Short teensy review on King’s Mile 81

Mile 81 by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Right, seeing as I’m sharing this on my blog, I thought I’d best do a full(ish) review.

Spoiler Alert for those who need it:

King’s depth of characters and understanding of human nature and people always astounds me. I love how he understands children and remembers what it’s like to be a child. His books are often a portal to forgotten memories of my childhood. He brings us back with simple things, such as the misspelling of ‘swastika’ in Mile 81 (“Notzi swat-sticker”), much like mentioning that as a child, he thought that a ‘bitch’ was an ‘extremely tall woman’ in On Writing.

Along these lines, I have one negative with the story: I can’t imagine a 6 year old thinking the world ‘asshole,’ even if she didn’t say it. It seemed out of character, but perhaps that’s my rose-tinted view of children. Apart from that, he was dead on his description of the characters.

It was short, so there’s not much to say. Although, the obvious similarities to Christine aside, it’s a unique short story for him. It’s definitely not his best (not on par with something like ‘The Raft’), but it’s thoroughly enjoyable.

I picked it up, assuming that I wouldn’t be able to finish anything that wasn’t in normal paperback/hardcover format, and ended up being disappointed that it had finished so quickly.

All in all, worth a read and a whole $15.00 🙂 Now I move on to UR.

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