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Bleachers (Paperback)

by John Grisham (Author)

3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (288 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Delta; Reprint edition (May 29 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385340877
ISBN-13: 978-0385340878
Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13.2 x 1.5 cm
Shipping Weight: 205 g

Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (288 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #8,976 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories:
#3 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Sports
#44 in Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers > Psychological & Suspense

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Product Description

From Amazon.com

With Bleachers John Grisham departs again from the legal thriller to experiment with a character-driven tale of reunion, broken high school dreams, and missed chances. While the book falls short of the compelling storytelling that has made Grisham a bestselling author, it is nonetheless a diverting novella that succeeds as light fiction.

The story centers on the impending death of the Messina Spartans' football coach Eddie Rake. One of the most victorious coaches in high school football history, Rake is a man both loved and feared by his players and by a town that relishes his 13 state titles. The hero of the novel is Neely Crenshaw, a former Rake All-American whose NFL prospects ended abruptly after a cheap shot to the knees. Neely has returned home for the first time in years to join a nightly vigil for Rake at the Messina stadium. Having wandered through life with little focus since his college days, he struggles to reconcile his conflicted feelings towards his former coach, and he assays to rekindle love in the ex-girlfriend he abandoned long ago. For Messina and for Neely, the homecoming offers the prospect of building a life after Rake.

Physically a narrow book, Bleachers is a modest fiction in many respects. The emotional scope is akin to that of a short story, with a single-minded focus on explorations of nostalgia and regret. The dialogue, especially that of Neely's friend Paul Curry, is sometimes wooden as characters recall Messina history in paragraphs that were perhaps better left to the narrator. But Grisham has otherwise written a well-made, entertaining--if a bit sentimental--story. --Patrick O'Kelley --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

As this poignant story begins, famed high school football coach Eddie Rake, who was known for producing one extraordinary team after another until he was fired, lays dying. Still, he remains a legend in Messina, a small town that comes together every week "to pour their emotions upon a Friday night football team." Indeed, in this town the football field is "more sacred than a cemetery." Neely Crenshaw, perhaps the best quarterback ever to play for Coach Rake, had vowed he'd never come back to Messina while Rake was alive. Yet he returns to share a vigil with the team members he left behind 15 years ago. Slowly, the narrative reveals why Rake was fired so suddenly and what happened between him and Neely. Along the way, the players reminisce and look hard at who they have become. This is a story of men's loyalty, their toughness and their clumsy affection for each other. Grisham's voice calls to mind that of Martin Sheen; he reads quietly and doesn't modulate his voice as the various team members tell their stories. He doesn't need to. His understated, stellar performance outshines the book's cloying story line.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Customer Reviews

288 Reviews

5 star:		(74)
4 star:		(74)
3 star:		(43)
2 star:		(47)
1 star:		(50)

Average Customer Review

3.3 out of 5 stars (288 customer reviews)

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Most helpful customer reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars A Good Game, April 28 2009

By	Jamieson Villeneuve "Author at Large" (Ottawa Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

John Grisham's new novel, "Bleachers," is another of his forays into regular fiction. I am always wary of when an author tries new things, but after the success of his other non-legal thrillers ("Skipping Christmas" and "A Painted House") I was excited to read this book. Unfortunately, the book failed to excite me.

Neely Crenshaw is going back home to Messina, a small Mississippi town, to attend the funeral of his old football coach Eddie Rake. Neely has also come back to chase some ghosts that have haunted him: the lights of the football field, a girl he loved and coach Eddie Rake, a man that Neely loved to hate. Neely left Messina and had not returned for fifteen years.

When Neely arrives, the town is already in mourning, though not much has changed in fifteen years. Eddie Rake is, according to rumor, holding on by a thread, close to death and wasting away. Neely stops at the football field, the bleachers, where his life was shaped for him. Neely had been an All American football player, number 19 and famous at eighteen. The bleachers and the field shaped him and made him who he was.

Others begin to gather at the field, an impromptu vigil for Rake. As more and more football players arrive, they all begin to rehash the old games, the old plays. Each has a story to tell or a memory of the game, of Rake. The Spartans won thirteen titles, all under the tutelage of Coach Eddie Rake. There are a lot of memories in thirteen titles.

Neely also has some unfinished business to take care of. A girl he hurt fifteen years ago. Will she be able to forgive him after all this time? And, as the town continues to mourn, questions are asked: what happened in the game where Neely broke his wrist? What happened in the locker room that day? And what happened to Coach Rake?

As Neely tries to decide whether or not he hates or loves Coach Rake, others get ready to wait for Rake's death. They want to know what happened, what went down. Is Neely finally ready to unravel a secret that is fifteen years old?

If you love football, you will probably like "Bleachers". I'm not a big football fan, but that didn't take away from the book too much. Grisham's descriptive writing makes you feel as if you are there, as if you can see the sweat on the player's backs. Unfortunately, good writing is all that is good about this book.

The book is really short, for one thing; at a slim 163 pages, I was able to finish it in a day. Not much happens, either. There is one plot to the book and it could have been written in ten pages. Basically, in 163 pages, nothing happens. Neely goes home, the coach is buried, a bunch of men reminisce about the past and that's it. There are no surprises here.

I found the people in Messina to be lacking as well. The characters are flat with little to no depth and I found I didn't really care whether or not Neely forgave his coach or made nice with his ex-girlfriend. I didn't connect to anyone in this story, which made it hard to care about the book's resolution.

"Bleachers" should have been marketed as a short story rather than a novel. While Grisham is able to bring to life small town Mississippi, you may not want to stay there very long. Now, don't get me wrong here: this isn't a bad book; it's just not a particularly good one and certainly not the calibre that we're used to seeing from Grisham.

I'd save this one for a quiet afternoon where you can lose yourself in a short story. It's an okay read and it will have football fans drooling for more.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Way Too Short, Mar 24 2005

By	Donette (Nova Scotia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bleachers (Mass Market Paperback)

I give this book 4 stars because it was simply too short. I liked the premise - the death of a football coach and the way his players remember him and grieve him. But there wasn't enough. I read this through in one sitting. It might have been a more exciting book if Grisham had not told it through the points of views of players reminiscing but had kept it in the time period they were remembering. That would have been a great book.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Predictable pedestrian plot, Dec 11 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Bleachers (Hardcover)

I used to enjoy John Grisham until his plots became transparent and brutally predictable. I love books, but this was the first book I actually threw out to spare another the pain of reading it.

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Most recent customer reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Predictable and Weak
As I've not read Grisham before, I picked this book up at the library to give him a try. From what I know of him, I sense that this is not him at his best; it is a diversion from... Read more

Published on Jul 28 2004 by A. Gillis

4.0 out of 5 stars Nothing bleached out about this one, folks
Of the five books I've read recently, only three stick in my mind as being well written and worthy of mention. "Birth of Venus" is one. Read more

Published on Jul 27 2004

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable emotional reading.
My wife gave Bleachers to me for my birthday. Football? Where the heck are the lawyers? That was my first thought. But it wasn't very long until I was hooked. Read more

Published on Jul 23 2004 by Ozzie Levesque

2.0 out of 5 stars A nice enough story....but where is the John Grisham....
....that wrote novels that I could hardly wait to get my hands on? I used to cringe at the though of having to wait for my next Grisham-fix! Read more

Published on Jul 19 2004