Bleachers john grisham book report

Bleachers john grisham book report

May 05,  · John Grisham is a well-known author with fifteen published novels, several of which were made into movies. This book is one of his best It's hard not to feel for Neely, and John Grisham trots out every convention to enlist the reader in the star's legion of fans. "Bleachers" is an effective, sensitive and tidy portrait of the impact of high-school football on the men who played the game and an examination of the enduring legacy of a coach who inspired loathing and love in his players/5(K) BOOK NOTES / SUMMARY FOR BLEACHERS BY JOHN GRISHAM WEDNESDAY Summary (Continued) This all prompts a discussion about who had the guts to fire Rake after Scotty’s death. Paul says that Scotty was the wrong kid to have died, because his uncle, John Reardon, was the Superintendent of Education

Bleachers - John Grisham

Bleachers by John Grisham pp, Century£ John Grisham's 16th novel is not quite what you might expect: Bleachers is no clunking legal thriller but a slim, plotless little number about football. No Mafia, no dodgy juries, and not a struggling young attorney fighting against the system in sight. In so far as there is one, the hero of Bleachers is an ex-coach called Eddie Rake, a legend in the small town of Messina, whose football team he used to inspire to spectacular success.

However, Eddie only appears towards the end, and in a coffin. The novel takes place bleachers john grisham book report his last few days, so Eddie lies off-stage on his deathbed while the former players, who've gathered at the stadium to mark his passing, remember old times. Because the sport is, of course, not the kind loved and adored throughout the rest of the world but American football, the veteran stars who are recalling the triumphs of 15 years before are still in their early 30s, bleachers john grisham book report.

The Messina Spartans, whose stadium bleachers john grisham book report always packed with 10, spectators, whose feats define the town, whose stars of yesteryear are framed in photos that cover the walls of the local diner, are a team from the local high school. Neely Crenshaw, Silo Mooney and the rest of the cast all peaked when they were 18 years old. Even for the criminally hedonistic Silo, bleachers john grisham book report, and especially for Neely, once an amazing quarterback and subsequently something very unamazing in real estate, bleachers john grisham book report, adulthood can offer nothing to compare with schoolboy glory.

Having set up this intriguing emotional predicament, Grisham shies away from doing anything much with it, preferring to concentrate on the players' memories of wondrous second-half comebacks and the toughness of Coach Rake's training sessions. Neely does have a brief meeting with the bleachers john grisham book report he once spurned and still loves, and there is a short excursion to more familiar Grisham territory when the sometime Spartans pay a visit to another former footballer in a high-security correctional facility, but that's about it by way of event.

Which is unfortunate, since it bleachers john grisham book report the novel relying for most of its material on accounts of games gone by, and accounts of games gone by have a terrible habit of not working in fiction. Possibly it's because it's hard to get worked up about teams and matches that are made-up, sport has proved to be even more difficult for novelists to describe successfully than sex, as various supposed classics - a special mention here for JL Carr's How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup - of a benighted sub-genre will attest.

At one point, when he has to deal with a protracted account of the key game in the book - the championship game, the one that features a secret fracas in the dressing-room and Neely Crenshaw leading the Spartans to an amazing second-half comeback while playing with a broken hand - Grisham comes up with the ingenious ploy of playing the tape of the radio commentary yes, the high-school Spartans had their own commentator on the radio.

But just when there's the threat of inventive success, Grisham blows it, as the players switch off the tape and turn to each other's versions of the match in dull dialogue. This is typical of the book as a whole, which starts out rather promisingly but doesn't really develop. I was left wondering why Grisham bothered to write it.

Perhaps he wanted to evoke his own schooldays when he was, the press release declares, an occasional quarterback for the Chargers of Southaven High School. Or maybe he wanted to prove that he doesn't need all the legal apparatus - that he can do emotion and stuff like that in a literary sort of a book. If that's the case, I'm afraid that Bleachers only proves that he does, and he can't. A whole new ball game. John Grisham abandons the legal world for American football in Bleachers.

What a shame, says Harry Ritchie. Buy Bleachers at Amazon. Fri 26 Sep Topics Fiction John Grisham reviews. Reuse this content, bleachers john grisham book report.

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Bleachers by John Grisham

Bleachers is a sports novel by American author John Grisham. Centering on the fictional Messina High School football team, and in particular its hard-nosed former coach Eddie Rake, it explores the stories of several Messina High players and their complex relationship with Rake May 05,  · John Grisham is a well-known author with fifteen published novels, several of which were made into movies. This book is one of his best Sep 27,  · by John Grisham pp, Century, £ John Grisham's 16th novel is not quite what you might expect: Bleachers is no clunking legal thriller but a slim, plotless little number about football