John Grisham's Rainmaker

Since I came from Roşia Montană I didn’t really do many things besides sleeping, spending time on the Internet and reading. I didn’t get to read much over there – I was way too busy carrying things around. So when I came home I devoured John Grisham’s Rainmaker. I finished it a few days ago, but I didn’t much feel like writing a review of the book before now.

The book was pretty good, no doubt about it. I do not feel much spiritually enriched after reading it I’ve got to admit – meaning I haven’t learned anything from it, save for a few things about the American law, but still I enjoyed it quite a lot.

The subject of the book isn’t that original though. It’s about a boy named Rudy Baylor (also the narrator), a student at law school, who wants to sue this big insurance company named Great Benefit (the classic David versus Goliath). The problem is he hasn’t yet passed his bar exam and he’s flat broke. And unemployed. He also falls in love with a young girl who’s married to an abusive ex-high-school baseball star. So basically poor Rudy has a lot of problems up his mind, and he’s not the superhuman Mitch McDeere (from Grisham’s first novel The Firm). Actually I really the fact that John Grisham did a novel about a guy who is totally different from his precursor Mitch McDeere – the guy who was handsome, hard-working, sporty and completely lacking any flaws. Rudy is just a normal guy, one of the least glamorous members of today’s (actually the 90’s) society. And his battle is quite inspirational; since none of us is Mitch McDeere it’s much easier to identify with Rudy, the young loser.

One of the flaws of the book is that it gives a lot of unimportant details about Rudy Baylor’s life. Not that they’re boring to read or something, but some of the books incidents could have been easily left out – like anything that concerned a character named Miss Birdie, a character that I found superfluous for Rudy’s Baylor evolution as a character.

I really liked the end of The Rainmaker, due to its moderate realism, yet that is as much as I’m gonna tell you about it – I’ll let you read the book and have the pleasure of reading it yourselves – it’s really worth it.

I’ve also seen on the net that there is a film made after the book. Unfortunately I haven’t seen it, you I’ll make sure I’ll see it one day. Especially since it’s directed by Francis Ford Copolla, a film-director I really like a lot. I just need to find it at a local video store.