The Appeal by John Grisham Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Appeal
Book Review: A bit depressing, but good!
Summary: 4 Stars
John Grisham returns to the legal system for his newest novel. Unlike many of his previous ones this one begins with the verdict and then goes on to the appeals process, stock market manipulation and borderline election fraud.
In fact there's very little time spent on the actual legal process and quite a bit spent on the manipulation of the public in an election for a state Supreme Court justice. One gets to see in full bloody detail all the various tricks and scams that are pulled on the public during an election (like taking a moderate justice and painting her as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, out to ban guns, allow gay marriage and make abortion mandatory!).
Some of these dirty tricks are quite dirty indeed, and while both sides do them, they tend to be done a lot more by Republicans (if for no other reason than the fact that they're a lot better organized). What you see in this book is true, ugly, bare-knuckled politics at its yuckiest.
This isn't a perfect book; the characters are pretty one dimensional, and it's rather easy to tell good from evil, cause the good ones are saints and the evil ones do everything but twirl mustaches and tie women to rails. There's also a rather convenient set of events that happen to the son of one of the characters towards the end of the book that had me slightly rolling my eyes.
*** ((SPOILER ALERT!)) ***
It also had a very unhappy ending, at least to my mind.
Still, a good novel and worth the time to read. If nothing else, it might help persuade people that we really DO need appointed judges and not elected ones. It will also give you a better understanding of how our courts really work, and might well crush the notion of "activist judges", which is just silly.
Book Review: A disappointed avid Grisham reader ...
Summary: 1 Stars
After reading the first 10 chapters, I told my wife, "I liked this book better when it was non-fiction and was titled 'A Civil Action'." If you want to read a courtoom thriller about a big corporation whose recklessness pollutes the water of a community, I would strongly suggest Jonathan Harr's book instead of this one. And, if you have already read Harr's book, you can safely skip this fictionalized version and save yourself its manipulations.
There is no question Grisham is a great story-teller, and this book offers some good story telling as always. However, as I got into the book, it was becoming more and more apparent that this was story-telling with a clear agenda:
+ Big Business is bad. Always bad.
+ Christians involved in politics are misguided and misinformed.
+ Mind-numbing, high dollar punitive damages are necessary - and good.
With the agenda above very clearly being laid before me page after page, I knew the end before I got there. I even suspected I might get a post-story reminder from the author that this book was "purely fictional". I wasn't disappointed. I was then treated to two paragraphs of honesty acknowledging, in short, "but I really do feel this way."
I appreciated that honesty. But I could have done without a story, which seemed clearly crafted to manipulate me to believe the above agenda.
I have not felt this way about any of the 20 previous Grisham books I have read. While "The Chamber" certainly offered a challenge to death penalty thinking, it did so was some even handedness that this story sorely lacked.
If this is where his novels are heading -- stuffed with one-sided, leftist philosophy -- I will no longer be placing Grisham novels in the "Must Read" category. With his next go around, I will definitely wait for some feedback from others before I dedicate several hours to another story showcasing shallow caricatures of "Christian activists," elitist condescension to conservative thought, and sweeping, over-the-top assertions of Big Business Badness.
Book Review: A disappointing Effort
Summary: 2 Stars
I have been a Grisham fan since I read A time to Kill, a brilliant book by any measure. It is one of my all time favorite novels about lawyers and the law. The Appeal, therefore, came as a profound disappointment.
There is nothing wrong with the author of a novel having a point of view, of course, but Grisham's constant pounding of the idea that plaintiffs' personal injury lawyers and the huge verdicts they often win are an unalloyed good and that business and industrial executives, despite the jobs their efforts create, are invariably venal and vicious became very tiresome. Worse, the plotting is sloppy and the characters one-dimensional.
I was particularly put off by Grisham' bias because his position that making judges run for election in contested political contests is a grotesque mistake is absolutely correct. He could have done so much more with the problems such elections create had he resisted the urge to lionize plaintiff's lawyers and vilify business at every turn. Alas, he didn't.
Grisham is a fine storyteller, as his previous successes have proved but this time out he has failed. Too bad, too bad!
Book Review: A discomforting mirror
Summary: 4 Stars
John Grisham's books are so readable, and they move along so smoothly and relentlessly, that we may be fooled into thinking they are simple. And they are. Devilishly simple. His characters are drawn with just a few bold strokes, causing some readers to infer they are flat and one-dimensional. Indeed, Grisham is no Charles Dickens. He would never make it if, like Dickens, he were paid by the word. But he shares some qualities with the earlier author. His books are laced with ironies, although the modern reader is not pummeled with them as is the case with Dickens, whose characters were given laughably silly (though apt) names, lest the ridicule not be understood.
Grisham would seem to have more faith in his audience. But, while his humour and scorn are more subtle, he does have fun with character names. The vilest character in "The Appeal" is so obsessed with earning money that one of his major companies has, as the book opens, been convicted of deliberately dumping toxic waste into a city's water source and the surrounding area, causing severe cancer clusters and many deaths among the local population who had no choice but to get their water from this supply. The obscenely wealthy character, possibly the most amoral one in the book (though he has competition), is named "Trudeau". Eau is French for water. As for the name itself, one could have fun playing with the first four letters of the word.
The historian Edward Gibbons remarked that "our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery." Grisham illustrates this time and again. The young married lawyers who sold most of their belongings in order to fight a blatantly wicked powerhouse have kept one asset, their Latin-American nanny who is an illegal alien. True, they rescued her from an abusive situation, but they are breaking laws nonetheless. And there is the simplistically naïve and pedestrian lawyer who is handpicked and financed by the bad guys with deep pockets. This shallow and inexperienced young man runs as a perceived squeaky-clean conservative against a so-called liberal (read "sinful") woman judge. The candidate does not disappoint his questionable benefactors. He dutifully performs his role without a misstep, not showing sympathy until he is struck with his own misfortune. And this compassion only projects as far as the instances that reflect his own unhappy experience.
Grisham is disturbing when we look into his mirror and see ourselves. This is the uncomfortable truth of fiction. And writers like Grisham excel at making us squirm.
Book Review: A good start deteriorating into a boring end ...
Summary: 2 Stars
I read most of Grisham's book. He is a good story teller, if he chooses to.
This one has a good start. I would say the first 1/3 has a plot that has promises to a great story. Nonetheless, the second and rest of the book simply lets all the leads drop to a boring dead end: there is no fight on the Judge campaign, there is no twist in Carl's manipulating of the share price. There is no threat on the Paton's lives. The final plot on Ron's son provides ingredient for high drama, but instead Grisham just let it pass. So there is no final courtroom battle, no vindication by the small folks, and no 'expected' downfall of Krane and Carl.
As a reader, I read the first 1/3 with interest expecting a lot of intrigue, consipiracy and even murder but at the end I close the book with total disappointment. The hours spent on the book is not even entertainment.
Grisham has made his millions. He probably just wants to write for his own pleasure but probably not to the pleasure of his fans, however.