The world breaks everyone, Papa Hemingway said, and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. True enough, if the metaphor is about bones. Bones break, but bones knit, and bones can be stronger for the experience. It’s a strong metaphor, but it doesn’t cover everything, doesn’t include everything that can break.Bones break, but hearts break too. That’s another metaphor, of course. Hearts don’t break the same way bones break. Bones break and shatter and splinter, and you go to the doctor and get them set and splinted, and they heal and you go on your way. Hearts break, and no doctor can heal them, nothing but time can sweep up the pieces. The healing of bones is a natural process; with enough time and care the most horrible injury can be made whole. The healing of hearts is a natural process, but sometimes, even with all the time and care in the world, hearts can heal incompletely. There can be sharp shards sticking out or pieces missing. Some heartbreaks are so serious that you walk around for years with a heart like a bag of broken glass; you rattle when you walk. Reversible Errors is marketed as a legal thriller, in the same category with amped-up murder mysteries about young lawyers in trouble. It is nothing of the sort. There is a surface resemblance, of course, but it is not substantive. Scott Turow’s novels are not about the mechanisms of the law or the similar but more mysterious mechanisms of justice. The shadowy pathways of the legal system are subordinated to the murkier pathways of the heart. The surface of the book is about that tried-and-true staple of the legal thriller; the death penalty. Reversible Errors is informed by Scott Turow’s own experience as a member of an Illinois panel tasked to investigate inequities in that state’s system of capital punishment. The story takes place, though, in Turow’s own Kindle County, and does not directly address the issues raised in the Illinois system. This is not a screed for or against the death penalty, which is welcome. The crime is horrible; the execution-style slaying of a restaurant owner and two customers in the small hours of the Fourth of July, 1991. The accused is Romeo “Rommy” “Squirrel” Gandolph, who is convicted largely on his own confession. Ten years later – the bulk of the story takes place in the summer of 2001, largely to avoid the impact of September 11th on the characters – Gandolph submits a half-literate plea for mercy to a federal court, claiming that he never killed anyone. The court appoints a reluctant litigator to Gandolph’s defense – which is hampered substantially by Gandolph’s mental illness and inability to help his attorneys. The mystery of the case is quickly resolved. After a quick flashback running down the facts of the case, a dying prisoner steps forward to take credit for the crime. Ermo Erdai, dying of cancer and languishing in Rudyard prison after an assault conviction, claims that he was the killer in the Fourth of July massacre. Although his motivation for committing the crime is murky, it provides at least a reasonable doubt about Gandolph’s guilt. In a normal legal thriller, this important information would have been a big surprise, not revealed until a slack moment in the plot. Turow gives us this information early on, cementing Gandolph’s innocence in our minds. This is not an accident, or carelessness on the part of the author. Turow is not especially concerned with how justice is to be done for Rommy Gandolph, although his plight is an important backdrop for the plot. (This is one book, by the way, that you can judge by its cover; the cover features a man and a woman reaching for each other; the condemned man is a tiny figure in the background.) The real story is the relationships of the web of characters, and how they lose and find love. A police detective and an aspiring district attorney conspire to break each other’s hearts in 1991; they are reunited ten years later after years spent in unsatisfactory marriages. Gandolph’s lawyer seeks out and woos a difficult former judge in 2001; they manage to find each other despite their own difficult pasts. Reversible Errors reminds us of the simple and inescapable truth; hearts don’t always heal whole; you can have splinters and shards sticking out, wounding those you come in contact with. The challenge for Turow’s characters is to find someone else whose hearts have been shattered in the same way, to find love and compassion. And most of all, forgiveness.
I'm read this book for my "Death Penalty" class. I struggled to get through the first half of the book, but once I could tell where the plot was going, I got into it. If I ever have a craving for a lawyer book, I will probably pick up another Scott Turow book again. He did a good job creating a plot that wound itself around a couple times. I had no idea where he was going for a while, but once I figured it out, there were no surprises in store for me.I'm not sure if I was supposed to feel bad for Gandolph. He was set up for murder by many people, and really did not have a chance the first time around. Only when he got his appeal lawyer, Arthur Raven, did his story become believable. The only characters I really liked were Arthur Raven, Gandalph's lawyer, and Gillian Sullivan, the original judge on the case that convicted Gandolph. However, Sullivan had her own issues at the time of his conviction that do affect his second trial. These two characters had pretty good chemistry together and I really hoped they would find happiness after a lifetime of misery.Though this type of story (law suspence) did not really appeal to me when the book was first assigned, I understand why my professor assigned the book afterall. It had some really good examples of how a federal appeals court behaves. I do not regret pushing myself through the book on the last day that I was supposed to read it, and if I have the right craving, I could pick this book up again (when I say crave, at this point, I would only crave the storyline between Raven and Sullivan).
What do You think about Reversible Errors (2003)?
I am not sure how I missed this Turow when it first came out, but I am very glad to have found it. He is such a master of the legal suspense and you travel right along with his characters through all the legal technicalities…which how Arthur Raven gets the case of Squirrel, sitting on death row and claiming his innocence. Well of course he is innocent, isn't he? I travelled all the ups and downs with Arthur. The thing I enjoyed about this is that I would decide I knew exactly what had happened, then 5 pages later be at a total loss as to what happened. All those niggling doubts! Every character in this story had issues….and most had pretty BIG issues. They had been associated with this case and each other many years before, and now life had come full circle. They had changed, looked at life a bit differently perhaps. Turow took the reader back in time for several chapters, and though I do not usually like this in a fast paced book…it was necessary, and did not slow the story. The title refers to not only the legal aspects of this book, but can be applied to each of the characters as well. In the legal system reversible errors can lead to a different outcome….is this true in life? If you are looking for violent, gritty crime with larger than life beautiful heroes and sadistic villains, then this is not the book for you. If you are looking for a cast of real and flawed characters as well as a page turning suspense then grab this for your weekend read.
—Connie
Turow is such a great writer. I love hearing about all the intricacies of the law from someone who's clearly spent so much time embroiled in it. He also keeps the legalese accessible so that you never feel lost and you feel like you're getting a deeper understanding of the legal process while he keeps you hooked into the personal lives of his characters. It's awesome.His writing is so clever and filled with so many fleshed out voices and points of view. This is my second Turow book and I can't wait to get my hands on my next.I just loved it so much.
—Jake Jarvi
Downloaded from Audible.comNarrator: J. R. HornePublisher: Random House Audio, 2002Length: 14 hours and 30 min.Publisher's SummaryRommy "Squirrel" Gandolph is a Yellow Man, an inmate on death row for a 1991 triple murder in Kindle County. His slow progress toward certain execution is nearing completion when Arthur Raven, a corporate lawyer who is Rommy's reluctant court-appointed representative, receives word that another inmate may have new evidence that will exonerate Gandolph.Arthur's opponent in the case is Muriel Wynn, Kindle County's formidable chief deputy prosecuting attorney, who is considering a run for her boss' job. Muriel and Larry Starczek, the original detective on the case, don't want to see Rommy escape a fate they long ago determined he deserved. Further complicating the situation is the fact that Gillian Sullivan, the judge who originally found Rommy guilty, is only recently out of prison herself, having served time for taking bribes.Scott Turow's compelling, multidimensional characters take the listener into Kindle County's parallel yet intersecting worlds of police and small-time crooks, airline executives and sophisticated scammers and lawyers of all stripes. No other writer offers such a profound understanding of what is at stake when the state holds the power to end a man's life.
—Johnsergeant
