wilderthan | Review - The Long Walk

I didn't like Stephen King back when he was pretending he wasn't Richard Bachman, so I don't know if I'd have recognised his writing if I'd read this then, but I think I probably would've. There's something about it. The main difference is the theme -- it's horribly human, much less supernatural. He always has something of the human in his books, I've found, something true, something that'll make sense to your ordinary sceptical reader, no matter who they are -- something about family bonds, or just the familiarity of the creeping horror, or a fear that sort of floats around, like a flu pandemic or the death of a child...

This book is much closer, because it's all about humans. It's a cruel book. You know from the beginning that the end isn't going to be a release, because you start off with one hundred characters and it's going to narrow down to one. That's cruel. I felt bad, rooting for Garraty, 'cause weren't the others deserving, too? There isn't a real winner, in The Long Walk, I think. The ending is interesting -- I can see why people call it weak, but it fits with the rest, I think, and if you find it an anticlimax, well, consider: maybe you were supposed to.

For something in which so little happens -- one hundred boys walk through Maine, and if they go slower than four miles per hour they get shot, and the winner is the one left standing at the end -- this is oddly compelling.

And my feet feel just a little sympathetically sore right now.