|
|
|
The Appeal
by John Grisham
|
|
|
Large Photo
|
Edition: Hardcover
Publication Date: January 29, 2008
Publisher: Doubleday
ISBN: 0385515049
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 97
Average Customer Rating: 
List price: $27.95
|
|
|
Showing page 1 of 20
|
|
|
|
Reviews
|
|
 Interesting and thought provoking . . , May 13, 2008
|
|
|
While this was written as a cautionary tale, it really makes one sit up and take notice. All written is possible and on some fronts, highly probable. Scary. A good read, especially in a presidential election year. Makes you really take notice of things. Best Grisham in a while.
|
|
 Disappointing, May 11, 2008
|
|
|
Disappointing to say the least. I have been a John Grisham fan since The Firm but his books are getting more mundane by the year. I do not think I will read another one.
|
|
 2.5 stars, May 5, 2008
|
|
|
Grisham, after quite a few boring and tedious 'personal' novels, is back on familiar turf with the legal drama The Appeal. Grisham's books are often about the small guy against the big old mean corporation. I stopped reading his court dramas a long while back because they were all becoming too much alike, and the writing was often very poor. Well Grisham is almost back on track with The Appeal, even if the book falls short in the end.
I really enjoyed the book's first chapter. A big corporation is found guilty of poisoning a small town's water source, which causes many to die of cancer. The big mean old corporation, not wanting to create a precedent with the verdict, will try and find a way to appeal the decision. The best way? Rig the appeal process of course. That's when the book starts getting long, often ridiculous at times. Instead of offering us a mystery, Grisham offers us a polotical election that will decide the outcome of the appeal. The characters that were introduced in the first chatper disappear, replaced by political figures and rich executives. It's almost as if the first chapter was an unfinished short story that was developped into a novel.
Yes the story is familiar grounds for Grisham, but I could see that he was trying to do something different with this novel. Instead of being a novel about the families and the people affected by the disaster, the book becomes of story of politics and of the rich getting richer. There really isn't any emotional punch to this story, which was much needed to elevate the story to the next level.
The dialogue is often unintentionally funny and the pacing is often off. After its first chapter, I was really expecting a good novel, like the ones Grisham used to write at the beginning of his career (I can't wait for him to go back to the heights of The Firm, A Time To Kill, The Rainmaker and The Partner). But because the characters are so paper-thin, and the emotional content just isn't there, The Appeal falls short in the end. This one could have, and should have, been much much better.
|
|
 The Pelican Brief, only without any murders, May 5, 2008
|
|
|
Another fine story from Grisham, with lots of juicy details about how the justice system really works.
Without giving anything away, the basic plot is: 1) Small-town lawyer wins a huge verdict against a pesticide manufacturer in Mississippi; 2) the manufacturer appeals the verdict to the State Supreme Court; 3) the Supreme Court usually votes 5-4 to uphold such verdicts; but 4) there's an election coming up, which the manufacturer's handpicked candidate has a good chance of winning; 5) which would tip the balance in the opposite direction.
So it's similar to the Pelican Brief (also very good, BTW), except this time the corporate tycoon uses political consultants, not hit-men, to try to change the make-up of the court.
In particular, I really liked the interplay of the multiple story-lines about the physical, emotional, and economic impact of living in a "cancer cluster" like the poor people in this story; the financial challenges that small-town lawyers face in litigation against major corporations; and the ups and downs of running a hard-fought political campaign, with both sides having their good days and bad days. Dirty tricks, of course, play an important part in the campaign, but it was also interesting to see how campaign managers could manipulate very different social groups with very different motivations into uniting behind a single candidate.
A great story, especially during the current campaign season.
|
|
Boring, May 5, 2008
|
|
|
This book was more boring than my husband's legal briefs. I felt like I was reading a newspaper report. No character development; no suspense. Too many names, no personalities. Too many dollar figures. Too much talk about money. I had to force myself to skim the last thirty pages just to find out if the plaintiff ever got her money.
|
|
|
|
Reviews
