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A review by powerpuffgoat
The Client by John Grisham
2.0
I saw the film when I was a kid, so I figured I would give this book a go.
It started off quite well. The book didn't waste any time, and every character we met was only introduced as they were about to become part of the plot.
Unfortunately, after the initial third of the book, it slowed down and lost a lot of it's charm.
For a book that is thicker than your average thriller, it has a lot, and I mean A LOT of redundant dialogue. You have the same conversations happen once, twice, three times, four times. You have the author describing someone's thoughts, only for them to voice them, almost verbatim, a page later. You have various characters speak about the same events using the same phrasing. You have interactions that could have been summarised in one sentence.
It feels as if the author was so keen on dialogue that he forgot about moving the plot forward. And yeah, I get it. In real life, we do have the same conversations over and over. We do have different people discussing the same event. But as a reader, it's not exciting.
Also, the name Reggie isn't even that unusual! Every bloody character marvels that a woman formerly known as Regina goes by Reggie... I can't help but think that it's the author projecting his weird hang up on multiple characters. Or maybe he thought he was being innovative and edgy, I don't know.
The other downside of reading all this dialogue is how much the characters all have the same voice. And there is a whole lot of characters, too! But you're telling me, that gang members from New Orleans, speak in the same PG-13 way as a black judge from Memphis and a poor child who lives his whole life in a trailer park?
The other side effect is that the narrative is very linear. We learn of things as they happen, we then hear about these events again as someone recounts them. There isn't a single reveal along the way. Perhaps it was a different era of writing, where the suspense was built on what might happen. Except the suspense is killed by endless discussion of what ifs.
On top of that, the dialogue isn't well-written. It's not sharp. It's not profound. It's just very mediocre.
It started off quite well. The book didn't waste any time, and every character we met was only introduced as they were about to become part of the plot.
Unfortunately, after the initial third of the book, it slowed down and lost a lot of it's charm.
For a book that is thicker than your average thriller, it has a lot, and I mean A LOT of redundant dialogue. You have the same conversations happen once, twice, three times, four times. You have the author describing someone's thoughts, only for them to voice them, almost verbatim, a page later. You have various characters speak about the same events using the same phrasing. You have interactions that could have been summarised in one sentence.
It feels as if the author was so keen on dialogue that he forgot about moving the plot forward. And yeah, I get it. In real life, we do have the same conversations over and over. We do have different people discussing the same event. But as a reader, it's not exciting.
Also, the name Reggie isn't even that unusual! Every bloody character marvels that a woman formerly known as Regina goes by Reggie... I can't help but think that it's the author projecting his weird hang up on multiple characters. Or maybe he thought he was being innovative and edgy, I don't know.
The other downside of reading all this dialogue is how much the characters all have the same voice. And there is a whole lot of characters, too! But you're telling me, that gang members from New Orleans, speak in the same PG-13 way as a black judge from Memphis and a poor child who lives his whole life in a trailer park?
The other side effect is that the narrative is very linear. We learn of things as they happen, we then hear about these events again as someone recounts them. There isn't a single reveal along the way. Perhaps it was a different era of writing, where the suspense was built on what might happen. Except the suspense is killed by endless discussion of what ifs.
On top of that, the dialogue isn't well-written. It's not sharp. It's not profound. It's just very mediocre.