The Rooster Bar – by John Grisham
After reading about 25 books by John Grisham, I’m starting
to make an interesting comparison to another great writer - Stephen King. King was a flawless author for the first
decade or so of his career. Then, as most of his faithful readers will attest,
his works became hit or miss. He could
still turn out a great book once in a while, but his catalog also became
littered with stuff ranging from mediocre to outright awful. Sadly, John Grisham is going down the exact
same path. What makes it harder is the
fact that 90% of Grisham’s books are about the legal profession, and it seems
as though there are only so many stories you can tell about the law, lawyers,
court cases, and interns working 400 hours per week. Sadly, I’ve made this observation about many
of Grisham’s recent works, and my opinion certainly hasn’t changed after
reading this one.
Now, before you read any further, I should warn you that
I’ll probably be divulging spoilers. I
rarely give away spoilers during my reviews, but when a book is particularly
bad, I actually believe that I’m doing prospective readers a favor. If they decide not read a book based what I
reveal, I’ll save them lot of money and a lot of time. So continue reading at your own risk.
This story is about a small group of law school students who
realize too late that their particular school is essentially a diploma
mill. It suddenly dawns on them rather
late in their tenure that none of them are really smart enough to be real
lawyers, and if they do somehow pass the bar exam, their chances of getting a
respectable job are very slim. What
makes this so unsettling is that each of these kids is about $200,000 in debt
due to their school expenses. And of course, each one of
these kids has major problems at home.
One has a poor mother and a crook for a brother who’s about to go to
prison, another is from a family of illegal aliens (sorry – ‘undocumented
immigrants’), and on and on and on and on.
Although, they all still have about a year to go before
graduation, they decide it makes more sense to pool their remaining loan money,
drop out of school, and begin working as unlicensed street lawyers. No, they can’t do anything prestigious, but
the system is so mismanaged, that no one will ever check their credentials as
they chase ambulances and prey on the poor misfortunate parents of teenagers
that are about to go to jail for a DUI.
So they set up an illegal shop, get duplicate cell phones, fake business
cards, and operate under the façade of having an office with the same address
as - you guessed it - The Rooster Bar.
It doesn’t take long before these kids realize they’re in
over their heads. Although the system is
chaotic, it isn’t stupid, and pretty soon these kids have all sorts of people
after them. I should say that at this
point in the story, I really found the book to still be entertaining. What bothered me is how the book progressed
during the last 75 pages or so. Had the
book had a different ending, I may have rated this book 4 stars out of a
possible 5, but since the ending was so awful, I ended up docking an entire two
stars off my review.
Now, I’m getting closer to the spoilers.
As our group of friends realize they’ve dug their hole too
deep, they proceed by digging deeper.
They show no remorse whatsoever for their actions. If John Grisham expects us to “feel sorry”
for these kids because they were too dumb to read the fine print when
researching their law school (It’s called ‘Foggy Bottom’. I mean: Come on!!!), he’s sadly
mistaken. These kids are arrogant, cocky
punks who prey on the sick and the weak.
I should state that they initially DO want to help their ‘clients’ to a
degree, but when the fire gets hot, they essentially keep running and
abandoning those who they committed to helping.
Had these conceited pups been eventually arrested and prosecuted, I
would have been happy with the ending of the book, but Grisham lets them get
away scot free. They end up in some
tropical paradise with gobs of money. I
simply didn’t get it. I couldn’t
understand why the author would ‘reward’ these nasty characters. I guess
Grisham ‘feels sorry’ and blames their nastiness on ‘the system’, but I cry ‘foul’
on this. People need to be responsible
for their own actions. I know it’s only
a book, but still…..
Another gripe: Since one of these kids is from a family of
illegals, this allows Grisham to preach heavily from his soapbox. The student’s family eventually gets deported
back to Sengal, and we get to read about all of the woes and atrocities about deportation. I didn’t really mind Grisham getting
political, but these diversions seemed of no use to the overall plot. Yes, Grisham did manage to connect the dots a
bit at the end, but the whole thing seemed too forced. It felt like Grisham really wanted to write a
standalone book about immigration, realized he didn’t have enough material, so
he salvaged what he had into another (this) book. Again, this isn’t the first time Grisham has
done this. It rarely works, and it doesn’t
work here either.
Last gripe: Fairly early in the story, Grisham wants us to
feel sorry for his characters that are drowning in hundreds of thousands of
dollars in debt. However, we read on every other page that these kids are “going
out for coffee” or “ordering a pizza” or “going out to a bar for a few
drinks”. Each time I would read this, I
would smack myself in the head. Note to
anyone still reading this review: If you have hundreds of thousands of dollars
in school debt and a potentially bleak future, you should NEVER be eating out
in restaurants, buying the newest smartphone, buying movie services like HBO or
Netflix, etc. etc. etc. These things are
LUXERIES. You shouldn’t buy LUXERIES
until you have your NECESSITIES payed off.
It still baffles me how many people don’t get this.
On that note, if you decide to enroll in a law school, do
your research first. It’s time for
people to start to take responsibilities for their own actions.
O.K. sermon over.
Bottom line: This book was pretty bad.
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