- Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc; Open market ed edition (7 Dec 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0451196716
- ISBN-13: 978-0451196712
- Product Dimensions: 17 x 10.6 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 35,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
On the first day of May, one hundred teenage boys meet for an event known throughout the country as "The Long Walk." If you break the rules, you get three warnings. If you exceed your limit, what happens is absolutely terrifying.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
98 of 100 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Originally published as one of the "Bachman Books" The long walk centres around a young man named Ray Garraty who decides to enter a competition called the Long Walk, whereby one hundred competitors literarally walk until they drop, with anyone who drops below four miles per hour being brutally dispatched by a group of heartless soldiers until only one is left. Why compete? Because of the ultimate prize - anything he desires. The book charts his mental decline as he walks hundreds of miles, gradually becoming attatched to some of his fellow walkers, all the while knowing that if he lives, they cannot. Similar in theme to "the Running Man", another book originally released in this compendium, this is King (or Bachman) at his best, with the tale mixing "Stand By Me" style themes of friendship amongst adversity with scenes of total horror. The only question is: how did King think he would continue to write under a psuedonym when these tales of the macabre could so clearly only ever have came from one man?
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
What a story!!For such a simple plot,King builds up characters you can really identify with and feel for.The reader can feel the fear and pain along with his or her favourite character.With the advent of reality T.V.,one feels this tale is not set in too distant a future,and that scares me as much as the guards in the book,and the punishments for walking slower than 3 miles per hour.The cameraderie built up between the walkers is admirable,and displays King,s faith in the human creature.There are similarities between this and Mr.King,s "Running Man" but I do not see this as a fault,just a need to re-tell a fantastic story.This does not have the speedy action of "Running Man" or the out and out horror of "Carrie",but I found it really creepy in a disturbing my sense of right and wrong way.One feels for the "heroes"of the walk,but surely greed was their motivation to start the walk,so one cannot help but think "well you asked for it".A great read
66 of 70 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Before Bachman's untimely death of "cancer of the seudonym", Stephen King wrote some of his most original work. "The Long Walk" is an example. It is like the spitting image of "The Body", since both deal with the same subject: the loss of innoncence. But where "The Body" is an elegy to long gone friends, "The Long Walk" is an scary tale of the erosion of childhood dreams.
The premise is simple: 100 teenagers will walk, non-stop, until they drop one by one and are terminated, and the last one standing will be granted whatever his heart fancies. Around it King spools a gothic yarn of classic treatment. The kids that take the Walk go in expecting to fight only physical exhaustion. Slowly, they find out their enemy is a different one: MADNESS.
Anybody wishing to take a walk on the dark side, come along. They are about to start...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
One of the best books I've read!
Just want to say that this is one of the best book I've read. It's amazing. It's simple, not too fancy, really direct type of writing, but it touches your inner fears... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Nuno Pires
Amazing!!!!
This is a truly magnificiant book and is in my top 3 Stephen King books of all time. I was literaly exausted reading it and every character was amazing. Read more
Published 1 month ago by stoke!!!!
Superb king
Superb king as usual. Pretty gory in places and thoroughly gripping throughout. I read this as part of the four `Bachman Books' (also including Rage, Roadwork and the Running... Read more
Published 1 month ago by ultimatecreate
Scary stuff..
I have loved this book for years. The premise of following one boy as he walks, for days, may sound dull. It's not. Read more
Published 3 months ago by R. L. Warren
"The Hunger Games" Owes Stephen King A Huge THANKS For The Idea
This is a great story. As usual with Stephen King, the characters are very real and you care about the protagonist. Read more
Published 4 months ago by LondonBookLover
I was walking with them..
I didn't expect this book about teenage boys to have much of an impact on me, being a woman in my early 40's. BUT I was totally consumed by it... Read more
Published 9 months ago by L.C.
On the Road Again
Ray Garraty and ninety-nine other teenage boys have passed screening tests, been randomly selected, and decided not to opt out of the annual Long Walk. Read more
Published 11 months ago by John M. Ford
skillfull book
Only few people can manage to write an entire book about a group of boys walking. This is evidence of King's ability to sustain a story. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Ioannis Glinavos
gripping
A last man standing sort of book. If you walk below 4 miles an hour for any reason your are given 3/4 warnings (2 mins) and then shot. Try and escape and you are shot. Read more
Published 18 months ago by GP
stephen king
Read nearly all that stephen has written, not one of his best, but was one he had left and had never finished, in his early days, still quite good though.
Published 20 months ago by sparky
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