Z/Web

Author: John Grisham

Okay, I’ll be honest: this is a horrible book. There are several reasons for that, but to explain them, I will have to spoil the ending, so if you’d rather not know, skip these comments. The book, overall, has a simplistic plot: it’s set in Mississippi where a giant chemical corporation has poisoned the well water of a small town and given hundreds of people cancer. A sympathetic husband and wife team of lawyers has been fighting a wrongful death lawsuit against the company for four long years and when the verdict comes back in their favor it seems like good news. Unfortunately, it’s just the beginning of the battle, for the corporation will appeal and it may be a couple more years before justice is served. That starts the second half of the novel, where the corporation begins machinations to elect their own anti-litigation candidate onto the Mississippi supreme court so that when the case comes up for appeal, the court can rescind the verdict. The book is long and detailed, going over every filing in the case and nearly every speech and promotion in the campaign. It is tedious and boring, and in the end, nothing happens. The chemical company’s guy gets elected and votes against the lawsuit and none of the cancer-striken victims get any justice. Grisham write the novel this way in order to stir up the reader’s anger at the supreme court election process (which is obviously ridiculous), but while it might be realistic, it does not make for a satisfying novel. Part of the problem is that Grisham goes so far overboard to make his hero characters sympathetic and good and his villains truly evil that the reader is naturally expecting justice in the end. The whole time you are reading the book you are motivated by the justice you know is coming and you can’t wait to see the bad guy get his. In the end, he wins, which is outrageous. I’m sorry: I don’t like predictable endings but when you set up a stereotypical storyline you need to follow-through with a stereotypical Hollywood happy ending. The odd thing is that Grisham’s case against the election process and the evils of big corporations killing people was already made: a happy ending wouldn’t have made us less outraged, just more satisfied readers. As it is, this is another “message” novel by Grisham, horribly disappointing, and it’ll unfortunately make me think twice about buying any of his novels again. (It reminds me of his horrible The Chamber, an anti-death penalty rant with no story.)

Today I headed up to Seattle for the big soccer match tomorrow. Interesting trip: ran into horrible traffic outside of Tacoma which had me reconsidering taking the train instead of driving. A few miles from the hotel I heard my car making strange sounds but I thought maybe it was the pavement. When I got off at my exit, however, I knew something was wrong: my steering wheel was wobbling like mad and I could hear a regular thumping sound. It was only a mile to the hotel so once I got there I checked my tire and immediately saw the problem: a huge bubble the size of half a grapefruit was bulging my left front tire! The tire still had air so I thought I could make it to a nearby Costco, but on the way the tire went completely flat, so I had to change it. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that, and never on this car. Lots of fun. Long story short: made it to Costco, ended up replacing all four tires (it was time). Learned that Oregonians don’t have to pay Washington sales tax, which is really cool. I guess they do that so that we’ll go up there and buy stuff instead of waiting until we get home, which was what I’d planned to do. All told, not a bad result (except for the tire cost, but I’d have had that later this year anyway): the new tires were on by seven o’clock and the car drives much better now (it feels like I’ve got new brakes, which is scary in retrospect). It could certainly have been much, much worse, like if the tire had given way on the freeway while I was going 60 mph!