I'm kind of stretching it a bit as really, only about the first 30 pages or so are on a college campus, but Rudy has the feel of a student throughout the whole book, so I figure it works fine.
I've come across a lot of Grisham in the past, but I've never actually finished a book of his before this one. I picked this book up somewhere and it's been sitting on my shelf for years, and I decided this was the week to read it. So I plowed my way through...
Part of my problem with Grisham is that he takes so long to get to the point. I get so bored in the beginning and sometimes I can keep going through, knowing that things will get interesting, but with Grisham I just never could get past the beginning. There's a lot of lawyer-talk which might be part of the reason it's slow, but as he writes courtroom thrillers, I can't complain about the lawyer-talk.
This book, specifically, is only thrilling when court is in session, and that takes up less than 50 pages of the book. I spent the rest of the book wondering when we would go back to the courtroom, thus making it a very long read. Grisham did an amazing job in the courtroom, so I can appreciate and understand why his courtroom thrillers are so widely acknowledged as being the best. He writes the scenes very well and keeps writers on their toes throughout the trial, and I was very captivated in those scenes.
He also writes characters very well. I feel about the main character exactly the way I think Grisham wants me to feel about him. He is very pathetic and sad in the beginning. He starts to mature and get his life together, which makes me root for him even harder: I want him to succeed. Somewhere along the way, however, he loses that appeal for me. He lets it go to his head and starts focusing so much on his success that everything else is nothing to him, and that's when I kind of start to hate him. Grisham did a great job leading me through that relationship with Rudy.
What really did not work for me in this book were the different subplots throughout the story, like Miss Birdie and Prince. Those held no meaning, and when they didn't impact the main plot at all, I was very disappointed and annoyed. I still don't understand why they were included. Miss Birdie gave Rudy a place to stay, but there were many different ways Rudy could have found a home without needing to introduce a whole new plot point and a whole new character that just fades away into the rest of the book, being overtaken by the main trial. Grisham could have saved a lot of time by just keeping her and the tale of Prince out of the book. They had no meaning, no appeal, and no point.
I had just convinced myself that I liked the book when I got to the ending. Then all bets were off and I put the finished book in the trash can. Seriously? How many ways can authors write a guy throwing away his life for a girl? It's just not a great story line, and I have no patience for it. Rudy just loves this girl so much, which is not justified to the readers (and I get it, love doesn't have to be justified, but at least try to make me believe it...), and he just takes off with her, because he messed up in a big way, and the trial he thought would give him all the success of the world, doesn't give him as much as he wanted. I was so annoyed when I read those last few pages.
I don't plan on returning to Grisham. Ever. He was slow to get in to, and just when things got interesting, they took a turn for the worst. No thank you.
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