A Review of The Long Walk by Stephen King

I consider The Long Walk to be one of Stephen King's finest books, and that's saying a lot because I really like his work*. This dystopian work was written in 1979 and is one of the most chilling novels I've ever read.  The premise is that 100 teenage boys start a walk, and the winner is the last man standing, one of the prizes being that you live to survive the race. There is no set distance, but if you stop walking you die, if you incur a penalty three time penalties you die, there is only one survivor. It's a horribly simple idea, and it's this single mindedness that is so chilling; there is no stepping away from this procession, you are with these boys as nearly all of them walk towards their deaths.

Source

The story is told through the eyes of Ray Garrity, one of the competitors, we are introduced to the other boys via friendships he makes and gossip that trickles down through the line. I found myself getting invested in other characters, rooting for them, and then it would hit home that there is only one survivor. This idea is made sharply poignant as various boys talk to each other about winning, in some ways blocking out the fact that for this to happen their comrades must perish. The huge truth of their near certain death is almost blinding, they can't talk about it, but they can think of nothing else; hope and despair are clung to with equal measure. Because of the omnipresence of death in this story we are forced to look at the futility of their struggle against all the odds, and question is it worth it. It's like King has boiled down the essence of our own daily struggles and our own inevitable death. In their blisters, aching legs, and cramping muscles we can see our own travails through life.

It's the small details that are most shocking in the book, after a short while you accept the horrifying premise that 99 boys will die for the sake of a televised competition. But the idea that they can't stop to take a crap seems like a cruel and needless punishment, that they might die because they took too long to relieve themselves, it brings a whole new meaning to stage fright!

I recently watched The Hunger Games(which I've yet to read) and was struck by the similarity to The Long Walk; a gameshow where teenagers compete for their lives, survival of the fittest, retaining humanity in an inhuman fight for your life. I'd love for this to be made into a film, but I'd hate to see it go the way of so many other of King's books like The Langoliers, Dreamcatcher, and The Tommyknockers, which were all truly awful.

I would highly recommend this book, it one of my favourite reads of this year so far, it was one of those books that I slowed down nearing the end as I didn't want to finish it.

*A somewhat uncool thing to say on front of people who consider themselves serious readers, but I find mostly they've never read his work and just him on the fact that he writes about the supernatural.

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Scary Reads for Halloween

It's that time of year when you can smell the dry cold in the air, there are leaves rustling around your feet and every shop window is packet with monsters and ghouls. Halloween is my favourite time of year, it means I have excuse to spend loads of time making an outlandish costume, which I can then flounce about town in. It got me thinking about all the creepy books I've read over the years. Here are just a few;

Shrine by James Herbert: I read this in my early teens, and don't really remember a huge amount of it, except the overwhelming feeling of dread every time I picked up the book.  It's about a deaf mute little girl who after seeing visions can hear and speak again. It was a compulsion to keep reading, somehow I thought I could prove that there was no boogeyman under the bed if I just kept reading. But with a book as opposed to a film it's a much slower eking sense of terror, there is no such thing as ripping off the plaster quickly. Even the front cover freaked my out, look at her!

It by Stephen King: This is another one of my early teen reads, thanks to my much older brother's book collection I read a plethora if inappropriate books quite young. It is to blame for a large number of people of a certain generation being terrified of clowns. They are creepy anyway, but he dialed up the notch to about 11. It's the usual mix for King with the ensemble cast fighting the supernatural; in this case a clown that terrified a group of teens and has now returned to them in adult life. When a book follows you around during the day and makes you terrified of simple things like a drain plug you know you are onto a winner.

The Body Artist by Don DeLillo: This is not meant to be a scary book, and it wasn't, not in the way the two previous ones are. But I found it unsettling. DeLillo is lauded as a giant in literature, his writings are an exploration of prose, the self, and are an experiment in reading. The Body Artist isn't really about much, there is a woman in a house who has recently lost her husband. The book is like a wisp of their relationship,and their roots in their house, her deceased husband is very present by his absence. A third presence enters the story(non story), he is never fully described, he is just there, sometimes he speaks in different voices, yet he has no voice. It was this character that gave me a major case of the willies. I had to stop reading it for a few weeks as I was too scared by this non entity, I went back to it eventually, which I'm glad of as it was a beautiful quiet book.

So what books have given you the heebie jeebies?

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Hello and Welcome

Welcome to our first blog post!

It will mostly be me, Ruth, writing these updates, but now and then John might pop in and say hello too. We've have a second hand book stall at the Milk Market, and for a while now I've been toying with the idea of starting this blog. I've been blogging for about 5 years already with Nice Day Designs, and I've found that lately I've been blogging about books, reviews, and illustration quite a bit, so it seemed to make sense to separate out the two.

I'm an avid reader, I have been since my mother first brought me into the library at the age of 3. Reading has always been a way for me to relax, escape, learn, and fall in love with new worlds. I'm one of those people that slows down when I near the end of a book because I don't want it to end. 

On this blog I hope to talk about this life long love of the written word, and maybe you'll enjoy my ramblings too.

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