Customer Reviews

The Associate

5 star:		(72)
4 star:		(76)
3 star:		(148)
2 star:		(200)
1 star:		(237)

 

 

Mr. Grisham is padding his billing sheet with The Associate, which seems almost to have been ghost-written. It reflects little of the talent behind The Partner, my favorite Grisham novel and, frankly, it made me somewhat upset to have spent 27 bucks. I would have been disappointed to buy this one in paperback. Time was that you started a Grisham novel and couldn't put it down. Had I not been stuck in an airport en route from a deposition I would not have had the patience to finish.

This book was like my sixth grade term paper; we all had them, you would count the words until you got to the end. Likewise, although there was some great potential in this story it was not realized. Sure, there were half-hearted attempts to bring other characters to life, but they were all just that, half-hearted. The ending was among the most disappointing that I have ever come across--in any genre.

Nobody learns anything. There is no character progression--just a slow moving train wreck from which nobody emerges having been enlightened. In fact, the reader feels much like our protagonist--forced to endure a journey that was expected to be something completely different and not entirely sure how to escape. Heavens, big law firms are such a deliciously evil mix of stunningly warped personalities and distorted goals that any number of excellent thrillers could be drawn from facts known to just about any lawyer.

I do hope that Mr. Grisham rediscovers the joy of telling a story--he is very good at it; however, I cannot recommend this book.

John Grisham can be one heck of a novelist when he sets his mind to it. But "The Associate" comes across as a bit lazy and unfocused. This story of a young and bright law student who is the victim of a blackmail scheme just wanders for a while and then kind of plops down in the end. I will admit that I found much of the writing interesting but it seems that Grisham wants to tell the reader the difficulties and detail of working for a massive law firm without adding any suspense or proper conclusion to the tale. Maybe he plans a sequel (?) which could be fairly dynamic but this book can be summed up fairly simply.
1. Kyle wants to work in the law.
2. Bad guy threatens Kyle with video and blackmails him to steal information from major legal firm. (Who is the bad guy? You'll never know.)
3. Kyle reluctantly cooperates.
4. Lots of meetings with bad guy and hero going over dull details.
5. Kyle agonizes
6. One moment of horror when a character dies (Who killed him? You'll never know)
7. Will Kyle execute plan of bad guy?
8. Then a completely deflating climax. (Believe me, you'll be sorely disappointed.)
There is a comparison on the book jacket to "The Firm" a previous Grisham hit novel. My advice, read "The Firm". If you must read this book, wait for the paperback to be on sale at the used bookstore near you.

I have read every one of John Grisham's books and was looking forward to this one, however, after finishing it last night, I must say I was very disappointed. The ending (which, of course, I won't give away) was very lame. He spent a lot of time on the big bad law firms abusing the associates and not enough on the real story of Kyle and who were these people who were ruining his life. I would definitely not recommend it.

I've been a longtime fan of Grisham and this novel was utterly terrible. There was no connection with the characters, it dragged on and on with no point, and then ended so spectacularly badly that I was searching for a missing page or something, unable to believe that was the end.
He has written many good books, and no doubt will again, but don't waste your time with this one.

I have to confess that I haven't read any books by John Grisham in a while, but when "The Associate" hit the bookstores, I felt compelled to read this book. I was taken back by the great difference in opinion with current reviews, but quickly put them aside as I enjoyed the book with only a couple of objections.

It is true that this story is somewhat reminiscent of "The Firm", but with a distinction of the outside sources blackmailing the main character into stealing secrets from the biggest law firm in the world. Young Yale graduate, Kyle McAvoy, is being blackmailed by an unknown secret source and by a handler known only as "Bennie Wright" for his participation in a possible frat house rape years before. McAvoy must secretly steal documents from a large and controversial lawsuit or fear the consequences of a damaging video going public.

This book is an easy read in Grisham's typical storytelling style. It begins with an interesting angle, but keeps a somewhat monotonous pace until page 104. Then the story picks up with interesting angles and begins to unfold in the usual entertaining fashion. At times, I did feel that the book read more like a field report from a private investigator than a thriller novel. My main complaint would be that the character of "Bennie Wright" should have been more of an integral part of the storyline. We needed to see this crafty and secret character conducting business so that it would really pull the reader into a more suspenseful mode for McAvoy. I think the reader would have felt more distress and not feel cheated with the ending. As far as the ending goes, it has an ending but maybe not as satisfying as most would like.

If you want a nice easy weekend read in the standard Grisham style, I would recommend this book. However, if you're expecting a giant climatic scene with an aggressive confrontation, you will not find that with this book.

-Jennifer Chase, author of thriller "Compulsion"

Over the years, I have really enjoyed Grisham's books. But in the past few years, Grisham has really started to fizzle. I was hopeful that the Associate would be an improvement over The Appeal, but it was not to be.

The Associate immediately captures readers in the first couple of pages and has some very well-developed characters. It also has a character, Bennie, who remains an enigma throughout the book, and after. Grisham's books frequently have underdeveloped characters but Bennie is a very significant character in the Associate and because of his stark underdevelopment as a character, many readers (including me) remain unsatisfied.

If you REALLY like Grisham, then this book will be just OK for you. The plot is strong, moves quickly, AND (in typical Grisham fashion) falls off the cliff pretty abruptly.

If you aren't sure if you would like Grisham, don't start with this book. Go back to when he was in his prime -- A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief.

I probably won't run to the bookstore the next time Grisham's book comes out like I have in the past with his books and I probably won't stay up until the wee hours of the morning reading either. I'll read his next book but I'm a less 'fanatic' Grisham reader now than I was last week.

Had Grisham offered this book to publishers as his first, I don't think we would ever have known the name Grisham.

John Grisham has been saying that this new book is similar to The Firm. This is only true in the sense that it has a young protagonist. Does he not understand what it is that people liked about The Firm and A Time to Kill? While The Associate is fun to read and a page-turner, the characters are the same old stereotypes as in all the later Grisham books. There are no detailed descriptions of anything. I hate to say it, but I think John Grisham is wasting his talent, even being a little bit lazy.

This novel grabbed me on the first page. Why is this bright young law grad doing community service? Why is the FBI stalking him? And why is he so nervous? The plot reminded me of The Firm, which I enjoyed. The writing is competent, the story initially engrossing. A large law firm blackmails its own members for a nefarious agenda. The hero is a not so innocent, but sympathetic hero...

Grisham used to write novels that kept me on the edge of my seat. I recall The Pelican Brief, and A Time To Kill. Perhaps if I read them again, I would find them dated and boring, but I remember them as fast paced and enjoyable thrillers. His recent novels, like The Broker, were disappointing. I hoped for more in The Associate. Unfortunately I did not find it. Maybe Grisham has lost his edge, or maybe I have moved on to other things. Perhaps the legal thriller has had its run, and now shows signs of age. My attention began to lag after about 100 pages. I could not believe in the characters deeply enough to care about them. When routine tasks like cleaning the kitchen take precedence over a book, it is time to seek out another book! I am sorry to write this. I really liked Grisham, and I was hoping for more. I cannot recommend this novel to lovers of true adventure. This is not a terrible book, but it is not great. It will pass the time during a long flight, or on vacation, but there are better novels out there to discover.

If the title question is enough to keep you reading, then "The Associate" should hold your interest and attention, but if you want more, you'll need to look elsewhere because Grisham doesn't deliver much more than that question as a dramatic catalyst in his newest effort.

Sure, there's not a lot wrong with "The Associate" from some perspective. As popcorn legal thrillers go, Grisham strikes all the right notes (big money firm, incessant rehashing of the junior associate workload, mysterious baddies, altruistic but conflicted protagonist), he just strikes them all hollowly.

Briefly, just as Kyle McAvoy is set to finish at the top of his Yale Law class and head out into the public service world for a few years of giving back before heading to Wall Street to rake it in, his past comes back to haunt him when the mysterious "Bennie" holds an ominous sword of Damocles over his brilliant head. To keep the blade from dropping, Kyle must agree to accept a job at a white shoe New York firm that is representing a defense contractor in an $800B patent action over a piece of emerging aerospace technology, and serve as Bennie's man on the inside, feeding confidential information back to the blackmailer and compromising his client, his career and his integrity.

But, who is Bennie? That's the mystery driving the novel, and even as Kyle unravels a laboriously-paced strategy to answer just that question, Grisham never really fills in enough of the blanks to make Bennie's anonymity compelling enough to drive the plot. Is he working for the other side in the litigation? Is he representing a foreign government (the Israelis for example, who were in a joint venture with DoD and the private contractors on the development of this new bomber)? These questions get cursory mention throughout the book, but are never threshed out.

Grisham spends a lot more time on Kyle's day-to-day life in the firm than seems warranted. If he wasn't going to rely on the genre-tested designated baddies like the Mob (The Firm/The Client), international intelligence and assassins (The Pelican Brief), or another ready-made villain, then he needed to spend some time delving into Bennie, the forces behind him and the sources of his seemingly limitless power, money and inside info. The narrative picks up some steam about two-thirds of the way through when one of Kyle's college frat buddies (a recovering alcoholic whose story was actually one of the more interesting character development efforts Grisham made) is found shot in the head, execution-style, in a highway rest area mens' room. In one sense, the hit is disappointing, Grisham kills off one of the more developed and compelling characters; but, he does seem to pick up some welcome steam here, too. Immediately after, Kyle is thrown headlong into the litigation battle at the center of the book along with having a heightened urgency around his dealings with Bennie> He finally begins to fight back against the implausibly gripping blackmail against him by bringing his family in and hiring a pugnacious white collar criminal defense attorney, another promising character who just arrives as too little, too late. This is a pivot point that marks more of a return to the frenetic pacing of early Grisham, but its still pretty flat for frenetic. "Michael Clayton" may have been able to bring corporate espionage to compelling life, but, here Grisham never does.

Sure, most of Grisham's past work has centered around "Big Business" as the ultimate culprit: the ones driving the assassins to kill Supreme Court justices in Pelican; the forces behind jury-fixing and cigarette justice in The Runaway Jury; and the anti-democratic backroom politicking in "The Appeal;" but, in those works he filled the landscape in with compelling background and depth: Supreme Court politics, assassins, Mobsters, race, the death penalty.

The sad fact is that no matter how much Grisham clearly wants us to draw an alternative conclusion, law firm life and white collar crime just aren't that compelling or implicitly nefarious - certainly not enough to drive a successful "legal thriller," the genre that Grisham helped create with the early success of those books mentioned above (plus, The Client [mob/FBI], A Time to Kill [race, murder, the KKK], and The Chamber [race, death penalty]). If Grisham isn't willing to exploit the instant dramatic effect of these kinds of grand topics, then he needs to do the hard work himself on developing compelling conflict and a dramatic momentum. In "The Associate," he never does.

I think the decision shows a continued trend in Grisham toward a more political, less-commercially-oriented style that doesn't want to lose what needs to be said in the way he says it. "The Appeal," and Grisham's recent nonfiction work, "The Innocent Man," began the shift that continues to play out here.

Also, its obvious that Grisham's life has changed, and those changes are evident in the book. The opening scene paints a vivid picture of a youth basketball league game, complete with the kind of dank and dusty gym that anyone who is involved in their kids' youth sports will instantly recognize as authentic and imbued with experience. It is the kind of scene he used to paint of law students, professors, young associates and G-Men in his early work (i.e., the Chinese food celebration scene early in "The Firm") that so accurately captured that milieu, and its evidence that where he's writing what he knows, the talent is still there. But, it was the creative flourishes, the plot development and the character composition that made successes of those early books. He was never Dickens, but for a mass-market NTY Bestseller, the books always delivered.

Here, he has more trouble. Maybe there isn't a lot of argument against his presentation of NYC megafirms as slavishly and single-mindedly committed to the six-minute increment, but they are not actually set pieces. The lawyers and secretaries and sandwich boys may be ripe for caricature; but they are not caricatures. These firms do have heartbeats; and, Scully & Pershing has none of the personality (or personalities) of Bendini, Lambert & Locke. The firm is a dead zone, the partners we do know are flat, and even Kyle, his friends and family and the other associates just fill in check boxes on the novelist's card. The driven Harvard man has none of the depth of Mitch McDeere; the love interest never acquires the significance of Thomas Callahan, and the thrice-divorced supervising partner doesn't take on any of the character of Avery Tolar.

And, right through to the end, Grisham never delivers and the book feels - it feels a little unfair to say this, but this is how it feels - like the product of a need to make a publication date on a multi-book contract.

All in all, I would say approach "The Associate" warily and probably approach it in paperback. Tide yourself over in the meantime with the recent paperback release of "The Appeal," and temper your hopes for when you do read the new one. If you're expecting a quick reading pop legal thriller to pass the time on the train, Grisham's probably got you covered; but, if you're hoping for the crackling, guilty pleasure, up-all-night reading of "The Firm" or "The Pelican Brief," this is a disappointment.

JAW

The climax is extremely weak. There is really no falling acting to this story. Characters are developed nicely, but ultimately unrelated to the resolution or even the conflict in this story. Mr. Grisham does a terrific job of making you want to read what comes next, but he does not seem to be able to wrap up all of the wonderful details he has created.