I just finished (well, I didn’t finish it) the recent Grisham book entitled “The Appeal”. It has to be the most irritating book I’ve read in a long time. Not a new thought in it. It’s “Bonfires of the Vanities” meets “Erin Brokovich”. Grisham rehashes Brokovich’s story with Krane Chemical and the slimy character of Carl Trudeau at the helm.
At great personal and financial cost to Mary Grace and Wes Patyon, these married lawyers manage to win the case, as chemically polluted water has been proven to be the cause of at least 16 deaths.
Enter stage left, Barry Rienhart. There is never a paper trail, an e mail trail or a cell phone trail to him. His names barely pops up on Google. But he’s here to buy a Supreme Court judge to overturn the verdict. It only costs Carl Trudeau about $8 million, but that’s chump change compared to the $34 million the jury has asked from Krane Chemical. These pages are chocked full of useless details, and useless statistics. Who cares about the packing and marketing of a young corrupt judge to oust the mindful judge who has had her seat for 8 years?
I stopped reading it at page 274, skipped to the end, and ol’ Barry wins and the poor folk who are dying by the day in Bowmore, Mississippi, never see a cent. What was Grisham thinking? These are despicable people with way too much money protecting those who poison others. What is the message here? I didn’t care about one single character; it was an empty, unsatisfying read without a single redeeming feature.
With Barack Obama as president, with the message of hope and change, Grisham has delivered the exact opposite – one from which we have all suffered - greed and not taking responsibility for our actions. This books drags you down, it makes you proud of nothing. Don’t bother to read it, it will pollute your soul, it will starve your heart.
My [Rating: 0.5/5]
Interesting magazine, but I don’t see anything anywhere about Generation Jones. Seems to me that makes the magazine look behind the curve. Given all the major media buzz lately about GenJones, any publication like this (ie. focused on those born during the post-WWII boom in births) looks out of touch, in 2009, to not be talking about GenJones.