile was an unprecedented publishing triumph: all six volumes ended up on the New York Times bestseller list—simultaneously—and delighted millions of fans the world over. Welcome to Cold Mountain Penitentiary, home to the Depression-worn men of E Block. Convicted killers all, each awaits his turn to walk the Green Mile, keeping a date with “Old Sparky,” Cold Mountain’s electric chair. Prison guard Paul Edgecombe has seen his share of oddities in his years working the Mile. But he’s never seen anyone like John Coffey, a man with the body of a giant and the mind of a child, condemned for a crime terrifying in its violence and shocking in its depravity. In this place of ultimate retribution, Edgecombe is about to discover the terrible, wondrous truth about Coffey, a truth that will challenge his most cherished beliefs…and yours.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review Entertainment Weekly A literary event.Boston Globe King surpasses our expectations, leaves us spellbound and hungry for the next twist of plot.Entertainment Weekly [The Green Mile] has everybody talking….[King’s] best fiction in years….A prison novel that’s as haunting and touching as it is just plain haunted.USA Today One of King’s most immediately engaging page-turners.The New York Times Mr. King now dominates like Carrie at the prom. About the Author Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and an AT&T Audience Network original television series). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower and It are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter OneThis happened in 1932, when the state penitentiary was still at Cold Mountain. And the electric chair was there, too, of course.The inmates made jokes about the chair the way people always make jokes about things that frighten them but can’t be gotten away from. They called it Old Sparky, or the Big Juicy. They made cracks about the Power bill, and how Warden Moores would cook his Thanksgiving dinner that fall, with his wife, Melinda, too sick to cook.But for the ones who actually had to sit down in that chair, the humor went out of the situation in a hurry I presided over seventy-eight executions during my time at Cold Mountain (that’s one figure I’ve never been confused about; I’ll remember it on my deathbed), and I think that, for most of those men, the truth of what was happening to them finally hit all the way home when their ankles were being damped to the stout oak of “Old Sparky’s” legs. The realization came then (you would see it rising in their eyes, a kind of cold dismay) that their, own legs had finished their careers. The blood still ran in them, the muscles were still strong, but they were finished, all the same; they were never going to walk another country mile or dance with a girl at a barn-raising. Old Sparky’s clients came to a knowledge of their deaths from the ankles up. There was a black silk bag that went over their heads after they had finished their rambling and mostly disjointed last remarks. It was supposed to be for them, but I always thought it was really for us, to keep us from seeing the awful tide of dismay in their eyes as they realized they were going to die with their knees bent.There was no death row at Cold Mountain, only E Block, set apart from the other four and about a quarter their size, brick instead of wood, with a horrible bare metal roof that glared in the summer sun like a delirious eyeball. Six cells inside, three on each side of a wide center aisle, each almost twice as big as the cells in the other four blocks. Singles, too. Great accommodations for a prison (especially in the thirties), but the inmates would have traded for cells in any of the other four. Believe me, they would have traded.There was never a time during my years as block superintendent when all six cells were occupied at one time — thank God for small favors. Four was the most, mixed black and white (at Cold Mountain, there was no segregation among the walking dead), and that was a little piece of hell. One was a woman, Beverly McCall. She was black as the ace of spades and as beautiful as the sin you never had nerve enough to commit. She put up with six years of her husband beating her, but wouldn’t put up with his creeping around for a single day. On the evening after she found out he was cheating, she stood waiting for the unfortunate Lester McCall, known to his pals (and, presumably, to his extremely short-term mistress) as Cutter, at the top of the stairs leading to the apartment over his barber shop. She waited until he got his overcoat half off, then dropped his cheating guts onto his tu-tone shoes. Used one of Cutter’s own razors to do it. Two nights before she was due to sit in Old Sparky, she called me to her cell and said she had been visited by her African spirit-father in a dream. He told her to discard her slave-name and to die under her free name, Matuomi. That was her request, that her deathwarrant should be read under the name of Beverly Matuomi. I guess her spirit-father didn’t give her any first name, or one she could make out, anyhow. I said yes, okay, fine. One thing those years serving as the bull-goose screw taught me was never to refuse the condemned unless I absolutely had to. In the case of Beverly Matuomi, it made no difference, anyway. The governor called the next day around three in the afternoon, commuting her sentence to life in the Grassy Valley Penal Facility for Women — all penal and no penis, we used to say back then. I was glad to see Bev’s round ass going left instead of right when she got to the duty desk, let me tell you.Thirty-five years or so later — had to be at least thirty-five — I saw that name on the obituary page of the paper, under a picture of a skinny-faced black lady with a cloud of white hair and glasses with rhinestones at the comers. It was Beverly. She’d spent the last ten years of her life a free woman, the obituary said, and had rescued the small-town library of Raines Falls pretty much single-handed. She had also taught Sunday school and had been much loved in that little backwater. LIBRARIAN DIES OF HEART FAILURE, the headline said, and below that, in smaller type, almost as an afterthought: Served Over Two Decades in Prison for Murder. Only the eyes, wide and blazing behind the glasses with the rhinestones at the comers, were the same. They were the eyes of a woman who even at seventy-whatever would not hesitate to pluck a safety razor from its blue jar of disinfectant, if the urge seemed pressing. You know murderers, even if they finish up as old lady librarians in dozey little towns. At least you do if you’ve spent as much time minding murderers as I did. There was only one time I ever had a question about the nature of my job. That, I reckon, is why I’m writing this.The wide corridor up the center of E Block was floored with linoleum the color of tired old limes, and so what was called the Last Mile at other prisons was called the Green Mile at Cold Mountain. It ran, I guess, sixty long paces from south to north, bottom to top. At the bottom was the restraint room. At the top end was a T-junction. A left turn meant life — if you called what went on in the sunbaked exercise yard life, and many did; many lived it for years, with no apparent ill effects. Thieves and arsonists and sex criminals, all talking their talk and walking their walk and making their little deals.A right turn, though — that was different. First you went into my office (where the carpet was also green, a thing I kept meaning to change and not getting around to), and crossed in front of my desk, which was flanked by the American flag on the left and the state flag on the right. On the far side were two doors. One led into the small W.C. that I and the E Block guards (sometimes even Warden Moores) used; the other opened on a kind of storage shed. This was where you ended up when you walked the Green Mile.It was a small door — I had to duck my head when I went through, and John Coffey actually had to sit and scoot. You came out on a little landing, then went down three cement steps to a board floor. It was a miserable room without heat and with a metal roof, just like the one on the block to which it was an adjunct. It was cold enough in there to see your breath during the winter, and stifling in the summer. At the execution of Elmer Manfred — in July or August of ’30, that one was, I believe — we had nine witnesses pass out.On the left side of the storage shed — again — there was life. Tools (all locked down in frames crisscrossed with chains, as if they were carbine rifles instead of spades and pickaxes), dry goods, sacks of seeds for spring planting in the prison gardens, boxes of toilet paper, pallets cross-loaded with blanks for the prison plate-shop…even bags of lime for marking out the baseball diamond and the football gridiron — the cons played in what was known as The Pasture, and fall afternoons were greatly looked forward to at Cold Mountain.On the right — once again — death. Old Sparky his ownself, sitting up on a plank platform at the southeast comer of the storeroom, stout oak legs, broad oak arms that had absorbed the terrorized sweat of scores of men in the last few minutes of their lives, and the metal cap, usually hung jauntily on the back of the chair, like some robot kid’s beanie in a Buck Rogers comic-strip. A cord ran from it and through a gasket-circled hole in the cinderblock wall behind the chair. Off to one side was a galvanized tin bucket. If you looked inside it, you would see a circle of sponge, cut just right to fit the metal cap. Before executions, it was soaked in brine to better conduct the charge of direct-current electricity that ran through the wire, through the sponge, and into the condemned man’s brain.Copyright © 1996 by Stephen King Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I could write a thousand word essay and never do this book the justice it deserves. The FLAVOR of the time and place is more than HD could ever be. So please do not let me hear, “Oh, I saw the movie.” So what? The intimate story is told in 7D, with help from the master story-teller. NO, NOT EVER will the move be as good as the story was meant to be – and is. (I saw the move as well, it was darned good!) Stephen transports you to a place and time that no longer exist. People lived in such a different world then; even though not that many years ago, that time is so… gone.. The narrative style is GENIUS. Of course it goes without saying that things happen in this book that are better left unspoken. But you leave satisfied.

⭐A few friends have recommended that I read this book over the years. I’m glad I finally did.It’s a flawlessly told story of life inside the Death Row block of a penitentiary. There’s ostensibly a mystery that’s slowly revealed as the story progresses. But even though I’ve never read this book before, and never seen the movie in its entirety (just snippets here and there), the sheer weight of this story’s success means you know who done what from the start.There’s still plenty of suspense, though, and loads of twists and turns. I absolutely loved it.I was pretty sure I was going to give this book four stars, because of the formatting issues in my Kindle edition. I got the impression it was scanned in from a print version, and then someone was tasked with reading through it and fixing all the OCR software’s mistakes. Only they missed quite a bit. It’s the typical OCR stuff: mostly n, h, and b being confused, so you’d see the word “hoss” instead of “boss” for example.Being tech-savvy, I immediately saw what probably happened… but sometimes, both possibilities are actually words, making the situation worse.The last couple of chapters though… wow, those last few chapters are intense. Gut-wrenching. Incredibly emotional. With an ending like that, I’d be nothing more than a petty lugoon if I docked a star for some silly software issues!

⭐I did not read this book in the original serialized aspect. Instead, I read this not too many years ago as the one book. And I do not believe that it hurt the book at all. I don’t think there is anything that could hurt this book.The Ugly: As I said, there is hardly anything wrong with this book. The only thing I couldn’t stand about the book was the fact that it was told in flashback form. I don’t know what it is, but when it comes to flashbacks I don’t usually have a problem with them. It was just in this book it didn’t seem to work out for me.The Bad: Just because a man isn’t smart, doesn’t mean that he won’t be able to find a way to make it be known that he wasn’t the one to the kill the girls. Just by looking at the man, one would be able to tell that he wasn’t a killer. Sadly, he wasn’t smart enough to even kill a person. I know it was part of the book, but it also hurt the story going through.The Good: The emotions of the book is what drove it along. And it was what made the book so damn good. King was brilliant in the way he made everyone seem like their lives are nothing more than their emotions in the writing. It just seemed that this is the most emotional book that King has written.Final Thoughts: Even if you have seen this movie, you need to read this book. Easily one of King’s best books just because of the emotion in it.

⭐Admittedly, I am a Stephen King junkie. Read all the books, seen all the movies (even the bad ones). This book intrigued me from the start. It was maddening not to read ahead and devour the whole story cause King released this initially as chapter plays – feeding you 120-150 pages at a time and then making you wait until the next month to continue the story. The movie strays somewhat from the book but is pretty true to King’s form. The choice of Tom Hanks as Paul Edgecomb was brilliant. An actor who says so much without uttering a word. A shame Michael Clarke Duncan passed so early but he was the embodiment of the John Coffey character from the book. Literally and figuratively. I loved the relationship between Paul and his wife in the film. Very coy and old world genteel, hiding the sassy parts. I actually reread the book as my husband asked me throughout the movie if it paralleled the book and I had to read it as a refresher. One of my alltime faves – can quote most of it word for word. Has a lot of subtleties you’ll notice if you view it more than once. Highly recommended! Watch it and you’ll be “pleased several times” just like Paul’s wife Jan.

⭐This will ALWAYS be one of my favorite books of all time. I remember reading it when it was released as a series of small chapter books and waiting impatiently for the next one!! The movie adaptation is amazing as well and the actors were just phenomenal. Stephen King is a writer like no other and I grew up reading his books and watching the movies as they came along. I give this book 10 stars and will likely read many more times!!!

⭐After I finished The Stand, I wanted very badly to read another King immediately, and this book was recommended by quite a few people. Well, THANK YOU! If you are one of the many readers I have heard from lately, that have wanted to read King, but aren’t fans of horror-this is the King book for you.The Green Mile is the amazing story of of Paul Edgcombe, a prison guard in charge of death row in Cold Mountain Penitentiary. Though set in one of the worse place imaginable, King gives us a story about goodness, kindness, and love. I had to slow myself down from reading too quickly, so I could enjoy and absorb the story. I hope I am wrong, but I doubt I will ever find another character like Paul Edgcome. I actually made my husband PPV the movie the minute I finished reading the book, though in hindsight, maybe not the best idea, as I was exhausted the nest day. He felt bad for me, since I cried for the last half hour while reading the book!

⭐The trouble with Stephen King is that his “Voice” gets into your head and you don’t want it to go away .He doesn’t write at you he talks to you and you almost always find yourself wanting to hear more .Of course The Green Mile is an absolute classic ,and anyone who hasn’t read it really ,really should .King has a well deserved reputation for horror but this really isn’t that ..unless it’s the horror of what human laziness ,prejudice and selfishness can lead to in the right (wrong) circumstances .Don’t misunderstand me ,this is not a happy read for the most part ,though it does have some wonderful moments .What it does is drag you into a deeply unpleasant place ,populated by some unforgettable characters ,then dares you to look them and yourself full in the face and soul .At the current Kindle price it’s got to be worth downloading and taking the journey .

⭐I absolutely adored this book. I’m not actually a fan of King (I know, shock horror!) but this was such a wonderful book in its own sad way. I’d like to point out I’ve seen the film millions of times (it’s one of my favourites) but for some reason I had the urge to see what the book was like and I think the film did the book justice. John Coffey is such a sad, lonely character but you can’t help but feel his love for the characters that treated him right. Paul Edgecomb (admittedly all I could see was Tom Hanks) was a character that you can believe existed, the way he treated his prisoners and how he saw them were interesting.The only thing I disliked, and funnily enough disliked in the movie too, was the mouse. It seemed so out of place and, well, boring. I almost skipped those chapters about the mouse because to me, it didn’t add anything substantial. A part from that, I adored this book as much as the movie, I don’t understand why it’s labelled horror as I failed to see it as one. Supernatural sure, but I wouldn’t say it’s one of King’s horrors which is why I probably liked it. Glad I decided to read it, going up there with my favourites for sure.xxx

⭐My second Stephen King book, first one was Bag of Bones.This book is better. There is a compact story taking place in a Death Sentence Execution prison.Executions are carried out on an electric chair called Old Sparky :-)Prime roles are made up of four/five wardens, and three prisoners.I am starting to believe that Stephen King is writing for daily, ordinary reader for their easy enjoyment.I am missing intellectual investigations, inquiries into the psychology of people and their motivations.Stephen King is, most of the time, just showing us what everyone else see on everyday.( Though this was bit different in his other book, Bag of Bones. For example, there Mike, in a lot of instances, was also explaining what people really meant, and really wanted to say after their utterances.I really like that unmasking daily politically correct deception.)Though Stephen King produces enormous amount if great American English narrative, but then when there is nothing happening, and story lacks suspense, it starts feeling like simple, dull, empty, numb.It gives you a feeling if lot of repetitive talk in the unchanging sphere. And then I slide into disengagement, and I have to put energy to get back.In this novel, I liked the dry, authentic emotional sphere of the prisoners who are waiting for their execution.One of the wardens, Percy, keeps yelling “Deadman Walking here” while he is bringing the new prisoner John into his cell.Indeed, in a way, these people are walking dead. So I liked the talks, and the sphere of Walking Dead.Percy, unlike four other wardens, is hateful, and sadistic against prisoners for no particular reason.His sadism reaches its peak when he sabotages execution of a prisoner, Delacroix.On the execution, Percy did not wet the sponge with salty water they put on top of the head of the prisoner. This is for electric current to go through the body fast and more.As a result execution took long, and he is literally fried, terrifying the witnesses, and wardens, even Percy.Wardens, and their supervisor Paul, noticed this horrible deception but they couldn’t do anything about it.Because Percy is a relative of the State Governor. And Percy reminds this to others when he feels so.And neither Paul, nor others want to risk their jobs because of Percy.This is a painful situation for Paul. But developments will take care of Percy problem in a way he deserves.Again supernatural powers are intact in this story.I am not sure if I like this or not. The reason is that when there is supernatural power, and people just get alone with it as part of daily routine, it feels odd.Prisoner John, has such power. And it is just not clear why, how he got it. Maybe it is because of his angel heart.By using his power, John heals Paul’s bladder infection without Paul requesting it.Paul had been suffering dearly from this illness, particularly in every peeing. So Paul is so grateful to John.Paul, together with other wardens (except Percy) take even John out of prison too heal brain tumor of Chief Warden’s wife, Melinda Moores.John heals her also. Everybody gets stunned.Melinda, her husband are all enormously grateful to John fro saving her from tumor which was turning her insane.Paul feels so sad, and helpless about death sentence for John.John is a huge black man, accused of raping two little girls, and killing them.By using his supernatural powers, John makes Paul feel that real murderer of the girls is also here, he is other prisoner William Wharton.But John does not want to dive into business of proving it, and saving himself.Because he feels that life is so cruel, and deceptive, so it does not worth living in.John transfers insanity he healed from Melinda Moores to Percy. As a result, Percy kills William Wharton.This fixes the Percy problem in the prison.Finally, Paul supervises the execution of John.He asks John if he has anything to say. He says “I am sorry for what I am”Mother of the murdered girls witnessing the execution screams “O you monster, you ought to be! You damn well ought to be”John asks one favor during execution. Do not put the mask on his head. Because he is afraid of dark.Paul grants this. And orders “Roll On”, feeling himself damned forever.I feel like name of this book could have been I AM SORRY for WHAT I AM

⭐First of all, i’m an avid Stephen King fan! Generally i like his more horror themed stories, however i wanted to try one of his other styles. I purchased this on Amazon Kindle and i have barely been able to put it down, absolutely stunning story.I won’t ruin the story for anyone, though i’m sure most people will of seen the film, and if you have you won’t be disappointed because the film stayed VERY CLOSE to the book. It is an absolute must read, watching the film previously doesn’t take anything away.I’ve spent a lot of my time wondering about the imagery and symbolism King uses in this book, why he chose Green for example. And i think a lot of it has to do with his clear opinions on the death penalty, that is from understanding a bit about his beliefs and reading the story. From the get go in this book it is very clear that the real justice for the crimes these men committed, is not simply in the execution…it is on the mile. I love the line “No matter how it happened, Del is the lucky one” and the discussions of how life is pain and suffering, it is so very true. The men are seen as “square with the house” or “paid their debts” once the deed has been done and they’ve walked the mile, but the real suffering comes from the waiting…waiting to die…with all the pain and things you have lost still going on around you. King makes sure you understand that most of the men on the mile are tormented and live with regret for their crimes, he forces you to see a human side rather than simply the crime. You know why they are there…but you still feel sad for them as they walk the green mile. This is purely down to King, the way he draws you in and his beautiful story telling. Prepare to get kicked RIGHT IN THE FEELS with this one, it is a rough ride emotionally in parts.There are some fantastic comedy elements to the story as well! Old Toot has to be one of my favourites! (for anyone who has read it, i’m sure they know which part i mean, his “final words”). The mouse is also a wonderful light relief, though i know he symbolises something much deeper which i’m still puzzling on.If you happen to be doing an English course like i am, then this book will be perfect to flex your brain. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it and look forward to analysing it fully.If you just want a good book to read…you really can not go wrong with Stephen King. I can highly recommend this book, the only regret you may have is that you didn’t read it sooner!

⭐I’d seen this film many years ago but had never read the book. An article I was reading recently recommended the novel and I hadn’t read a Stephen King for a long time so thought I’d give it a go.An introduction by the author explains the development of the story, from a short story narrative made up during sleeplessness nights through to a series of short novels written under a tight time pressure through to the novel version (which is the six short novels presented in one binding).I’m really enthused about the prison aspects but apprehensive about the magical realism as always find this area difficult to believe.Once I started reading I realised that I need not have been concerned about any aspect as I was in the hands of a master storyteller.The episodic structure is fascinating and works really well, giving the opportunity for the tension to be increased towards the end of a section. Repetition is allows as a reinforcement at the start of the next section. There is a comfortable predictability to the pace which gives excitement but lets the reader concentrate on the plot twists.We see the story in the first person narrative of Paul Edgecombe who was the senior officer on a death row in the 1930s. He is now talking from an old people’s home much later in his life, remembering a period of his career that effected him for the rest of his life.Stephen King is well known for his horror stories but I hadn’t expected this novel to be so emotive and engaging. From the first page the story grabbed me by dangling teasers of what was going to happen later. His characterizations are amazing – they are people with great back stories and plausible lives. Even the magical aspects of the plot seem that they could be possible.I’ve been raving about this book to various people as I’ve been reading it. Many have previously avoided Stephen King as they are not horror fans but this novel is such a departure which will stay in my head for a long time.

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