John Grisham is undisputedly the king of legal thrillers. A lawyer himself, he wrote his first novel, ‘A Time To Kill’, in his spare time, getting up at 5 each morning and writing for a few hours before he started work. Book two followed, ‘The Firm’ and that’s when things started. By the time the celluloid version featuring Tom Cruise had appeared, Grisham was a sensation. Since ‘The Firm’, Grisham wrote a new book every year and the film adaptation was never far behind.
February 2001 brought ‘A Painted House’ but this Grisham book was a little different, there wasn’t a lawyer in sight. A Grisham himself puts it, “There is not a single lawyer, dead or alive, in this story. Nor are there judges, trials, courtrooms, conspiracies or nagging social issues.” Instead Grisham revisited his childhood and writes about an extended family of cotton-pickers in rural Arkansas. The protagonist is a bit different deviates from the norm as well, instead of Harvard graduate lawyer it’s a seven year old boy, Luke Chandler. The story is told through Luke’s eyes, and his musings on the important things in life, baseball, his Saturday trip to the cinema and the object of his affections, 17 year old Tally. He loathes the pain of picking cotton and aspires to be a professional baseball player, playing for his beloved Cardinals. His mother shares his dream and wants her son to be the first Chandler to leave the poverty trap of the family farm.
The story revolves around the cotton-picking season, a three month period in the autumn which determines whether the family will survive the incoming year or not. The mammoth back-breaking job is too much for a family and so they must hire workers. In this case the workers are the Spruills, a troublesome family from Eureka Springs and a group of ten Mexicans. Over the course of the three months lives are changed for all three groups amidst a backdrop of murder, harsh labour, secrets, pregnancy and the Korean War. Plenty of action, just what you’d expect from John Grisham.
So how does this book compare with his others? Has the change of direction been a wise move. In my opinion this has been one of Grisham’s best. Initially I was sceptical but the book is so involving and absorbing that it can be impossible to get started. John Grisham really proves himself as a master storyteller with ‘A Painted House’, expertly weaving stories, anecdotes and observations together. In particular he shows a great talent for creating people, rather than characters, Grishams’s unknown depths are untapped in this book.
Grisham has made a costly gamble in writing this book, a love letter to his childhood, though in my mind it has definitely paid off, finally showing Grisham’s true abilities.