Sooley

 

Sooley – by John Grisham

John Grisham in many ways is the Steven Spielberg of novel writing. He’s the best known and most popular of his craft, but if we’re completely honest, a lot of his stuff isn’t nearly on par with some of his better works.  I’ve stated in other reviews that I’ve felt Grisham could do much better if he would spend a couple of years on each novel rather than churn out two or so per year. Many of his stories seemed forced, rushed and not completely thought through. Sadly, Sooley is such an example.

The good news is that this book is a bit of a change of pace since it’s not one of Grisham’s “legal” books. It’s a sports book, which seems to be the second area of focus for Grisham when he’s not writing about overworked lawyers and crooked law firms. The story here has potential. It succeeds in many areas and does hold the reader’s interest. The trouble is that Grisham seems to get lost along the way and doesn’t really know for sure where he wants to take his story. Therefore, he seems to force this story into a direction where it doesn’t really seem to be destined. It’s almost like Grisham was struggling with where to take his story, and since he had a deadline, he had to hurry up and come up with whatever he could think of at the time. That probably isn’t what really happened, but it certainly felt like that when I was reading it.

Samuel Sooleymon is a 17-year old resident of the war ravaged and hostile country of Sudan in Africa. The one thing he has going for him is that he’s pretty good at basketball. Is he great? Well, no, but when a local coach wants to put a local team together to go compete in the U.S., Samuel isn’t quite as good as he needs to be, but the coach “sees something” in this kid who is still growing like a weed and developing into what his coach things will be a tremendous ballplayer.  So Samuel gets the dream of a lifetime to go play in the U.S.

This story is at its best when we see this new foreign land through the eyes of “Sooley”. He’s amazed at the wealth of this country. He can’t believe that he can get a job and be paid the astronomical sum of $7.50 per hour to be a locker boy for a college football team. Sooley is a good kid, and his naivete doesn’t hinder his development as a basketball player.

Well, one area of this book that feels a bit forced, is we read about what happens to his family back home. Let’s just say that it’s far from pleasant, and his family find themselves destitute, homeless, wandering and starving due to rogue military types that are quite common. When Sooley becomes aware of this development, all he wants to do is go home, despite the fact that he’s living his dream in America. I really wish Grisham would have given this area of the book a bit more care, and perhaps not told such a grim “back” story. It’s not that such travails are uncommon, it just seemed as if we were reading two different books at times, and it seemed too much of a distraction.

Well, Sooley gets better at his craft and ends up playing for a University. Not a very well-known university, but someone with Sooley’s background and lack of development is just fine with his predicament.  Once Sooley starts playing at the university is where this story really seems to go off the rails. I won’t reveal any spoilers, but I was not really happy with where the story went, nor how things turned out. It’s also a bit exhausting to read intricate details of the basketball games that are played throughout the book. Watching a basketball game is fun, reading a few pages of details about what happens throughout the game – not so much. It got to the point where whenever it was time for “a game” in this book, I would just scan the pages, see which team won, and move on.

So good writing, a decent premise, but the story sadly ends up going south.  I’ve said this many times before in other reviews of Grisham’s work, and I’ve even already said this in this review: If Grisham could have had an extra six months, I think he would have had more time to come up with a much more satisfying ending than what we’re presented with here.  Oh well. It was a quick, easy read. I just wish it wasn’t so quickly written.