This was my first John Grisham book, and I didn't really know what to expect. It was assigned for my book club because we wanted to read something Earth Day–related and this seemed to have an environmental message. Well, even though I'm sort of baffled and bored by the realities of stocks and legal brawls, this book held my interest more or less throughout and got me invested, and it did so using some storytelling elements I haven't really seen before. (Probably mostly because this is my first book in this genre.)I'll start with the couple of things I didn't like. Writing craft-wise, the fact that Grisham doesn't use the past perfect tense when he's supposed to really got under my skin, and there was a weird word misuse that hit my pet peeve button--when a character was supposed to be indicating calming down with a change in his voice and the narration said his voice "lowered several octaves." You do not know what an octave is if you say that. I'll do the math for you: "Several" here must refer to at least three. Most people who are classically trained in singing have a vocal range that is three octaves or less. So I'm really kind of annoyed when people suggest that voices will lower "several octaves" as if it is just an arbitrary measurement or as if it describes volume and not pitch. I'm pretty sure you were going for decibels, sir.But other than that, the only thing I became weary of was some sort of lazy shortcuts in telling us who's a good person. Pretty much categorically, for instance, the good guys are shown caring about and prioritizing the well-being of their children, and the bad guys get special scenes and conversations in which they show exactly how cold and uncaring they are about their own kids. It makes them feel like storybook villains. The same sort of went with religion, as the good guys were usually shown to be practicing and preaching their religion along the lines of help/love your neighbor while the bad guys used religion as a weapon and the narration made it clear that they were only pretending to be involved in religious proceedings as they explicitly did not engage in silent prayer during the times reserved for it. The religion thing, though, was something I really liked about the book; that it didn't clumsily say religion itself is good or bad, but showed that it can be used and abused in various ways that it actually is in the real world. That made me happy.Anyway, the majority of the book was fascinating to me. Bad guys poison the ground water, small-town hicks die of cancer, small-town lawyers rep a client and slam big business, big business counters with an appeal and sets the stage for the verdict going their way this time through corruption in the state supreme court. I sometimes felt like the entire story was just a list of the stuff that happened in a huge collection of fallout from the dirty business, and there wasn't much room to get invested in any favorite characters or connect to them personally because there were so many and their inner lives weren't often explored, but I still just found it so interesting how the domino effect manifested and how these weasels on the bad guy side can still come up on top because powerful people with money want things to stay the way they are. Meanwhile, the good guys aren't just losing money on stocks that they used as collateral on their expensive toys. They're losing their homes, losing their businesses, losing their FAMILY MEMBERS. It was just so disheartening seeing how these billionaires were forced into fighting the little guy because God help us all if you can't have your own private plane.I was getting pretty angry toward the end because of a switch-a-roo plot element that made me think the book was going to go in a maddeningly cheesy direction--ultimately using a personal tragedy to change the heart of an important character and cause him to cast a deciding vote in an unexpected way. I was planning to drop a star for that and go to 3 because doing that nonsense would make such a disgustingly convenient deus ex machina. But happily, the ending didn't go where I expected it to because of that. It didn't actually go where I expected it to go at all. I just kind of sat there at the end thinking "holy crap."All in all, except for some bits that dragged a little for me in the second section of the book, I thought the pacing was good (especially at the beginning--he managed to get me really worried about the verdict within the first couple pages, and I didn't even know the people yet), and I really enjoyed reading it. It was a peek into a world I know nothing about . . . and it was not a reassuring one.
Alright...well, I admit that I read a few one and two star reviews before posting mine because I wanted to read what the nay-sayers had to say about the book. I was pretty sure I knew what they wouldn't like, and I was pretty sure I would disagree. I was right. I understand others' chagrin with Grisham's choice of ending, but I thought it was refreshing. It's about time someone bucked the system and didn't give us a patented ending, all tied up with a pretty bow.So here is the deal. Mississippi just happens to be one of many states that elects it judiciary, including the members who sit on the supreme court of the state. Now you may think this is a good thing - leave it in the hands of the voter to decide who should make judicial rulings. But it is NOT! Judges, you see, should be free from the shackles of political biases so that they can make fair rulings without any pressure - decisions based on the merits of a case and the correct application of the law. The story explores what might happen if a supreme court judge just happened to be elected by a group hired by a man with money - billions of dollars, to be exact - and an agenda for winning a particular case.I do not want to spoil the ending, and perhaps it is true that Grisham is making a political statement. Okay, so it's pretty obvious. Even if he is, so be it. He still tells a fast paced and satisfying story of the type that I had once come to expect from Grisham. And while the book deals with torts and mass tort litigation, unlike The King of Torts, the book has some meat on its bones. Instead of decrying mass tort litigation involving large corporations (product manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and the like), Grisham delves into the one on one cases where such companies should be held liable for polluting the water and creating dangerous products in cases involving just one plaintiff. Tort litigation is the seedy underbelly of the law. Still, there are several law suits out there - think Erin Brockovich - that deserve attention in our courts. Huge conglomerates should be held responsible when they skirt the law and poison the water, create dangerous drugs, or manufacture products that are unsafe. Of course, you want the bad guy to get his due here. Maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. But Grisham leaves the reader feeling uncomfortable and perhaps a little guilty for playing into the game of big political campaign spending...naively believing everything one hears on t.v. about a candidate and his or her record based on a thirty-second commercial that takes sound bites completely out of the context in which they were meant to be be heard. He even makes one a bit uncomfortable with the idea the a judiciary is elected and that a judge would feel beholden to those who paid for his or her election. And in the end, I liked that he gave me something to think about. It reminded me of The Client and The Rainmaker, and that is a good thing.
What do You think about The Appeal (2008)?
What I learned from this book is that supreme court justices should be appointed not elected like politicians because then they get bought out by big businesses and the one with the most money wins and this is BAD, BAD, BAD. (point made, Mr. Grisham) This book is lacking a storyline, character development, excitement of any kind, and all other desireable elements of a novel. I usually like John Grisham but this book is BORING, BORING, BORING. In Grisham's honor I will recommend The Innocent Man, A Painted House, and The Pelican Brief.
—Eliece
This is a bit of a mix bag for Grisham fans. I went back and forth with my opinion on this book before deciding that on the whole, it was enjoyable and relevant. It had some slow parts, and it wandered off a few times, but in the end it won me over.There are several compelling characters, ranging from the broke small town husband/wife legal team who gave up everything to take on the big chemical baddies; to the despicable chemical company CEO who tries to buy a friendly seat on a court in another state rather than be held accountable for his company's illegal actions. But the characters aren't what make this book worth reading.The shining moments int the book were not necessarily character driven. However, the real life implications of someone essentially buying a friendly court, judges thinking about their decisions in terms of political backlash over interpreting the law correctly, and judges asking lawyers for money and then being expected to remain impartial on future cases were enough to keep me reading, and more importantly, thinking.The issues raised in this book were clearly meant to stir the pot and try to get people to realize the state of judicial selection in some states. This book was more of a statement than a novel, and the ending (which I love) was the exclamation point.You should read this book, and when you are finished, you should slam it down on the table and be pissed off. That's the point.So, while this may not be my favorite Grisham novel, I would definitely encourage people to read it and think about its message.
—Brian Schroeder
The Appeal is a book every American should read. It essentially explains how wealthy companies can literally buy judges - as in, have one taken out and a new one installed - in order to make decisions in their favor and protect them from having to pay damages to the people they maim with their practices.It also goes over the importance to the average citizen of being able to sue for malpractice or damages from defective or unsafe products.It was so dead-on that when i bought the hardcover (used) there were zero quotes or blurbs on the book talking about how great it was. If you go to Grisham's site there are quotes, but none on the back of the book itself! Very bizarre for one of Grisham's books. This is likely why (from wikipedia): "Grisham's plot closely resembles a real-life decade-long legal battle between West Virginia coal mining competitors. When Don Blankenship, chairman and CEO of A.T. Massey Coal, lost a $50 million verdict in a fraud lawsuit brought by Hugh Caperton and Harman Mining over the cancellation of a long-term coal contract, he contributed $3 million to help Charleston lawyer Brent Benjamin unseat incumbent Judge Warren McGraw. Benjamin won the election, and three years later, when Massey's appeal reached the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, Caperton's lawyers asked him to recuse himself because of Blankenship's financial support. Benjamin declined and he cast the crucial vote needed to overturn the verdict favoring Caperton. Among those who noticed similarities between the case and The Appeal was former West Virginia justice Larry Starcher, who criticized Benjamin for not disqualifying himself. He wrote in an opinion, "I believe John Grisham got it right when he said that he simply had to read The Charleston Gazette to get an idea for his next novel."[1]In June 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Justice Benjamin should have recused himself in Caperton v. Massey, sending the case back to the West Virginia Supreme Court. Writing for the majority in the 5 to 4 decision, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy called the appearance of conflict of interest so "extreme" that the failure to recuse constituted a threat to the plaintiff’s Constitutional right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s dissent warned that the United States Supreme Court majority decision would have dire consequences for "public confidence in judicial impartiality."[2]Only a minority of states elect judges directly, a controversial system virtually unknown outside the United States. The Appeal has been seen as an attack on this system of selecting judges, since judges have a conflict of interest when ruling on cases involving major campaign contributors.[1][3]"Here are the blurbs from his website: http://www.jgrisham.com/the-appeal/I gave the book only 4 stars b/c it was a little more technical and a little less thriller and therefore less enjoyable but the tradeoff is the education factor and social commentary.Night and day from what he did in The Associate, which was write a seemingly pointless story that was also disturbingly misogynist, i was very surprised and disappointed.
—Laura
