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| A Painted House | 
 enlarge | Author: John Grisham
Publisher: Delta
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
Buy New: $0.01
You Save: $12.99 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (1072 reviews)
Sales Rank: 17834
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0385337930
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385337939
ASIN: 0385337930
Publication Date: February 3, 2004
Release Date: February 3, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Until that September of 1952, Luke Chandler had never kept a secret or told a single lie. But in the long, hot summer of his seventh year, two groups of migrant workers ? and two very dangerous men ? came through the Arkansas Delta to work the Chandler cotton farm. And suddenly mysteries are flooding Luke?s world.
A brutal murder leaves the town seething in gossip and suspicion. A beautiful young woman ignites forbidden passions. A fatherless baby is born ... and someone has begun furtively painting the bare clapboards of the Chandler farmhouse, slowly, painstakingly, bathing the run-down structure in gleaming white. And as young Luke watches the world around him, he unravels secrets that could shatter lives ? and change his family and his town forever....
From the Paperback edition.
Amazon.com Review
Ever since he published The Firm in 1991, John Grisham has remained the undisputed champ of the legal thriller. With A Painted House, however, he strikes out in a new direction. As the author is quick to note, this novel includes "not a single lawyer, dead or alive," and readers will search in vain for the kind of lowlife machinations that have been his stock-in-trade. Instead, Grisham has delivered a quieter, more contemplative story, set in rural Arkansas in 1952. It's harvest time on the Chandler farm, and the family has hired a crew of migrant Mexicans and "hill people" to pick 80 acres of cotton. A certain camaraderie pervades this bucolic dream team. But it's backbreaking work, particularly for the 7-year-old narrator, Luke: "I would pick cotton, tearing the fluffy bolls from the stalks at a steady pace, stuffing them into the heavy sack, afraid to look down the row and be reminded of how endless it was, afraid to slow down because someone would notice." What's more, tensions begin to simmer between the Mexicans and the hill people, one of whom has a penchant for bare-knuckles brawling. This leads to a brutal murder, which young Luke has the bad luck to witness. At this point--with secrets, lies, and at least one knife fight in the offing--the plot begins to take on that familiar, Grisham-style momentum. Still, such matters ultimately take a back seat in A Painted House to the author's evocation of time and place. This is, after all, the scene of his boyhood, and Grisham waxes nostalgic without ever succumbing to deep-fried sentimentality. Meanwhile, his account of Luke's Baptist upbringing occasions some sly (and telling) humor: I'd been taught in Sunday school from the day I could walk that lying would send you straight to hell. No detours. No second chances. Straight into the fiery pit, where Satan was waiting with the likes of Hitler and Judas Iscariot and General Grant. Thou shalt not bear false witness, which, of course, didn't sound exactly like a strict prohibition against lying, but that was the way the Baptists interpreted it. Whether Grisham will continue along these lines, or revert to the judicial shark tank for his next book, is anybody's guess. But A Painted House suggests that he's perfectly capable of telling an involving story with nary a subpoena in sight. --James Marcus
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1067 more reviews...
 Excellent book that stays with you November 25, 2008
Extremely pleasant and relaxed reading, no tension, no suspense even if suspenseful things do happen - the story and the characters stayed with me. They stayed with me so much that I dreamed more story!
Is this a book of fiction? Eli Chandler, Pappy, was a real person who was known to baseball.
One thing for sure, the way he wrote the story gave me a real appreciation for what cotton farming was like - an utterly dreadful job!
I'd like to know what happened after the book ends.
"A PAINTED HOUSE" BY JOHN GRISHAM October 27, 2008
A GREAT BOOK!! DIFFERENT FROM OTHER J. GRISHAM BOOKS THAT I HAVE READ,
BUT I LOVED IT. 5 STAR REVIEW!!
Loved it October 8, 2008
This is one of my most favorite books of all time. I havent read it in years and am thinking of reading it again. Such a wonderful story.
Grisham shines in non-lawyer tome September 30, 2008
John Grisham has learned how to end a book - although it's not always a happy ending or the one we'd like. "A Painted House" is a wonderful slice-of-life, coming of age (even at 7 years old) story. Great descriptive writing, wonderful imagery. A good read from start to finish.
 A nice change of pace from the courtroom stuff but... August 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I enjoyed the change of pace from Grisham's normal books, but like a lot of other reviewers, I didn't think it was believable that Luke was a 7-year-old, and that it ended sort of abruptly with seemingly no resolution of anything. The story seemed to be building up to a climax that never happened. While I did enjoy reading about life in rural Arkansas in the '50s, I just felt so let down at the end. I also thought that Tally, the teenage daughter of the Spruills, got a little too much enjoyment out of little Luke watching her bathe. Comments such as "You liked that didn't you?" and "Maybe I'll let you watch me again." seemed a bit disturbing for a 17-year-old girl to be saying to a 7-year-old boy.
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