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Rate: 4/5

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Medium: Audiobook

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Overview (No Spoilers):

It has been a while since I read a book by Stephen King, but when I saw the trailer for The Long Walk, I knew I had to find out what happens. The premise seems so straight forward. One hundred boys from across the United States meet in Maine every year for a brutal contest where they walk continuously at 4 miles an hour until only one is left standing. In true King fashion, bowing out of the contest forfeits your life, though this detail isn’t immediately apparent. The stakes are high to say the least.

Starting out, the parameters around the walk are fairly vague for the reader, where we have to tease out the nuances of the various rules along the way. The Walkers all know the expectations, so with the reader being left to catch up leads to a mounting suspense as the first boy begins to falter. Soon the readers, alongside the horrified Walkers, learn that the consequences are indeed life or death. King includes warnings for the Walkers before they are disqualified (in a most permanent way), that serve to heighten the suspense and leaves a lingering dread for a set amount of time after. The warnings are a brilliant addition to amplify an already deadly situation. 

The Long Walk is a story of companionship, as with miles and miles of time to fill, the strangers slowly develop friendships or animosities even though their fates through the end of the contest are not mutually aligning. The reader too becomes attached to even the most prickly of characters, empathy and pity overwhelming any initial unfavorable impressions. 

King’s choice to dehumanize the crowd is interesting. By the end, the callous crowd is my least favorite character. The concept of the insatiable crowd’s thirst for blood while intermingled with the scattering of loved ones throughout the path provide such an intriguing breadth of emotions. 

King first published this novel under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. I highly recommend reading the prelude from King where he discusses how he felt about the unveiling of this pseudonym and how he uses the persona to find a different voice while writing. 

While listening to this book I went for a walk. It was disconcerting to be walking leisurely while reading a book where boys were breaking, desperate, and dying due to the same activity. It was then that I realized the pace they had to maintain was my comfortable jogging pace. Can you imagine walking 4 miles/hour up hill and down hill, rain or shine, day or night?

The Long Walk is a story of endurance and friendship even in the most impossible and grueling conditions. This story also starts off with such optimism, where despite the odds and consequences of failure, 100 boys convince themselves of their inevitable success. King packs in so many emotions into a relatively short read with a limited cast.  

Overall, The Long Walk is a brilliant read that builds horror and dread throughout until the reader is as wrung out and emotionally broken as the last few Walkers, leaving me to continue to ponder this story days after.

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Additional Insight (Spoilers Abound): 

• Did Ray break in the end? Will he recover mentally? How one’s anyone recover mentally from an experience like that.
• Why would anyone sign up for this?
• What happens to the other winners? What did they ask for in the end?
• Was Stebbins really the Major’s bastard son? Did he really take him to the end of one of the previous walks?
• Why did Ray really sign up?
• What happened to Scramm’s wife and child?
• Why is the Walk always in Maine?
• Does Garraty stay in a relationship with his girl?

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