Books

Standard Of Review: Grisham's Latest Is A Dull Read

Overall, Gray Mountain is a fairly mediocre addition to Grisham’s body of work. You'd probably be better off re-reading one of his classics.

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I am loath to admit this, but John Grisham played a disturbingly prominent role in the development of my love of reading. It all started when I was about 11 years old and I received a copy of John Grisham’s The Firm (affiliate link) as a gift. I could not put the book down, and I was enthralled at all of Grisham’s plot machinations, even if they were unrealistic. My 11-year-old self just assumed that actions like bugging one’s opponent’s law office was part and parcel of life as a lawyer — though if anyone actually bothered to bug my office now, they would probably just hear me complaining to my co-workers about Homeland and cursing WestLaw or Lexis when I cannot find a case on point.

After finishing The Firm, I then proceeded to tear through the other early works in Grisham’s oeuvre, including A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, The Client, The Pelican Brief and The Runaway Jury (affiliate links). I loved them all. However, as I got older and my tastes matured, I got tired of Grisham. I remember reading The Testament and The Brethren (affiliate links) and being extremely unimpressed at the thin characters and the ridiculous plotting. By the time Grisham moved away from legal thrillers and published Skipping Christmas (affiliate link), I was ready to skip Grisham (though as someone who tenses up in anger when I hear Christmas songs on the radio, I just might have to appropriate Skipping Christmas as the title of my future memoirs). I soon moved towards more “literary” modern fiction writers such as Philip Roth and John Irving.

As a result, it had been several years since I had read a Grisham novel. Nevertheless, when I found out that Grisham had just published a new legal thriller revolving around a young associate at a firm, I decided to see if Grisham’s work had improved at all over the years.

The book, entitled Gray Mountain (affiliate link), tells the story of Samantha Kofer, a corporate real estate attorney in her late twenties who has just been furloughed from her Wall Street law firm in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse. After her law firm requests that she take a public interest job for a year, Samantha begins working at the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic in the fictional, rural town of Brady, Virginia, in the heart of Appalachia. Along the way, she befriends Donovan Gray, a charming plaintiff’s attorney with some questionable methods to obtain evidence (Donovan’s ethos is: why issue a subpoena when you can just steal the evidence you need? He must have really hated doc review as a young associate). Donovan’s raison d’etre is to litigate with coal companies, which he believes have ruined the area due to strip mining.

Surprisingly, the book contains the opposite problem from previous subpar Grisham works. Samantha is a fairly well developed character, and Grisham spends a lot of time on her internal struggle regarding her future at a law firm, which I can definitely relate to. However, the plot is fairly weak and extremely schizophrenic; there are two main plot threads and Grisham never clearly picks one and sticks with it. I kept looking at the percentage-read bar at the bottom of my Kindle and wondering when I would figure out what the book was actually about. Even after I completed Gray Mountain, I still could not summarize the plot in less than about six sentences.

The first thread of thread of the plot is glamorization of life at a rural legal aid clinic. Grisham spends page after page after page painstakingly detailing Samantha’s various cases at the clinic, including a will contest, a wrongful termination case, and a divorce between two meth addicts. However, there was no real payoff to any of these cases, except for making Samantha feel good about herself. Grisham clearly believes that such cases consist of “real lawyering,” as opposed to Samantha’s old corporate law job. He takes several potshots (though occasionally not undeserved) at the banality and misery of New York law firm practice (e.g., the hours, the billing rates, and the work itself) and life in New York (Samantha pays a lot for rent! And she is too busy to have a dating life!).

The second thread involves Samantha teaming up with Donovan and his brother Jeff to fight the shadowy corporations (and the law firms helping them) that have strip mined the region. A large percentage of this portion of the narrative consists of Donovan (or other characters) spouting background information regarding strip mining that occasionally dragged on for pages at a time. At certain points, I began to wonder if Grisham would have been better off just writing a nonfiction book about strip mining (which, of course, should be entitled Strip Club: The Evil Cabal Responsible for Destroying the Environment).

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Shadowy corporations and/or law firms are Grisham’s specialty, but while the mining corporations and the evil law firm have a couple of menacing goons who show up every once in awhile, there were no tangible antagonists. The book also does not contain any real discernible plot involving the fight against the strip miners; it just kind of ends without any real resolution, making me wonder if Grisham was setting it up for a sequel (which, of course, should be entitled Fifty Shades of Gray Mountain. Grisham should definitely hit me up for more great title recommendations).

Overall, Gray Mountain is a fairly mediocre addition to Grisham’s body of work. I probably would be better off re-reading one of his classics like The Firm (which I plan to do for a future column). Now if you will excuse me, I will now sweep my office for bugs; I can’t let my opponents know what I think about this week’s episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at harrygraff19@gmail.com. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.

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