mass market paperback, 378 pages
French language
Published Feb. 11, 1989 by Albin Michel.
Garraty, un jeune adolescent natif du Maine, va concourir pour la "Longue Marche". Mais ce n'est pas une marche comme les autres, plutôt un jeu sans foi ni loi ...
God I love this one so much. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to read something cover to cover, but this is one of the rare ones that keeps me pushing through the eye strain. A severely underrated classic in its simplicity.
Gobsmackingly funny but bleak beyond repair. I enjoyed every page but it's just too goddamn bleak.
So, the book's about a bunch of dead men walking. I didn't really care for the social commentary that's supposed to be there if you squint your eyes. Past the premise, past the setup, the author didn't care either. Death men don't care.
It's also about a bunch of kids dying. Kids who don't know any better. They get to learn though. Not much. But they wizen up to how wrong they were about everything. Disabused of their convictions about their bodies, strength. Their minds, their fancy plans. A long, strung out, emphasized, capitalized but pointless lesson. Divine enlightenment during bad trip that doesn't seem to end. Raw reality received and processed but soon to be forgotten, too absurd to be any useful. You drop when you drop. Till then, maybe you get to …
Gobsmackingly funny but bleak beyond repair. I enjoyed every page but it's just too goddamn bleak.
So, the book's about a bunch of dead men walking. I didn't really care for the social commentary that's supposed to be there if you squint your eyes. Past the premise, past the setup, the author didn't care either. Death men don't care.
It's also about a bunch of kids dying. Kids who don't know any better. They get to learn though. Not much. But they wizen up to how wrong they were about everything. Disabused of their convictions about their bodies, strength. Their minds, their fancy plans. A long, strung out, emphasized, capitalized but pointless lesson. Divine enlightenment during bad trip that doesn't seem to end. Raw reality received and processed but soon to be forgotten, too absurd to be any useful. You drop when you drop. Till then, maybe you get to shoot the shit with a bunch of other unlucky bastards. But that's it.
It's also about a bunch of people dying in a very horrific way. Public, absurd, without dignity. Unrealistically twisted but all too recognizable. A merciless and hopeless gauntlet without any winners. It's a competition but not really. The only game, a game of chance versus their bodies. Against their minds.
All in all, it's all a decent metaphor, a good one even. And King can tell a good yarn. But I don't like it. Just too damn bleak. There are sunnier metaphors out there and fuck it if they're not just as true. I want to forget about this book.
A long-ass book about an even longer walk, yeah, just walk! Nothing interesting happens to be honest. Just some 100 boys, with whom I failed to develop any kind of emotional tethering, walking to their demise. Why would anyone in their right mind join the long walk knowing that it is certain death, is not clear to me still. The major, who is he actually, and what’s his motivation behind arranging the long walk? This book doesn't give answers to these questions. It probably would have worked better as a short story rather than this long-ass novel with no real climax.
Buen planteamiento de la trama, pero un poco pobre al final.
Save yourself the bother, and read something else.
