Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption

Genre: Fiction

This is the story of Andy Dufresne who is a prisoner of the Shawshank Prison in New England beginning in 1948. Andy is accused of the heinous crime of murdering his wife and her lover in an angry rage. This story is told through the perspective of one of his fellow inmates, Red. Red (is a redhead, hence the name) is the guy who can get you anything from the outside world, and Andy asks him for a rock hammer. See, Andy is facing a long time in prison and one of his hobbies is rock carving, and he figures he has plenty of time to hone his interest. And so begins a long lasting working relationship and, ultimately, friendship, between these two men. Red begins procuring several items for Andy, including several posters of Hollywood's latest sirens. As the story unfolds we learn of Andy's experience in prison and what has been keeping him busy at nights. This is a story of friendship, redemption, truth and an interesting perspective on America's prison system.

This book had me thinking about authors and writing. If I were to categorize authors, I would put them into one of two categories: story tellers and people tellers. Stephen King is a story teller. I think I tend to enjoy reading the people tellers more than the story tellers. But that's ironic, because I come from a family of story tellers. My grandparents used to argue over who would get to tell the story of something that happened to them both. My uncles both have really fun stories of growing up and the mischief they would get into. My mother and my middle sister are both story tellers too. My mother likes to tell stories in a similar style to my grandparents, usually something involving a joke or a poem. I think my sister would tell you she's an introvert, but her stories serve as her platform for coming out of her proverbial shell, when she's fully on center stage. And my father is a writer (he's written two books-more on those soon) and is a story teller in his writing.

All that said, I loved, loved this book and wanted to go back to it time after time even though it is a storyline lead book. Maybe it's because of the first person narrator or the ease with which the story unfolds in a straight forward way that made this work so well. King makes me feel like I am sitting on my grandparents' screened-in porch listening to the "grown-ups" talk. There's not much depth to the characters or their inner thoughts, but it works, and works really well. I highly recommend reading this older book as this epitomizes what reading is all about-pure joy.