John Grisham...here’s one something away from what you’ve written normally. No juries, and courthouses this time, and instead, one small boy in the dusty Arkansas, in the fifties, when the South in US was still in that transitory phase, catching up with a progressive north, buying reluctantly, the fact that cotton was no longer THE crop, and there were was a thing or two about the yankees one could learn from! Nevertheless, it all is said in a way that’s, in Grisham’s own comparison, rather dull n drowsy....and yet, there’s something about this bookl that makes it one that I have always felt I never liked, but ended up reading again n again, nevertheless!
Luke Chandler, the 7 year old kid in the ’cottoning’ family, essays his experiences in a way that , make sound as momentous to us as they do to his young mind...From seeing the pretty Tally bathing in a nearby stream, to Hank murdering another hired worker on his grandfather’s fields, Luke says it all....One is reminded of the innocence, the moral conflicts of one’ s own childhood, ranging from loyalty (to his uncle Ricky, who fathers a child of their poor neighbours’ daughter), n fear (watching grown up men maul each other up behind the co-op), excitement (about the possibility of meeting Stan Musial, his rugby idol)and tears(leaving his gran n pappy behind as he n his parents leave the farm for better work prospects in St. Louis).
Their unpainted home, bears testimony to their poor domestic economic status....one that doesn’t allow them afford a painted house, a dream his mother always had, and always goaded her husband to fulfill, and a dream that begins to see fructification only when li’l Luke sets his mind to it...the fact that despite a very poor crop, the whole household begins to contribute towards the paint, sometimes openly, and sometimes furtively, reveals a spirit, that refuses to be bogged down. Even as Luke and his parents leave for the city, they leave behind house that’s painted, a house, ironically , that they may never come to live in for long, ever, but a house that stood for a dream fulfilled...