Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

Stephen King 1982

Devastation Rating

Ugly Crying
prison survival injustice literary fiction friendship

Our Take

King writes hope in a place designed to extinguish it, and Andy Dufresne's quiet, patient endurance is more frightening than anything in King's horror work. Red's narration carries the weight of decades wasted, and the ending earns its hope because the novel has not flinched from what prison actually does to people.

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