Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
Troisième livre de King que je lis et absolument pas le dernier.
Habituellement je préfère lire des livres courts (environ 200 pages ou moins). Pour l'instant, Stephen King est le seul auteur qui parvient à me faire apprécier de bout en bout la lecture d'un livre qui fait le double de ce que j'ai l'habitude de lire. Je ne me suis pas ennuyé une seule fois malgré le fait que je connaisse le film par cœur et donc que je connaisse déjà l'histoire dans sa quasi-totalité.
C'est originellement un roman feuilleton, King débute alors chaque partie en reprenant la fin de la partie précédente, ce qui crée un effet de redondance / de répétition si on le lit dans une version intégrale comme celle-ci. Cependant ce n'est pas gênant, on comprend que c'est un procédé d'écriture logique dans ce contexte de publication.
C'est aussi le genre de livre qui annonce les événements avant de les raconter. King nous spoil le sort de certains personnages dès la première ou seconde partie, il annonce certains événements bien avant qu'ils n'interviennent dans la narration. Et pourtant, cela ne gâche en rien l'émotion qui nous est transmise lorsque ces événements sont enfin abordés. C'est peut-être dû au fait que je connaissait déjà l'histoire, mais ces spoils ne m'ont pas gêné; je pense que c'est compensé d'une part par le talent de King pour mettre en scène son histoire mais aussi par la richesse du récit : il se passe beaucoup de choses, les destins des personnages s'entremêlent, on voit véritablement s'établir un mécanisme de cause à effet qui, à mon sens, justifie ces spoils. En d'autres termes, dans La Ligne Verte, le destin des personnages est scellé, on ne peut qu'assister à leur inévitable descente aux enfers.
BREF, je ne me suis pas ennuyé une seule seconde, c'est bien écrit, c'est émouvant, je pense qu'on peut tous en tirer quelques leçons de vie en fonction de la lecture que l'on en fait: je met cinq étoiles à La Ligne Verte qui rejoint l'étagère de mes livres favoris aux côtés de Shining, et c'est pour cette raison qu'il me tarde de lire d'autres romans de Stephen King, peu importe leur taille.
Always postponed the day I would actually watch the movie and then one of my beautiful friends offered me the book so I automatically read it and it turned out to be amazing. The story elaborated different subjects : acknowledging, forgiveness and that whatever happens, happens. I did knew the outcome of Caffey but not how it went down to it. I have trouble crying over a book but it affected me seeing that nothing could be done. Edgecomb and Brutus are such goods characters. I kinda felt off about Delacroix’s part because it was a little bit too long for me but his execution made understand why King’s focused on him. And of course how could it be a great Stephen King’s book if it didn’t brought out one supernatural element.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.