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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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The
Appeal by John Grisham |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Bought John Grisham provides a decent
election year novel titled, The
Appeal, that plays to the themes of money and power. In it, he presents a
Mississippi Supreme Court campaign and election, and the maneuvering of
serious money to try to ensure that the new judge will be sympathetic to
powerful interests. There are enough twists and turns to keep readers
captivated, as well as provide thoughtful reflection on whether judges should
be elected or appointed. Here’s an excerpt, from Chapter 2, pp. 24-29: Mr. Trudeau's car was a black
Bentley with a black chauffeur named Toliver who claimed to be Jamaican,
though his immigration documents were as suspicious as his affected Caribbean
accent. Toliver had been driving the great man for a decade and could read
his moods. This was a bad one, Toliver determined quickly as they fought the
traffic along the FDR toward midtown. The first signal had been clearly
delivered when Mr. Trudeau slammed the right rear door himself before a
lunging Toliver could fulfill his duties. His boss, he had read, could have nerves of cold
steel in the boardroom. Unflappable, decisive, calculating, and so on. But
in the solitude of the backseat, even with the privacy window rolled up as
tightly as possible, his real character often emerged. The man was a hothead
with a massive ego who hated to lose. And he had definitely lost this
one. He was on the phone back there, not yelling but certainly not
whispering. The stock would crash. The lawyers were fools. Everyone had lied
to him. Damage control. Toliver caught only pieces of what was being said,
but it was obvious whatever happened down there in Mississippi had been
disastrous. His boss was sixty-one years
old and, according to Forbes, had a net worth of almost $2 billion. Toliver
often wondered, how much was enough? What would he do with another billion,
then another? Why work so hard when he had more than he could ever spend?
Homes, jets, wives, boats, Bentleys, all the toys a real white man could ever
want. But Toliver knew the truth. No
amount of money could ever satisfy Mr. Trudeau. There were bigger men in
town, and he was running hard to catch them. Toliver turned west on
Sixty-third and inched his way to Fifth, where he turned suddenly and faced a
set of thick iron gates that quickly swung back. The Bentley disappeared
underground, where it stopped and a security guard stood waiting. He opened
the rear door. "We'll leave in an hour," Mr. Trudeau barked in Toliver's
general direction, then disappeared, carrying two thick briefcases. The elevator raced up sixteen
levels to the top, where Mr. and Mrs. Trudeau lived in lavish splendor. Their
penthouse rambled over the top two floors and looked out from its many giant
windows at Central Park. They had purchased the place for $28 million shortly
after their momentous wedding six years earlier, then spent another $10
million or so bringing it up to designer-magazine quality. The overhead
included two maids, a chef, a butler, his and hers valets, at least one
nanny, and of course the obligatory personal assistant to keep Mrs. Trudeau
properly organized and at lunch on time. A valet took his briefcases and
overcoat as he flung them off. He bounded up the stairs to the master suite,
looking for his wife. He had no real desire to see her at the moment, but
their little rituals were expected. She was in her dressing room, a
hairdresser on each side, both working feverishly on her straight blond hair. "Hello, darling," he
said dutifully, more for the benefit of the hairdressers, both young males
who seemed not the least bit affected by the fact that she was practically
nude. "Do you like my
hair?" Brianna asked, glaring at the mirror as the boys stroked and
fussed, all four hands doing something. Not, "How was your day?"
Not, "Hello, dear." Not, "What happened with the trial?"
Just simply, "Do you like my hair?" "It's lovely," he
said, already backing away. Ritual complete, he was free to go and leave her
with her handlers. He stopped at their massive bed and looked at her evening
gown—"Valentino," she had already advised him. It was bright red
with a plunging neckline that might or might not adequately cover her
fantastic new breasts. It was short, almost sheer, probably weighed less than
two ounces, and probably cost at least $25,000. It was a size 2, which meant
it would sufficiently drape and hang on her emaciated body so the other
anorexics at the party would drool in mock admiration at how "fit"
she looked. Frankly, Carl was growing weary of her obsessive routines: an
hour a day with a trainer ($300 per), an hour of one-on-one yoga ($300 per),
an hour a day with a nutritionist ($200 per), all in an effort to burn off
every last fat cell in her body and keep her weight between ninety and
ninety-five pounds. She was always ready for sex—that was part of the
deal—but now he sometimes worried about getting poked with a hip bone or
simply crushing her in the pile. She was only thirty-one, but he had noticed
a wrinkle or two just above her nose. Surgery could fix the problems, but
wasn't she paying a price for all this aggressive starvation? He had more important things to
worry about. A young, gorgeous wife was just one part of his magnificent
persona, and Brianna Trudeau could still stop traffic. They had a child, one that Carl
could easily have forgone. He already had six, plenty, he reasoned. Three
were older than Brianna. But she insisted, and for obvious reasons. A child
was security, and since she was married to a man who loved ladies and adored
the institution of marriage, the child meant family
and ties and roots and, left unsaid, legal complications in the event things
unraveled. A child was the protection every trophy wife needed. Brianna
delivered a girl and selected the hideous name of Sadler MacGregor Trudeau,
MacGregor being Brianna's maiden name and Sadler being pulled from the air.
She at first claimed Sadler had been a roguish Scottish relative of some
variety, but abandoned that little fiction when Carl stumbled across a book
of baby names. He really didn't care. The child was his by DNA only. He had
already tried the father bit with prior families and had failed miserably. Sadler
was now five and had virtually been abandoned by both parents. Brianna, once
so heroic in her efforts to become a mother, had quickly lost interest in
things maternal and had delegated her duties to a series of nannies. The
current one was a thick young woman from Russia whose papers were as dubious
as Toliver's. Carl could not, at that moment, remember her name. Brianna
hired her and was thrilled because she spoke Russian and could perhaps pass
on the language to Sadler. "What
language did you expect her to speak?" Carl had asked. But
Brianna had no response. He
stepped into the playroom, swooped up the child as if he couldn't wait to see
her, exchanged hugs and kisses, asked how her day had been, and within
minutes managed a graceful escape to his office, where he grabbed a phone and
began yelling at Bobby Ratzlaff. After
a few fruitless calls, he showered, dried his perfectly dyed hair, half-gray,
and got himself into his newest Armani tux. The waistband was a bit snug,
probably a 34, up an inch from the early days when Brianna stalked him
around the penthouse. As he dressed himself, he cursed the evening ahead and
the party and the people he would see there. They would know At that very
moment, the news was racing around the financial world. Phones were buzzing
as his rivals roared with laughter and gloated over Krane's misfortune. The Internet
was bursting with the latest from Mississippi. For
any other party, he, the great Carl Trudeau, would simply call in sick. Every
day of his life he did whatever he damned well pleased, and if he decided to rudely skip a
party at the last minute, what the hell? But this was not just any event. Brianna had wormed her way onto
the board of the Museum of Abstract Art, and tonight was their biggest
blowout. There would be designer gowns, tummy tucks and stout new breasts,
new chins and perfect tans, diamonds, champagne, foie gras, caviar, dinner by
a celebrity chef, a silent auction for the pinch hitters and a live auction
for the sluggers. And, most important, there would be cameras on top of
cameras, enough to convince the elite guests that they and only they were the
center of the world. Oscar night, eat your heart out. The highlight of the evening,
at least for some, would be the auctioning of a work of art. Each year the
committee commissioned an "emerging" painter or sculptor to create
something just for the event, and usually forked over a million bucks or so
for the result. Last year's painting had been a bewildering rendering of a
human brain after a gunshot, and it went for six mill. This year's item was a
depressing pile of black clay with bronze rods rising into the vague outline
of a young girl. It bore the mystifying title Abused
Imelda and
would have sat neglected in a gallery in Duluth if not for the sculptor, a
tortured Argentine genius rumored to be on the verge of suicide, a sad fate
that would instantly double the value of his creations, something that was
not lost on savvy New York art investors. Brianna had left brochures around
the penthouse and had dropped several hints to the effect that Abused
Imelda would
be stunning in their foyer, just off the elevator entrance. Carl knew he was expected to
buy the damned thing and was hoping there would not be a frenzy. And if he
became its owner, he was already hoping for a quick suicide. She and Valentino appeared from
the dressing room. The hair boys were gone, and she had managed to get into
the gown and the jewelry all by herself. "Fabulous," Carl said, and
it was indeed true. In spite of the bones and ribs, she was still a beautiful
woman. The hair very much resembled what he had seen at six that morning
when he kissed her goodbye as she sipped her coffee. Now, a thousand dollars
later, he could tell little difference. Oh, well. He knew very well the
price of trophies. The prenuptial gave her $100,000 a month to play with
while married and twenty million when they split. She also got Sadler with
liberal visitation for the father, if he so chose. In the Bentley, they hurried
from beneath the apartment building and were onto Fifth Avenue when Brianna
said, "Oh, my, I forgot to kiss Sadler. What kind of mother am I?" "She's fine," Carl
said, who likewise had failed to say good night to the child. "I feel awful,"
Brianna said, feigning disgust. Her full-length black Prada coat was split so
that the backseat was dominated by her amazing legs. Legs from the floor up
to her armpits. Legs unadorned by hosiery or clothing or anything whatsoever.
Legs for Carl to see and admire and touch and fondle and she really didn't
care if Toliver had a good look, either. She was on display, as always. Carl rubbed them because they
felt nice, but he wanted to say something like "These things are
beginning to resemble broomsticks." He let it pass. `Any word from the trial?"
she finally asked. "The jury nailed us,"
he said. "I'm so sorry" "We're fine." "How much?" "Forty-one million." "Those ignorant
people." Carl told her little about the
complicated and mysterious world of the Trudeau Group. She had her charities
and causes and lunches and trainers, and that kept her busy. He didn't want
and didn't tolerate too many questions. Brianna had checked online and
knew exactly what the jury decided. She knew what the lawyers were saying
about the appeal, and she knew Krane's stock would take a major hit early the
next morning. She did her research and kept her secret notes. She was
gorgeous and thin, but she was not stupid. Carl was on the phone. I
anticipated that I wouldn’t care much for The
Appeal, because I had found many of his prior works to be tedious or
poorly written. The
Appeal more than exceeded my low expectations. I finished the book a
little sad that it was over, and I found myself weeks later still thinking
about whether or not it takes direct experience, close to home, to achieve
real understanding and insight. Read The
Appeal and find out what I mean. Steve
Hopkins, March 21, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the April 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The Appeal.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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