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John Grisham's novel The Firm

John Grisham's novel The Firm became a best-seller and will probably sell even more copies in paperback now that the movie version has become a major attraction. These facts should not blind the reader to the faults of the novel, which are many, and indeed the book is not structured well as a suspense novel and suffers from the flat writing style of the author. An examination of the first several chapters will show how the author begins his book badly while also indicating some of the reasons why a wide readership has been found just the same. The suspense in the novel is undercut from the beginning by a tendency to tell too much too soon. The book creates an aura of real mystery in the early pages but dissipates that advantage by providing a mundane reason for it sooner than necessary.

The first chapters of the book are taken up with the courting of Mitch McDeere by the law firm, and the reader senses from the first that there is something wrong with this law firm and with the offer they are making. It is, in short, too good an offer, with too many restrictions placed on the new lawyer and his wife. In the second chapter, McDeere's wife and another law-firm wife look at houses together, and the second woman tells Abby McDeere certain things she does not like about the degree of control the firm exerts not only on the lawyers but on their wives. Again, the reader will sense that there is something wrong, though what it is remains uncertain.

The dialogue in these early pages is entirely too repetitious, with the same questions being asked in different ways and with the character of Mitch in particular showing largely only one color, that of greed at the prospect of making the amount of money offered by this firm. The author does not have a good ear for the way people really talk, and the characters sound much too clinical and vapid in the way they circle around the same subjects again and again with essentially interchange...

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John Grisham's novel The Firm. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:14, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1690883.html