Mr. John should definitely return to writing about dealings with shyster lawyers, big money, crooked cops, righteous do-gooders, bad folks and such. I have read all his books and found them fascinating, interesting, engrossing and makes me hate to put the book down. And they made even better movies.  
 
A Painted House would be a good movie to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon, when you're snowed in and need some-thing to make you feel warm. Unfortunately, the book does not do much more. Mr. Grisham does capture the essence of a hot, sweltering life picking cotton, and the slow easy living in the 50's in a small southern town. It's no Little House on the Prairie!  
 
Luke, the narrator, gives me the feeling he is 7 going on 22. Of course, that's probably because the diction of these hard working, poorly educated sodbusters is not written so as to be really "twangy". Luke introduces "Pappy, my grandfather, ..." Instead of something like "Pappy, my grandpaw.." and goes on to muse over the fact that the pay for the hired hands "played heavily on his mind as we rode to town." A child of 7 would think in those terms?  
 
There's Pappy and Gran, my mother, and my father. Not the more familiar, "Momma", when the subject of the moment, and the father is seldom mentioned in depth. Everything is sort of "touched upon". There's no feeling of being real about these people. Except, of course, for the female interest that show's up in the person of Tally, a seventeen year old beauty (a member of the Hill people's group). Now how much can develop between a 7 year old boy and 17 year old girl. Fortunately, not much.  
 
I have struggled to page 187 (out of 292) and may save this book for next winter. Or next summer at the lake when there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do. Yesterday, I went to the library (getting smart in my old age!!) and signed out "Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire". I think I'd better check it out before buying it. Now that's another story!! Pardon the pun.  
 
To think I paid for three books thru the book club and all three have been less that entertaining. In fact, I read them just because I had them on the headboard of the bed.  
 
Those reviews are next!!!  
