Book Review: Sycamore Row
It's once again October, and yes, we are talking about John Grisham. Sycamore Row, his latest legal thriller to grace the book stands, takes off from the prolific author's very first novel A Time to Kill, with almost the same set of characters but with a different story imbued with racial violence and social injustice in the (fictional) town of Clanton, Mississippi. In A Time to Kill, Jake Brigance successfully defended Carl Lee Hailey for gunning down two white men who raped his 10-year-old daughter.
A trial that was as much about racism as it was about murder, it earned Jake a tremendous amount of respect for coming in support of a black. Three years down the line, his career hasn't taken off the way he was expecting it to be, and after his lovingly restored Victorian home was razed down to ashes by the Klu Klux Klan during the notorious trial, he is still living in a rental apartment with his wife Carla and their daughter Hanna.
Things however take an interesting turn when a rich, reclusive old man named Seth Hubbard, also debilitated by lung cancer, commits suicide by hanging himself from a sycamore tree on his 200-acre land (but this is not why the book is called Sycamore Row). Even more surprising is a new handwritten will he had drafted renouncing an earlier one prepared by attorneys from a prominent legal firm based out-of-town, leaving the bulk of his assets to his housekeeper of three years Lettie Lang, entirely cutting out his greedy children Herschel and Ramona from the inheritance.
A day after the suicide, Jake receives a letter from Seth (mailed before his death, of course) instructing him to carry out the terms of the new will no matter what. Lettie being black, the case predictably stirs up racial tensions as Jake and his team painstakingly unravel the real mystery as to why Seth chose to bequeath his wealth to her.
John Grisham's return to Ford County is downright impressive. With an eminently readable story about a bitterly contested will, Sycamore Row is both witty and tragic. It's not just the courtroom sequences, especially those with Judge Reuben Atlee around (watch out for Chapter 18!) that leave you with a goofy grin plastered on your face, Grisham handles the emotional subplots equally well. Lettie has had a hard life working as a maid in white people's homes. Her husband Simeon, on the other hand, is more interested in alcohol than in running the affairs of the house. But with the prospect of money, she finds herself surrounded by a barrage of relatives, including her husband, all eagerly anticipating a share of the fortune. The Hubbards and the lawyers are no different either.
The greed and avarice of various characters is in fact one of the recurring themes that Grisham explores in his works, and a master storyteller that he is, his novels have always been entertaining. But in Sycamore Row, he adds a moralistic angle that makes it very hard to put down. A job well done, Mr. John Grisham. Now comes the hardest part of waiting one whole year to read his next legal thriller!
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| Sycamore Row |
Things however take an interesting turn when a rich, reclusive old man named Seth Hubbard, also debilitated by lung cancer, commits suicide by hanging himself from a sycamore tree on his 200-acre land (but this is not why the book is called Sycamore Row). Even more surprising is a new handwritten will he had drafted renouncing an earlier one prepared by attorneys from a prominent legal firm based out-of-town, leaving the bulk of his assets to his housekeeper of three years Lettie Lang, entirely cutting out his greedy children Herschel and Ramona from the inheritance.
A day after the suicide, Jake receives a letter from Seth (mailed before his death, of course) instructing him to carry out the terms of the new will no matter what. Lettie being black, the case predictably stirs up racial tensions as Jake and his team painstakingly unravel the real mystery as to why Seth chose to bequeath his wealth to her.
John Grisham's return to Ford County is downright impressive. With an eminently readable story about a bitterly contested will, Sycamore Row is both witty and tragic. It's not just the courtroom sequences, especially those with Judge Reuben Atlee around (watch out for Chapter 18!) that leave you with a goofy grin plastered on your face, Grisham handles the emotional subplots equally well. Lettie has had a hard life working as a maid in white people's homes. Her husband Simeon, on the other hand, is more interested in alcohol than in running the affairs of the house. But with the prospect of money, she finds herself surrounded by a barrage of relatives, including her husband, all eagerly anticipating a share of the fortune. The Hubbards and the lawyers are no different either.
The greed and avarice of various characters is in fact one of the recurring themes that Grisham explores in his works, and a master storyteller that he is, his novels have always been entertaining. But in Sycamore Row, he adds a moralistic angle that makes it very hard to put down. A job well done, Mr. John Grisham. Now comes the hardest part of waiting one whole year to read his next legal thriller!
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