Rating: 
Summary: A long and enjoyable ride!
Review: This book is incredible, it actually makes you feel sorry for a man who is a disgusting and deplorable specimen of an individual. The ending is realistic, not fairy-tale and I respect that. As an author of non-fiction myself, I appreciate a little reality in fiction.Kasey Hamner, M.S., author of "Whose Child?" and "Adoption Forum"
Rating: 
Summary: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Review: It's a whole lotta book that goes a whole lotta no place.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, makes a person think twice
Review: For a former lawyer who has never witnessed a death row case, John Grisham's ability to portray such a case was impeccable. John Grisham tells the story of an ex-KKK member who is on death row for the murder of two young boys, and his defense attorney is his estranged grandson. Grisham was able to capture all the emotion and reality of an inmate's life on death row, and the lives of the inmate's family, as though death row cases were part of his daily routine. The Chamber is a complex novel about a controversial and painful topic to which almost every person has an opinion. During Grisham's time as an attorney he represented people accused of a variety of crimes, but never a capital murder case. John Grisham used the expertise of lawyers and members of the judicial system to learn about all aspects of a death row inmate's life and their cases. The Chamber is intended for an adult audience who has an interest in the controversial topic of the death penalty that causes them to reflect upon personal views and beliefs.
The Chamber is a compelling story of a family's deep, dark secrets that have been hidden from everyone, including each other... The book captures the reader's attention during the first chapter...
Rating: 
Summary: A Different Grisham Novel
Review: Those who read alot of Grisham novels know that a typical book written by John Grisham is suspensful, fast-paced, and a quick read. Well don't expect that at all from THE CHAMBER. The book is almost 700 pages and the plot and storyline go alot slower, as the characters are more developed. The story starts with Sam Cayhall, a racist KKK member who bombed a Jewish lawyer's office killing his two sons. Sam Cayhall is about to be sentenced to death by the gas chamber. Adam, who is a fresh and young laywer, gets involved in the case. Adam is Sam's grandson who wants to know about his turbulent past. The book is about Adam's fight to try and save his grandfather from the gas chamber. The book is not preachy, but is a novel against the death penalty. It talks about botched executions, racial imbalances in executions, and how it is morally wrong. I am a believer in the death penalty, but this book has softened my views, though has not changed it. The book is also about Adam as he copes with his past, from his father's suicide to his aunt who wants nothing to do with Sam. A pretty good novel, though different from Grisham's usual work. It isn't a bad novel for sure, though it could use a bit of trimming. Grisham does make it hard to sympathize with Sam, because Grisham is well aware that generally the death row inmates are not angels.
Rating: 
Summary: Cliched and two dimensional
Review: Usually Mr. Grishom's caricatures of American personalities are an amusing background to the suspence and action, but here it is the whole book. Also, it was almost embarassing for me to see him expose his own biases so close to the surface. He is not a great thinker, and he really just rehashes the same anti-capital punishment arguments over and over with little cosmetic changes. No action entertainment here, and I would have given it one star, except for some of the amusing caricatures.
Rating:
Summary: This book made me think!
Review: I can't say I "loved" this story. Or that it's a "great" story. It's a very hard book to read - the issues raised are very intense and very difficult to read about. I ended up with questions I'd never had before, which made this book really valuable to me. The death penalty, racism, hate crimes, family struggles, forgiveness, taking responsibility for one's actions are all covered in this one book - it was truly an intense read. I cried through a lot of it. This is definitely not escapism, light reading! It's not terribly action-filled - very unlike other Grisham books I've read. But just as good as the other books I've read by him, if more emotional and heart-wrenching. I am very, very glad I read the book, and I'm very glad my son is reading it. Don't expect to walk away from this one with the same views you had when you started it.
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Summary: John Grisham, The best Author in Novel/Education!
Review: I'm now right in the middle of reading John Grisham's "The Chamber". I discovered John Grisham several years ago. At one point in my life, I had lost my capability to read. When I got that capability back, I found the Author John Grisham. I truly enjoy his mixture of Novel/Educational writing! I've learned so much about our Law Makers and The Lawyers who work with the laws in a very interesting, delightfull way thanks to this special Author! This book concerns the first decade of my life. I can remember many of the events that John Grisham inserts materfully into this book during that decade. The 1960's! My children don't and can't conceive the events that took place during the Black American revolution! This book states the events in a clear manner. I would recommend this book for adults and children at their parent's discretion. If you like to read Novels that educate you, you'll love "The Chamber" by John Grisham! Note Date: October 10, 2003. I've now finished this great book. In it's detail, I wouldn't suggest this book for the younger children.
Rating:
Summary: amazing
Review: John Grisham does it again with his writing styles that blow you away. This time the setting is in Chicago where a fresh law graduate student decides to join a law firm that represents his long lost grandfather. He goes to Mississippi and stays with his alcoholic aunt. He meets his grandfather on deathrow, a cynical, opinionated old klansman charged with the bombing a law firm in the sixties that injured a jewish lawyer and killed his two twin sons. This powerful drama attacks the death penalty and will leave you thinking.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful and moving
Review: There is so much that I could say about "The Chamber", but somehow words alone can not do an adequate job of describing how I felt when I had finished reading it. This is a very, very deeply moving novel. The characters are extremely well developed and you find yourself being swept up in an emotional journey as the plot unfolds. This is not a fast-moving action novel, it doesn't have Hollywood-style twists, and it's not a high-octane thriller. But it's not supposed to be. Anyone complaining about the lack of action has simply not understood what the book is supposed to be about. I highly recommend "The Chamber" to anyone who has ever wondered just how precious human life is.
Rating: 
Summary: Original, interesting legal info, flawed thematicatically
Review: I was well aware of the popularity of Grisham before reading anything by him, and was quite surprised that such a 'bestseller' didn't fall into a formula plot. Admittedly he was well established before publishing this one - maybe the others are more conventionally pleasing? There are hints of thriller, and (in my mind) pretty much the assumption of a dramatic courtroom climax, but while either would have fitted easily with the content of the book, Grisham rejects them both. Rather the novel centres entirely on the anatomy of the final days before an execution. There's actually very little action to speak of, but a lot of dialogue, and reams of detailed narration of physical and judicial institutions. Rather than the pieces of the crime gradually being revealed, with a savage and vital twist forcing the pace, the opening chapters of the book simply relate precisely what happened in a neutral tone, revealing to three decimal places the exact degree of guilt of the defendant. So instead of the standard adrenaline ride of tracking down the 'real' guilty parties while dodging bullets and falling in love, we already know most of the salient details in the first few chapters. What takes the book beyond being little more than a dramatised documentary is the personal/family aspect of our young hotshot lawyer (Adam) actually getting to know his ex-KKK grandfather (Sam) while representing him. How did some of these awful things go on in his family? How does the perpetrator feel about them now? Characters appear and recede only as far as they relate to the final days on this death row case. Several seemingly central characters turn out to be red herrings - or, at least, they would if this was a whodunit. However as a detailed narration of a few weeks it feels more authentic to have them come and go as the lawyer tries and then dismisses various tangents in the so called 'gangplank' appeals. While at times he does push his luck with the amount of words devoted to relating precise architecture and procedures on death row, the documentary aspect generally enhances the book. I find it a real asset when the author painlessly incorporates information about something the they're an expert on and/or have researched thoroughly (cf. philosophy/literature in just about any David Lodge, rigging in Levi's 'The Wrench'). There is some suspense - this is a life and death situation revolving around appeals that will be judged - but a strength of the book is that it doesn't rely on the dramatic final judgement to make it worth reading. The major weakness, however, is its attempt to convince us of the invalidity of the death penalty. It is utterly transparent that key characters that oppose it are the salt of the earth, but anyone in favour has some basic character flaw (such as the slimy two-faced politician, or the martinet prison guard - blimey, what original characterisations), or is an embittered victim unable to be objective. This is a particular shame because there are a surprisingly large number of positive characters that aren't mere throwaways. Moreover the essential way the reader is supposed to be convinced of the moral corruptness of the bad guys is that the heroic ones don't like them - rather than what they actually say and do. Grisham even tries to reverse this - the reader, for example, is supposed to wryly laugh along with the clever tactic of the good-guys to commit wholesale fraud by inundating the governor's phones with impersonated constituents opposing to the death penalty; this strategy is no better than someone stealing ballot boxes, for example, but we're meant to swallow and even enjoy it, with a vague justification that the end justifies the means. But while some of his self-conscious methods of arguing against execution fail, it's a real irony that the actual resolution of the book is ingenuously a strong argument in favour of death row. It's the salvation of the fallen criminal. What Grisham doesn't seem to realise is that he constantly feeds Sam lines that endorse the redemptive effect of knowing that he's going to die soon. Because of the imminence of death Sam says he 'values life' more than he used to - which enables him to realise the wrongness of violent acts he'd previously felt no remorse for. With the clock ticking Sam writes genuine letters of apology to all his victims which would never have happened without such a threat. Indeed he repents in a staggering straight from a gospel tract scene, opening up to the priest because, in light of the chamber, he wants to make his peace. (This conversion, by the way, while doctrinally sound, is soon clarified as a classic nominal middle American one as Sam says to Adam:
I look at you- you're tolerant and broad-minded, well-educated, ambitious, going places - and I ask myself, Why didn't I become ... something like you.'
That being said, while Grisham can't help but tack some worldly success onto the inimical teaching of Christ, his presentation of the evangelical priest is startlingly positive, and there are some 'money's not worth integrity' intimations here and there). To convince his audience that it was wrong to send an utterly unrepentant killer - who'd do the same again without remorse given half a chance - to the chair would have been a difficult task. Alternatively Grisham has the intelligence not to present an innocent character wrongfully going to the gas chamber as his argument against execution: that's merely against poor judicial processes. Instead he tries the middle ground of presenting a guilty but redeemed figure. But when the catalyst - or even cause - of that enlightenment is the chamber itself, the moral to this tale is hardly one opposing it.
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