Tra i migliori romanzi di King, letto prima di aver visto il film.
L'eterna lotta tra il bene e il male, descritta con toni meno crudi di quelli a cui ci aveva abituato l'autore.
Una lettura consigliabile anche a chi non ha mai letto nulla di King. ( )

The Green Mile is a great read. If you liked the movie, then you'll probably like the book. They have the same feel. This is actually one of the rare times when I like the book and the movie equally.

I listened to the audiobook this time and it was really good. ( )

Almost thirty years on, I'm finally reading this as a single novel. The first time, I read it in the monthly installments that came out, and enjoyed the heck out of it.

But this time? This novel has struck me like no other King novel. King has scared me. King has tugged at my heart. King has shown me evil and good, wonder and despair. He's made me laugh and made my cry. He's created characters that I loved and characters that I've despised, and even characters that have been incredibly close to people I know in real life.

He has never written a book that's affected me the way this one does. Even reading it for the second time, knowing some of the twists at the end, King's writing, his story, his storytelling, his characters, his situations...they hit me.

When a book hits me like this, I literally feel my mind splitting into two different, but equally active modes:

The first is the Reader, who still continues to move through the story, immersed in the story, and enjoying every word as it carries me on the path that King has woven. This is the part of me that's deeply affected.

The second is the Writer, who steps back a bit and sneaks over to that curtain and lifts it to take an admiring look at the inner workings of the story, the mechanics that King built so carefully and put in place to make this entire machine work so well. This is the part of me that's impressed and also trying to learn from it.

King has always been good at creating his everyman characters. They aren't rich, they aren't overly exciting...they're just you and me, but thrown into extraordinary circumstances. He's also been pretty good at creating those meaner characters, the bullies and the brutes. He's also created a lot of very good exceptional characters, Carrie White, Danny Torrance, Charlie McGee, Johnny Smith, and he's done it again with John Coffey. So, it's not these that make this novel special. They're what make it a King novel.

I think it comes down to two things.

The first is the incredible set pieces that King builds into this novel. Coffey with the two girls in the field. The first death of Mr. Jingles. William Wharton's arrival. The very bad death of Eduard Delacroix. Coffey with Melinda. Coffey with Percy, and Percy with Wild Bill, and two more scenes toward the end of the novel that enter into spoiler territory. I don't know that King's created a novel and packed such powerful scenes into it since maybe THE SHINING or IT. His novels all have one or two, but nine or ten? No. So, that's one. King was on fire with this one.

The other is how much King was able to dig into life and death and the consequences of both. How he was able to talk about the influence and indifference of God. And how he was able to build such nobility and pathos into his flawed characters that it literally hurts to see them in pain.

I don't think King ever wrote another novel like this, one so deeply affecting. But I will say, to anyone who ever doubts the man can write, this will always be the one I'll point to to prove them wrong. ( )

Former prison guard and nursing home resident Paul Edgecombe tells the story of John Coffey, a prisoner that he looked after back when he was the head guard on Death Row (the "Green Mile") in a Depression-Era penitentiary. Coffey is a giant of a man, but simple-minded, and has been convicted of raping and killing two young girls. There are lots of story lines, ranging from a severe urinary tract infection to a magical mouse, but the main show involves Coffey's supposed guilt, and a special power that he seems to possess. I won't spoil any more of the plot.

All of King's novels have a type of character who is a straight shooter, and a moral person, and brave, and ready to mix it up if honor so dictates. This character type is presented too abundantly in this work for my taste, and I just felt like a lot of the devices were over-the-top in asking for our involvement. For a setting and group of characters that presents so many opportunities for moral shading, I just felt like there was too much black and white.

That said, this novel has a lot going for it. There are several interlocking stories and subplots, and they all gel together very nicely. I also found the ending, which takes place in the frame story at the nursing home, to be unusually satisfying. And the narrator, Paul Edgecomb, really is a very likable fellow, and seeing him at two different stages of his life really makes the reader think about aging, and the elderly.

So many of King's novels deal with a battle between spiritual forces of good and evil, but this book almost seems to be more about magic, and the change is refreshing. There are fewer explanations for the phenomena that we see, but that preserves an air of mystery and wonder about them happening. Sometimes explanations are nice, but I think that in this case, King makes a wise decision by leaving some things open for interpretation. ( )

There are very few books that have made me absolutely break down and sob, and this was one of them. The story is so real; I've never wanted to reach into a story and help so badly before. Stephen King has penned a masterpiece with this book. ( )