The Associate by John Grisham

BOOKS OF THE TIMES

Another Young Lawyer Is Served Up for Breakfast

By JANET MASLIN

Published: January 25, 2009

John Grisham kick-starts his latest morality fable just as he has kick-started so many others: by introducing the warring forces of good and evil. On the side of the angels: Kyle McAvoy, idealistic editor in chief of The Yale Law Journal. As “The Associate” begins, Kyle is coaching a basketball team for underprivileged kids in New Haven as he waits to graduate and pursue his career of choice. He has accepted a $32,000-a-year legal aid job so he can help migrant workers in Virginia.

But there is a sinister stranger with a “slick head” and “calm hairy hands” in Kyle’s future. He shows up to broach a different career plan. This vaguely foreign-sounding man, calling himself Bennie Wright and aided by a team of fake F.B.I. agents, announces that he would like Kyle to become a $200,000-a-year associate for a high-powered New York law firm. Translated from the Grisham-ese, what that means is that Bennie — acting on the same kinds of murky but all-powerful motives that used to fuel Hitchcock plots as he sets up a corporate espionage scheme with Kyle as its patsy — would like Kyle to sell his soul to the devil.

Kyle is a brash, attractive good guy. (Think back to “The Firm.” Mr. Grisham has.) Why would he agree to an about-face like that? Because he has to. Quicker than you can say, “Duke lacrosse team,” Bennie brings up an ugly college episode that involved Kyle, his Duquesne University fraternity brothers and a woman named Elaine who now claims to have been raped by four of them at a party. Bennie has a cell-phone video record of the incident that is remarkably clear, even though all participants were too drunk to remember whether the sex was consensual.

Thus propelled, Kyle goes off to a place where he will suffer mightily so that Mr. Grisham can have a field day. Kyle enters the greedy, brutalizing world of Scully & Pershing, said to be the world’s largest law firm. This place chews up and spits out smart young rookies from America’s top law schools, and Mr. Grisham gives himself yet another chance to deplore that process.

With the help of a well-used cookie cutter he delivers one more hard-charging book about the hellish demands of corporate law. “I want to be a partner so I can sleep until 5:00 A.M. every day until I die at 50,” Kyle says bitterly, once he sizes up his new Scully & Pershing career.

Must a lawyer’s life be this way? Do you even have to ask? Kyle’s father has a small-town practice in Pennsylvania. “He worked very hard and treated everyone fairly,” the book says of him. “Clients were free to call him at home, and he would meet them on Sunday afternoons if necessary.” As for income, “fees were sometimes delivered in the form of firewood, eggs and poultry, steaks and free labor around the house.”

Soapbox fiction can be stupefying. But Mr. Grisham owes a very long winning streak to his stealth gift for making preachiness thrilling. Most recently, in “The Appeal,” he examined the corrupt process of rigging an election and concocted one of his best stories in recent memory. This time, returning to safer and more familiar territory, he dissects an amoral corporate culture, decries blind ambition and manages to use alcoholism, often the laziest aspect of crime stories, as an element of dramatic suspense. Though Kyle has been sober since college, he now finds himself stuck in an expense-account world where the second bottle of wine at a two-person lunch is supposed to be a perk, not a problem.

Mr. Grisham so often writes similar books that the same things must be said of them. “The Associate” is true to form: it grabs the reader quickly, becomes impossible to put down, stays that way through most of its story, and then escalates into plotting so crazily far-fetched that it defies resolution. Kyle McAvoy is another of the two-dimensional yet terrifically likeable heroes who come to life on Mr. Grisham’s pages only to evaporate later.

It’s easy to predict what choice Kyle will make at the end of the novel. It’s impossible to imagine, let alone care, what his life will be like once the improbably wild furor surrounding this one lone law-firm recruit is over.

Every now and then Mr. Grisham comes up with a lemon. “The Broker,” the touristy international thriller that existed primarily an excuse for its author to research the picturesque cafes of Italy, was one of those. “The Associate” is much better, even if it’s something of a retread.

Filled with individual episodes that are more memorable than its overall plot, it describes astonishing wastes of Kyle’s $400-an-hour time, for example when he bills $800 for driving a law partner’s car (actually his wife’s car) around blocks in Lower Manhattan because he can’t find a parking space near the Federal Courthouse. It also powerfully captures the cynicism with which Scully & Pershing’s new associates are whipsawed into utter servility while being persuaded that they are poised to become part of New York’s power elite.

Mr. Grisham fuses Kyle’s college and job experiences with something more skillful than simple cross-cutting. He brings back the old buddies who were part of an embarrassing past and allows them to nerve-rackingly jeopardize Kyle’s future. And although Mr. Grisham surrounds good-guy Kyle with spies, thugs and other calm hairy-handed menaces, “The Associate” never forgets who is this new lawyer’s worst enemy. It’s his old self.

I agree with Maslin's opinions of book in that it was addictive to read and we incorporated the consumption of alcohol very well into the book. After getting drunk often in college, Kyle decided to quit drinking altogether to avoid anymore drunk incidents. But when Kyle takes on the job as law associate for Scully & Pershing he needs that cup of wine to relax after an eighteen hour workday. However, one of Kyle's college buddies, Joe Baxtar, has abused the drug: Grisham uses a few chapters to show his struggles at rehab centers on account of his uncle forcing him to enter. Illustrating Baxtar's struggles allows the reader to see that Kyle is not the only one accused of rape that is struggling to fit in with society. Kyle also has a very deep connection with his father which emerged during his childhood years because he helped with his father's firm every day. Kyle did not tell his father about the rape charge when it first came up. Since Kyle didn't tell his father, he must have not thought much about the accusation and felt it could be avoided. Kyle's relationship with John McAvoy mends at last with the partnership of McAvoy & McAvoy law opperating in the town of York, Pennsylvania where Kyle grew up with his father.

The Accidental Mother by Rowan Coleman

Family and friends are more important than money, occupations, and love interests. This statement that should be obvious to all that are close to family and friends, is explored in Coleman's novel. Sophie, a middle aged woman living in London, is forced to take a break from her well paying, life shadowing job when her childhood best friend dies and her kids are without a legal guardian. Sophie thinks that taking care of two little girls is going to wreck her life, and is therefore determined to find Bella and Izzy's father who abandoned the family right before Izzy was born. The kids wreck her couch, prevent her from working on many parties, and put a sharp knife into a relationship with a client. When the girls' father, Louis, is found by a private detective found by Sophie, she has become attahced to the girls like they are her own. Sophie does not want to leave them. When the kids have gotten used to their father, Sohpie leaves, and after working for three months and receiving a promotion nothing feels right for her. Sophie realizes that the kids, and their father who loves Sophie, are who she really wants to spend their time with. I loved this book because the reader observes Bella and Izzy mature. Izzy refuses to take off her fairy dress, while Bella acts like an ignornat snob when forced to go to the zoo with Louis at the beginning of the book. However, by the end the family is close-knit and with Sophie and Louis's help the girls grow up and realize both guardians are there for them whenever, forever, whatever.

THe Accidental Mother almost 1/3 of it

The Accidental Mother

Rowan Coleman

Quarter 2

In this book the main character, Sophie, works at a major party planning corporation in London, and has dedicated her whole life to her job--almost too much of it. Suddenly she finds out that her childhood best friend has died and she has to take care of her children, a decision she made half drunk almost 10 years earlier. I would love to tell Sophie that even though her life is changing by the second, with everything mistake the kids make or decisions she makes, to take it easy. Sophie knows that her job is in jeopardy before the children's father is found and she can work, every day, for the whole day, again. Sophie should realize that children of a close friend are more important than getting a promotion or making a lot of money. Sophie must realize that taking care of kids is not that easy, so having a man, Jake Flyn, who likes her, aid her with the kids might not be a bad thing. If Carrie's husband is not found, a huge liability is placed on Sophie and she should not make a bad impression on the kids.

The Year of the Flood Whole Book

The Year of the Flood

Margaret Atwood

Last Entry for the book

Quarter 1

The book was a great way of explaining how the human race and how science can make humans sympathetic, and animal-like. The gardeners learn how to survive on an earth filled with stealers, and greedy people. When a waterless flood sweeps over the human race, some Gardeners manage to survive along with Crake’s “splice people.” These humans that act like animals by surviving in while talking to each other and sharing their feelings, are evaluated and explained in the book’s prequel. Religion is weaved into the book as well, because the Gardener’s name their important leaders after Adam and Eve in the bible. Also every day, for them, is dedicated to saint and a poem from a hymnbook is read about that specific day and the workings behind it. I happened to love the book because it portrayed the world in a way normal people do not think of it. At the beginning it started with two Gardeners alone, thinking they were last living humans after the waterless flood. The chapters alternate between the two women narrating. The women then take the reader back explaining important events in their lives. Finally the stories meet when the flashbacks end and they meet each other after the waterless flood.

The Year of the Flood (300 pages)

The Year of the Flood

Margret Atwood

Quarter 1, Book 3

The Year of the Flood is science fiction. The characters are part of a cult formed in protest of the evils going on around them. Ren moved back to the HealthWyzer complex with her mom, where she was born. Ren is confined to HealthWyzer limitations where she eats, sleeps and goes to school. Another clue that the book is sci-fi is that the survivors of the waterless flood observe liobams and other animals engineered to be a combination of two animals. There are also gangs on the streets that are called pleebrats. These people live in the “pleebs” or slums with no housing or sanitation. Amanda, the girl Ren’s family takes in from the streets, tries to impress Ren with her jellyfish bracelet in which real jellyfish live and must be fed. Another main character, Toby, then works in an AnooYoo salon that gives women various treatments to make them look younger and feel healthier. She is forced to move from the Gardeners’ rooftop to an underground cell and have surgery to change her identity because she is in danger of getting caught by the security force of the day, or CorpsSeCorps. the technologies she encunters prove the book takes place in the future.

The Year of the Flood (first 3rd)

The Year of the Flood

Margaret Atwood

First 3^rd of the Book

In this science fiction sequel to Oryx and Crake, a “waterless flood” has taken life away from all humans except two women, Ren and Toby. Ren and Toby are part of a group, which alters the way they live their lives. The group that they have chosen to be a part of is called Gardeners, referring to the Garden of Eden in the bible. The women do not know that the other is alive, but the book focuses on what they are thinking about and their past, not their means of survival. In one chapter, Ren leaves the Gardeners’ area to walk around at the mall with her best friend. Ren meets a girl named Amanda who happens to have a bracelet with jellyfish in it, that Ren later finds out Amanda had stolen. Since Amanda has no home and lives on the street Ren decides to have Amanda live with her, her mother and stepfather. Ren’s best friend Bernice, does not like Amanda. When Ren chooses to take Amanda in, she is giving up a friendship she has cherished her whole life. Ren thinks of the situation positively because she now shares a room with Amanda and views her as more of a sister than a friend. Things start to crumble between Bernice and Ren when Amanda finds out that Bernice’s father is sleeping with another women in the Vinegar Closet. Bernice will not talk to Ren, who tries to make an effort to include her. Ren's decision definitely changed her childhood, but is it for the better?

Unwind

Unwind

Neal Shusterman

Quarter 1

Unwind tells of the story of what might happen to teenagers in the future when abortion no longer exists; instead the parents of unwanted teens fill out of a form to have their child undergo surgery in which the child's body parts are preserved and then distributed to people in need who have the money to pay for these body parts. Essentially the child dies, but their body parts live on in other people. Three unwinds safely make their way to a "graveyard" or place where unwinds make their own city with a captain in charge of them. However, when the captain nearly dies two of these unwinds must take him to the hospital and are therefore caught and sent to a harvest camp, the place where they will be unwound. However, there lives are saved when the third unwind and two of his friends blow up the building in which the procedures take place. The unwinds that blow up these buildings are called clappers because they have chemicals put into their blood stream so that when they clap there is an explosion. It's ironic that the children are going against the law and saving hundreds of lives because everyone at the harvest camp escapes. The book's message is that avoiding reality is possible and that even though people make bad decisions there are people to compensate for them and that everything happens for a reason. One of the unwinds, Conner, is asked to write a letter to his parents when in hiding in someone's house on the way to the graveyard. He writes that he loves his parents even though they choose to have him unwound. This letter reveals the message that maybe parents know what they are doing and that taking care of their children is really their major goal. Another point worth mentioning is that Conner is in the building when it is blown up and he needs a new arm to recover from his injuries. He thinks and knows that unwinding is unethical, but the arm he is given is that of his enemy, should he haven taken the arm if it was a life or death situation? I enjoyed this book very much because it was a science fiction thriller that was filled with action!

Jack and Jill

Jack and Jill

James Patterson

Final Post For This Book

Quarter 1

The ending of the book, like in any crime investigation book, is what the reader looks forward to while reading everything that comes before it. One important theme in the book is that a profession can become extremely overpowering, and even if you love what you do, family always comes first. As detective Cross tries to solve two different murder cases, he finds that he is more aggravated with the murderer killing small black children that go to his son's school, than the killer murdering celebrities. When Cross is finished solving both cases, and can spend time with his two kids and grandmother, who raised him and helped to raise his kids, is what he truly cherishes in life. I greatly enjoyed the book! All detective mysteries have me on the edge of my seat and keep me wondering if the murder(s) will be solved and by whom. I also love that James Patterson uses dramatic irony so the reader finds out who is committing the murders before the detectives and is able to follow the story from their perspective. Patterson wrote at least 10 books with Detective Cross and I have now read 3 with Cross and even more books by Patterson without him.

Jack and Jill

Jack and Jill

By James Patterson

Quarter 1

In this thriller where detective Alex Cross is hard at work, two murder cases must be solved by Cross and the D.C. police force. One killer is after little, African American kids who attend the Sojourner Truth School where Alex's son, Damon, attends classes. The other, who calls himself "Jack" teams up with a woman who he falls in love with, "Jill," and together they play a vicious game where they murder celebrities in the D.C. area and eventually plan to kill the president. Detective Cross, the main character, has to deal with both of these murderers and is having difficulty with both cases because they are leading to dead ends. Now he has a new problem on his plate that he blatantly reveals when talking to his shrink, "There's also a woman I met whom I could become interested in. She's married,' I said and smiled." (179). This is now a new problem Alex must face--he likes a woman that is married. This woman, Christine Johnson, is also the principal at the Sojourner Truth School and it is her first year there, so he has interviewed her and worked with her on the case. This minor character is becoming more involved in the book and starts to become a major distraction to Detective Cross. The same night after talking to his shrink, Alex drives to Christine's house because he is attracted to her and cannot help it, he then enters her house and they have a deep conversation before he realizes he should get home. The predominant question in my mind remains, will Christine continue to be a distraction to Alex or will she be a help in solving either murder case?

Darwin's Radio (Whole Book)

Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear

Summer Reading

The most important theme from this book is to think everything over before making a conclusion or decision. Kaye Lang, a molecular biologist, works on finding a cure to a sexually transmitted virus called SHEVA. This virus is transmitted from men to women and results in the woman having two pregnancies because the baby has a baby of its own. Kaye tries to figure out if SHEVA is going to wipe out the entire population. She worries because the average person hears about SHEVA and its problems on the news and then aborts their pregnancy. The first successful baby to come out of the womb with SHEVA was stillborn resulting in even more women to giving up their babies to the new, scary disease. Kaye is stubborn and she believes that SHEVA is not a change for the worse, so when she has a SHEVA pregnancy she keeps her baby. Kaye has to face a lot in this situation because no colleagues support her reasoning. This discovery of Kaye's intertwines with many other discoveries and stories throughout the entire 500 page book. Because Kaye never gives up she is the one who can appreciate the joy of giving birth to a SHEVA infected baby who can talk at the age of six months and is very advanced.

Sarah's Key (whole book)

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Summer Reading

The protagonist in Sarah's Key is really what allows the story to unfold, event after event. Julia, who grew up in Massachusetts and moved to Paris as a young woman, is assigned to write an article about the French police rounding up Jews to the Velodrome d'Hiver during World War II (she works at as a journalist for a not so popular newspaper in Paris). When she received the assignment, Julia was naive about the subject, and only knew that it took place during the Holocaust. Thankfully Julia is determined throughout the entire book and learns all about the Vel d'Hiv roundup. She finds the site where the building stood in Paris and questions people living on the block living where it stood, and researches about the topic through the night. As she researches about the topic the author gives the reader a peek at what one family, and in particular one girl, went through during the roundup and after it. Julia faces obstacles while researching such as divorcing her husband, and getting pregnant unexpectedly; however, she does manage to find out everything she needs to know about the event and more. Sarah is the girl whose life is uncovered as a flashback to the war. As Julia indulges herself into the topic she finds out more then she is meant to know about her husband's family and their connection to Sarah's.