REVIEW: The Long Walk (book) by Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman

The Long Walk is a dystopian survival book. I borrowed my copy from a coworker.

Review:

This dystopian novel follows the five or so days of the Long Walk, the "American pastime" in which 100 teen boys must walk at least four miles an hour for however long it takes until only one of them is left. Any boys who drop below the minimum speed or who break any of the other various rules are given a warning. After three warnings, they're shot. Acquired warnings drop off after a few hours of walking according to the rules. The "winner" gets, I think, whatever they want and some cash. Honestly, by that point it really doesn't matter.

I'd seen the movie trailers and thought the characters seemed decent enough - too decent for me to want to watch them die, one by one, over the course of 108 minutes. But I figured I'd at least give the book a try.

Initially, I thought that a lot of the boys involved in the Long Walk probably didn't know the true consequences of what they were involved in. The POV character, Garraty, kept thinking about how, after three warnings, they "punched your ticket," as though they sent boys who didn't measure up back home. When the first boy was shot it became clear that, actually, everybody knew this was going to happen.

Which begged the question, why even do this? The book never really answered this to my satisfaction. This is a dystopian novel in which very little time is devoted to showing you what the dystopian world in which it exists is like. Readers learn bits and pieces here and there. I recall a mention of there being no more rich people anymore, and I got the impression that life could be hard and that there were maybe shortages at times. No one could protest the Long Walk without being taken away (killed? imprisoned?) by the Squads, which is what happened to Garraty's father. It sounded as though the Major had, at some point, used the military to essentially take the whole country over. 

At the same time, the Long Walk was something that teen boys had to apply to take part in. It didn't sound like anyone was required to apply, and applying didn't guarantee you a spot. Even if you were chosen, you didn't know for a while if you were just a backup or an actual participant. Winners supposedly got whatever they wanted as their prize at the end of the Long Walk, but it seemed like very few of the participants had any idea what they'd want their prize to be - I had thought maybe Garraty's mom was sick and needed treatment they couldn't afford, but it was like he'd decided to participate in the Long Walk on a lark.  

There were very few mentions of past "winners." In fact, the only one that I can recall was a past winner who died not long after his Long Walk due to the strain it had put on his body. And yet there were still boys voluntarily applying to take part. Yes, these boys were largely young idiots who had no real concept of their own mortality, but this was an event in which 99 out of  100 participants were guaranteed to die, and it didn't sound like the final survivor generally had a great future ahead of him either. Of the characters whose background stories were revealed, there were maybe two of them whose participation made any kind of sense (and, even then, only with a large dose of insanity and/or stupidity added in).

This was a grueling read in which readers learned a bit about various characters while waiting to see when and how they'd die. King writes vivid characters, but still. What was the point? I'm guessing it was some kind of war metaphor or something, because this felt like reading a war novel, complete with earnest teens thinking about the girlfriends, wives, and mothers they left behind. It seemed like King was also going for some sort of "the Long Walk = a condensed version of life" thing.

Well, I read it, and it underscored for me that I shouldn't ever watch the movie (although, according to someone I know, the movie at least cut back on the boob and butt grabbing, so there's that). The characters were well depicted (although I ended up disliking more of them than I expected, including a few I think I wasn't supposed to dislike - sorry, but McVries' girlfriend was better off without him), and King ground them down and broke them to pieces in a very believable way.