|
Loading... A Painted House (2001)by John Grisham
This story is very different from John Grisham's usual ones as it is not a legal thriller or mystery. While it is a Southern, setting it is a story about a boy who witnesses something he wishes he hadn't. You are placed inside the mind of this boy and feel his emotions. It is a very good book. (  ) ArizonaFlame | Apr 16, 2013 |  This is to me is one of is best books. It was a book that made you love the characters who struggled through hard times. At the end you wanted to know what happened to them in years to come. Mr. Grisham? A sequel please, he could become a lawyer. I have given this book to many as gifts, recommended it and re-read it. All but one person loved it and was disappointed it was not about a lawyer or trial. It's sad when authors are only given credit for writing about one thing. Writers aren't one dimensional folks! They dream about many things just as we all do. Give this little book a shot, I think you'll love it! ( ) alwaysbooktime | Mar 31, 2013 | This is to me is one of is best books. It was a book that made you love the characters who struggled through hard times. At the end you wanted to know what happened to them in years to come. Mr. Grisham? A sequel please, he could become a lawyer. I have given this book to many as gifts, recommended it and re-read it. All but one person loved it and was disappointed it was not about a lawyer or trial. It's sad when authors are only given credit for writing about one thing. Writers aren't one dimensional folks! They dream about many things just as we all do. Give this little book a shot, I think you'll love it! ( ) alwaysbooktime | Mar 31, 2013 | ..after a slow start this book proved to be good. Grisham's legal thrillers are spot on, so i was worried, how this would be. I enjoyed it. (  ) kimbacaffeinate | Mar 30, 2013 | A different book for Grisham, but a good one. A simple story well told - I enjoyed it. (  ) Neale | Feb 14, 2013 | no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0385337930, Paperback)Ever since he published The Firm in 1991, John Grisham has remained the undisputed champ of the legal thriller. With A Painted House, however, he strikes out in a new direction. As the author is quick to note, this novel includes "not a single lawyer, dead or alive," and readers will search in vain for the kind of lowlife machinations that have been his stock-in-trade. Instead, Grisham has delivered a quieter, more contemplative story, set in rural Arkansas in 1952. It's harvest time on the Chandler farm, and the family has hired a crew of migrant Mexicans and "hill people" to pick 80 acres of cotton. A certain camaraderie pervades this bucolic dream team. But it's backbreaking work, particularly for the 7-year-old narrator, Luke: "I would pick cotton, tearing the fluffy bolls from the stalks at a steady pace, stuffing them into the heavy sack, afraid to look down the row and be reminded of how endless it was, afraid to slow down because someone would notice."What's more, tensions begin to simmer between the Mexicans and the hill people, one of whom has a penchant for bare-knuckles brawling. This leads to a brutal murder, which young Luke has the bad luck to witness. At this point--with secrets, lies, and at least one knife fight in the offing--the plot begins to take on that familiar, Grisham-style momentum. Still, such matters ultimately take a back seat in A Painted House to the author's evocation of time and place. This is, after all, the scene of his boyhood, and Grisham waxes nostalgic without ever succumbing to deep-fried sentimentality. Meanwhile, his account of Luke's Baptist upbringing occasions some sly (and telling) humor: I'd been taught in Sunday school from the day I could walk that lying would send you straight to hell. No detours. No second chances. Straight into the fiery pit, where Satan was waiting with the likes of Hitler and Judas Iscariot and General Grant. Thou shalt not bear false witness, which, of course, didn't sound exactly like a strict prohibition against lying, but that was the way the Baptists interpreted it.Whether Grisham will continue along these lines, or revert to the judicial shark tank for his next book, is anybody's guess. But A Painted House suggests that he's perfectly capable of telling an involving story with nary a subpoena in sight. --James Marcus (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:57:48 -0500) "The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that's never been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it." "For six weeks they pick cotton, battling the heat, the rain, the fatigue, and, sometimes, each other. As the weeks pass Luke sees and hears things no seven-year-old could possibly be prepared for, and finds himself keeping secrets that not only threaten the crop but will change the lives of the Chandlers forever."--BOOK JACKET.… (more) |
 Google Books — Loading...
Popular coversRatingAverage: (3.5)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
8
Wikipedia in English (1)
9