Rating: 
Summary: A Charming Story Flawed by an Inauthentic Narrator
Review: It's Arkansas in 1952. The Chandler family is trying to scratch out a living on 80 rented acres where they grow cotton. Grandfather, father, and son all love baseball. Grandmother and mother provide great food and lots of love. During the harvest, they need to attract migrant workers from the Ozarks and Mexico. The story opens just before the first workers are hired and continues through to the end of the harvest. In the course of the picking, Luke Chandler learns a lot about life, love, morality, and the economic realities of farming. Many people will compare this book to To Kill a Mockingbird and Tom Sawyer. Mr. Grisham consciously modeled the book along the lines of both works, because he makes many allusions to them. Fans of Mr. Grisham's lawyer books will be disappointed to find out that there are no lawyers in this one. This book has many fine qualities. The sense of place is strong. You will be emotionally affected by the characters. The book raises many fascinating questions about morality and spirituality. The book also has some big weaknesses. The narrator is a seven year-old, Luke Chandler. No seven year-old has ever existed who is like this Luke, however. In many places he has the vocabulary of a college graduate . . . which greatly jars the authenticity of his voice. He also is able to gather information better than James Bond. Mr. Grisham could easily have remedied both problems, but did not choose to do so. As a result, he turned a serious novel into a sort of self-satire with a large wink to the reader that this is fiction, after all. The book has a lot of humor in it, but the humor is often coming from the sophisticated views of the author in ways that are not subtle enough. For example, there is an extremely obvious play on the fence painting scene from Tom Sawyer. Not satisfied with that, Mr. Grisham feels compelled to have Luke's mother make the allusion directly. In considering a moral dilemma about lying, Luke puts Hitler, Judas, and General Grant in together hell based on what he has been told. I came away hoping that Mr. Grisham would do more books like this one, but scale back his dramatics, the capabilities of his characters, and his own voice. Fiction has to seem like it could have occurred before we can comfortably enter into it. A Painted House allows you to do that sometimes (like during Saturday afternoon visits to town to do little boy activities) but not others (like during the events surrounding the scene with Hank and Cowboy on the bridge). After you have finished this book, I suggest that you think back to when you were seven. What were your biggest hopes, concerns, and dilemmas? What have you learned since then that has improved on those perspectives? What have you forgotten that you should refocus on? Select a worthy goal before you seek it out!
Rating: 
Summary: Love Grisham but really hated this one!
Review: I have read all Grisham's books, most within a day or two. I still read this one fast, but unfortunately I read it fast because after a hundred pages or so I began to skim read. I do not like to skim and don't even remember the last time I have resorted to doing so because I normally love to absorb the details of a well-written book. Despite Grisham's attempt to depart from his typical style and bring us a nice story about a poor southern boy to life, I was bored to tears and raced through to see if it was ever going to get any better. I do like non-suspense literature but this is not Grisham's forte. Without lawyers, he is out of his element. John, please return to the stuff we love!
Rating: 
Summary: Instant Classic
Review: John Grisham has written a book that I'm sure will one day be read in junior high classes. This book reminds me of Harper Lee's great book. It's neat to read a nice modern novel that you could recomend to your local clergyman without feeling embarassed.
Rating: 
Summary: Grisham at his worst.
Review: If you are a John Grisham fan, do not pick this one up. He makes an awful attempt at being John Steinbeck. Some of the characters are fairly amusing but most are just downright shallow and uninteresting. Without his name this work would have never seen the light of day.
Rating:
Summary: This was a delightful story.
Review: This story is incredibly well written, about a young boy named Luke. By the age of eight, Luke has witnessed two murders and the birth of a baby. His family lives on a cotton farm, and this year the crop is not going to make it. The graphic descriptions of the intense labor young Luke endures while picking cotton with the hired Mexicans and hill people, peppered with humor and good story telling, is enough in itself to keep the reader enthralled. But John Grisham takes the story further, telling us about Pappy and Gran, who live on the farm with Luke and his parents and who become loving, warm characters that will live in your heart long after you have read this book. It is a story of intense love, of willful and comical disobedience, of unshared and shared secrets, and it is a story that will invite you in and give you a cup of coffee. Luke's house has never been painted, and an evil comment by one of the hill people about the unpainted house leaves Luke with a bitter taste in his mouth. When the only hill person to be liked in this story, a handicapped boy named Trot, takes it upon himself to paint the house, it falls to young Luke to finish the job. The storytelling begins, encircles, and ends with the painting of this much loved home, but John Grisham paints more than the house. He paints the Mexicans, the hill people who come for the summer months to help pick cotton, the poverty-stricken neighbors, and even the Uncle who is at war in Korea that never actually enters the story. There will be no doubt in your mind that John Grisham is capable of writing in any genre, and you will enjoy and remember this story for years to come.
Rating:
Summary: What might have been
Review: I tried to like this book - really, I did. I just couldn't. Grisham tries to evoke the spirit of Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird and just fails miserably. Luke had the potential of being a wonderful creation, but never quite made it. The characters are poorly developed and the backstory is essentially nonexistent. Perhaps the failure lies in the sheer number of characters? The worst part is that I kept thinking that the book would get better and it didn't. I hate when that happens.
Rating:
Summary: You probably should have put a lawyer in it
Review: Could not finish. First book from his stable of book that could not allow to run to completion. I can not give it away. Good luck if this is all you have to read.
Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I am an avid reader that reads 2 or 3 books a week. Not so with this one - it was soooooo slow and dull.
Rating:
Summary: A coming of age novel
Review: As a southern person I would reccommend this novel to anyone who is an avid reader. This is not your typical Grisham novel involving courtroom drama. However, I believe this was one of the finest pieces of literature I have ever read. Grisham's depiction of Luke could not have been more real. This seven year old boy experiences events and tragedies that many adults have a hard time coming to grips with. Grisham's style of humor in the novel also grabbed me as well. I know what it is like to hear a story told over and over agin only to have it changed to almost epic like status. As an educator I would say pick this novel up today, I was not able to put it down. Grisham was not affraid to expand his style, and he hit a home run with this piece.
Rating:
Summary: Self-Indulgence
Review: John Grisham has given us so many entertaining stories that I suppose he deserves to indulge himself a bit. I hope he doesn't do it too often or he will find himself losing readers. This book was filled with laborsome description and narrative. Action was sparse, suspense and literary tension almost non-existent. Worst of all, however, was the totally unbelievable seven-year child speaking through the voice of an articulate 40-year-old man. This is kind of surprising, because if I remember right, he did a pretty good job with an eleven year old kid in "The Client." I wish John Grisham luck. I hope this book worked off his need for self indulgence and clears the way for getting back down to work entertaining us.
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