I have spent the better part of an hour trying to come up with some clever opening for this critique of John Grisham’s latest novel, “The Last Juror,” but I find the work has left me utterly speechless and inexplicably drained. Seriously.
The jacket hints at a 21st century thriller, the kind we’ve come to expect from Grisham, whose previous successes include “The Pelican Brief,” “The Firm,” and “A Time to Kill” among others.
His latest venture chronicles a time in the life of Willie Traynor, a 23-year-old college dropout reporting for a small-town newspaper in Clanton, Miss. When the paper goes bankrupt, Traynor borrows $50,000 to buy it and return it to estimable form. A month after his first issue, quiet Clanton is rocked by the brutal rape and murder of the beautiful young widow Rhoda Kasselaw, who managed to reveal her assailant’s identity seconds before dying. The story of a lifetime has just dropped into Traynor’s lap.
Has the pondering of Willie Traynor flummoxed my frontal lobe? Has the depth of the human experience left me at a loss for words? Has the cat (gasp!) finally caught my tongue? Nay, reader, nay! Whereas many of my fellow colleagues have been seduced by the slippery spiel of one J. Grisham, I will be the light in the darkness, a champion of truth when I say, without remorse, that this book is an absolute disaster.
Grisham’s writing is inconsistent and misguided. A sparse, careless writing style reads like the memoir of some absentminded senior who rambles and attempts to make up for it by adding forgetful quips.
“Our three-day fling came to an abrupt end the way both of us expected but neither had admitted… She would go through many men before she found one who would last. I sat on the porch outside my office and waited for her to park below, knowing she was probably in Arkansas by then.”
This hollow style of narration fails to develop any visible aspect of the story. Grisham’s characters, already reeling from a lack of substance and direction, are deprived of a setting that may have improved their impact measurably. A small-town setting isn’t necessarily a recipe for literary success. If you’re planning a vacation, don’t go to Clanton.
The story’s design is typical of its genre; a young, conflicted protagonist seeks to defeat the forces of evil that may escape the purview of judicial righteousness. What’s not to like, right?
Wrong. The case is forgettable at best, and Grisham is forced to rely on an artistic resourcefulness that apparently failed him when he needed it. The plot teeters back and forth between action and inaction like some disabled seesaw. Neither is overwhelmingly interesting, leaving us two confounding questions: Why is this book’s name “The Last Juror,” and why am I still reading it?
Certainly not to enjoy ourselves. Perhaps we feel obligated to free these characters from their bleak and meaningless existence, something achieved solely by closing the cover one final time.
