Customer Reviews

Bleachers

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

 

 

After 'The Painted House' and 'Skipping Christmas', Grisham has once again spun a lovely tale outside the world of law and attorneys...and he has succeeded yet again. In this book, Grisham delves into the heart of a forgotten football hero. Neely Crenshaw is Messina's most famous son until he is forced to stay out of the game due to an injury. Years pass by and Neely battles hard to come to terms with his almost famous status. Eddy Rake, Neely's coach had been instrumental in shaping Neely's illustrious career. Yet Coach Rake's atrocities towards Neely on the football field continues to haunt him. Neely returns to Messina when Coach Rake is dying, partly to introspect if he can bury the ghosts of fame forever and partly, and more importantly to forgive Coack Rake. Neely's touching speech in front of his familiar home crowd is beautifully written. One can't help but relate to feelings of remorse and gratitude. As humans, we have all had feelings of angst, bitterness and frustration towards individuals who have been largely responsible for shaping our lives. It is not until such people leave us forever do their absence become conspicuous. Neely Crenshaw experiences similar feelings.
Overall a feel good book. Grisham has written a beautiful and piognant book on human emotions using football strictly as a background.

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.

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 his usual thriller/mystery approach.

Regardless, this book seemed quite amateur in terms of its plot and outcome. I kept waiting for something 'big' to happen; whatever it was that Neely had to deal with. I kept wondering 'What is the conflict between he and Coach Rake'? I won't give it away, but I was terribly disappointed with what the pages revealed; it wasn't really anything at all. A lot of lead up to a dissapointing climax. I also didn't find the 'emotional' scenes the least bit emotional or riveting.

Better luck next time with Grisham. Guess I'll have to try one of his classics.

Its been quite some time since Grisham wrote "unadulterated" and "classic-kinds" law fiction. Maybe he does not want to be categorised as a "law thriller" writer.
Frankly, for some time now, Grisham had been disappointing me with his "off-law" books. But the Grisham fan I am, I have been persisting with his writings. I read "Bleachers" without much expectations. But I must say that of all the "Off-Law" books he has written, this is the best. I thought in some of his earlier similar attempts, for example, in "Skipping Christmas", the story did not have any direction. You kept on waiting for something to happen without anything happening.
Bleachers succesfully tells the tale of a group of boys in the process of becoming men. The story is something any grown up in his late 20's can relate to. Its a light hearted story, conveying a message and with the usual Grisham ingredients of classic story-telling.
In my all time list of Best Grisham books I would put this at number 4, with the first three being The Rainmaker, Runaway Jury and The Chamber.
This book is a good read. But readers who goto Grisham only for legal thrillers- stay away. If I recall, there is only one occurrence of the word "lawsuit" in the whole book.

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.

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. McCrae's "Bark of the Dogwood" is another. And last but not least, Grisham's "Bleachers." Yes, I know this Grisham novel is reminiscent of "The Junction Boys," but in my opinion, Grisham does the story proud with his handling of the characters and their interactions. As always, the setting plays an important part in his books (really, it's another character) and while this may not be a legal thriller, it's worthy of a place alongside his other bestselllers. Would also recommend THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD--A Tour of Southern Homes and Gardens.

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. The story line is very easy to follow, and the begining moves along at a relatively slow pace, however, it manages to keep your attention with very well laid out character building.

Bleachers is a tale of a historical highschool football coach, a man loved, a man hated, a man leaving no one indifferent about him. Now on his death bed, his "players" come back to wait for his passing. Sitting in the bleachers of Rake stadium named after thier coach, they take you through the stories and rumors that created and destroyed the legend is/was their coach. It is rather short for a Grisham novel but nevertheless provides a great entertainement value.

This novel is arranged by days rather than chapters which, I thought, was a very interesting idea. I am not a football fan nor do I know very much about the sport. I can tell you that my wife, who knows less than I do about the subject, loved this book also.

In summary, it is not my favorite Grisham novel, but it is certainly a good choice for a leisure read.

....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!

Bleachers is a pleasant enough tale with a somewhat interesting, albeit annoyingly predictable storyline, I will give it that. But I'd be willing to bet that for those of us who remember the spell-binding and positively riveting storylines of his earlier novels, the fact that Bleachers is somewhat interesting is of very little solace.

Those of you who know his work, know just what I'm talking about. I don't know exactly when it started, maybe it was with Painted House, but Grisham's novels have become absolutely forgettable. I used to have no qualms with parting with my hard-earned dollars on hardbacks of his stuff so I wouldn't have to wait a whole year for the paperback to come out! Now, I feel like I got taken for the $5 I paid for the paperback version of Bleachers at my local WalMart! If Grisham's the next effort is as innocuous and cookie-cutter as Bleachers was, I'll keep my money and look for his next attempt as I'm sifting through the inevitable stack of unwanted books at my neighbor's future garage sale.

This is the first Grisham book that I have read. I was very satisfied with it overall. Despite being a quick read (less than 200 pages ) it has characters that are detailed very well and a great main plot. The only blemish is that it might have been too quick of a read. With it being written so well I really couldn't out it down and finished it in less than 3 days. I would reccomend this book to anyone who has ever played organized football at a high school level or higher. But you don't have to have been involved in sport to enjoy Grisham's great style. I also recently enjoyed two other books, though they were totally different from this one. The first was Hiaasen's "Skinny Dip," and the second was "The Bark of the Dogwood."

I've read everything that Grisham has put out, except for The Last Juror, and I have to say that this was a nice change of pace. While Grisham is the master of the legal thriller, it's nice to see him branch out successfully into different themed, shorter novels, such as this book and Skipping Christmas. Much like Skipping Christmas, I read this novel in just two days, and it held my interest through the conclusion.

It would have been nice to leave out Neely's long lost "love" from High School, however. Her inclusion in this book just seemed tacked on, and left me confused as how I should interpret the presence of her with respects to the rest of the plot. Does there have to be an obligatory sub-plotted romance B-story in every book? This book would have worked just fine without it.