The Associate
by John Grisham
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Book Reviews of The Associate
Book Review: Guess what, I loved "The Associate"!
Summary: 5 Stars
Kyle McAvoy is about to finish Yale Law School when an incident from his student days is catching up with him as the mysterious "Bennie" enters is life. Kyle's original plans to spend a couple of years offering his services to the poor fall through when he is blackmailed into joining New York's largest law firm as a spy, passing on information from the firm's biggest trial to date.
The book has initially been compared to "The Firm" and lots of reviewers have already given their judgement. Barely a couple of fives so far. Grisham has lost it. Grisham has become lazy. There is no plot. No real ending. In short, bad, bad, bad. Save your money. Lots of warnings, and so on.
I found the first 100 pages a bit slow - and partly due to the reviews I should perhaps not have read beforehand - my expectations were not the highest.
However, Kyle starts his mission at the firm and as I am introduced to the everyday life of a Big Firm Associate, things improve quickly. Of course, knowing very little to nothing about big New York law firms, I'm an easy buy tending to believe what I'm told. Grisham's dry sense of humour works its usual magic, and at times I find myself laughing out loud.
The characterization is brilliant. Are the players exaggerated? Cardboard cutouts have been mentioned, but honestly, isn't life full of them? Not only in New York, where I have in fact spent a few years, but also small town life in Norway daily parades a wonderful variety of extraordinary people painting the otherwise dull surroundings bright. (I may in fact be considered one of them, a 65 year old who has just bought a new pair of bright red patent leather stilettos with a 2 inch plateau.)
The point is, I enjoyed the book very much. I understood Kyle's decision, that he panicked. I understood his being terrified of "The Video". A lack of judgement, at least in hindsight. But it's always easy to solve problems afterwards, and especially other people's. In addition, Kyle is young. He has a brilliant education, is intelligent, good looking, popular. He has a resourceful father with whom he enjoys a strong relationship. Help should be at hand. But Kyle is still young, inexperienced and scared to death.
The lack of a plot. As I see it, the plot is not solely to find out who "Bennie" is, but by whom he is at all times kept up to date with the background facts he needs in order to put pressure on Kyle. In other words, is there a second spy inside the firm, and a much more important one than a first year associate? I feel that question, if indirectly, is being answered.
The ending is critizised for being non-existent. A sequel hinted at.
My curiosity was satisfied. John Grisham once again managed to keep me awake until the wee hours. Not many authors manage to do that.
Perhaps I am naïve. Perhaps my lack of detailed legal knowledge makes me a thankful audience. I don't care. Grisham always gives me a good time with his books. This was not my favourite, those are "A Time to Kill", "The Client" and "The Testament".
But I still could not turn the pages fast enough. And I still wanted more.
Book Review: Lackluster ending keeps this book from being great
Summary: 4 Stars
In John Grisham's latest thriller, The Associate, Kyle McEvoy has everthing going for him. About to graduate from Yale Law School, he has job offers from the biggest firms in the country. Kyle, however, plans to spend a few years offering legal aid to migrant workers. His plans are interrupted when some shadowy agents show up with a video from his past that could destroy him. Kyle is forced to go along with these men, led by Bennie Wells, and accept a job at a high paying firm where he will be a high paid associate making big bucks, working 100 hour weeks, and stealing corporate secrets.
Kyle sees no way out of his immediate predicament. He first contacts his frat buddies that shared his hdden secret. Joey Bernado is now an engaged stock broker. Joey reluctantly agrees to help. Baxter Tate movied to Hollywood to be a star but instead found addiction to cocaine and alcohol. During Baxter's second stint in rehab, he finds God and cleans up his life. The novel picks up pace when Kyle begins his job at Scully & Pershing. Kyle is one of 100 new associates, and he's immediately thrown into the pressurized world of long work weeks the need to bill as many hours as possible. Kyle makes a few friends, including Dale, the pretty ex-mathemetician. Kyle continues to lay the groundwork for a plan, he just has no idea what the plan will be. He gets photos of Bennie and the thugs sent to chase him. He develops ways to lose tails and finds secret exits to leave his office without being detected.
This book is marketed as being a thriller similar to Grisham's first big hit, The Firm. It is similar, and there's nothing wrong with that. Most big authors like Coben, Patterson, Sandford and Connelly follow a pattern that has made them successful. In The Associate, Kyle never actually has to steal the documents that Bennie wanted. The suspense comes from Kyle coping with the pressure of having to lie to his friends and family and to live everyday with the knowledge of what his is going to have to do.
I liked Grisham's The Associate. While he writes a new novel every year, he has varied the type of story he tells enough so that The Associate feels fresh. Also, he doesn't tackle an issue this time. There isn't an evil corporation, politician, or insurance company lurking over our idealistic hero. Well, he does portray the evils of high dollar corporate law firms, but I imagine most people agree that law firms that charge $800 an hour and the corporations that pay them are already not operating in the best interests of most people.
I thought the ending was quite believable, but not as good as it could have been. I'm certainly not going to give anything away. I thought the ending was very realistic considering the type of person Kyle was and the type of bad guy that Bennie was. Grisham has never had incredible endings in his books, and this is no exception. The unsatisfying ending could be why this book is getting so many bad reviews. This book would make a great movie, and when the movie is made, I imagine Hollywood will probably create a new, user-friendly ending.
Book Review: "Trust is the most important thing a lawyer has."
Summary: 3 Stars
Twenty-five year old Kyle McAvoy has a brilliant career ahead of him. He is the editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal and has been invited to join the ranks of several high-powered firms. His inclination, however, is to spend a few years in public interest law, helping migrant workers in Virginia. Kyle's plans are suddenly derailed when he is approached with an offer that he dare not refuse. It seems that Kyle has a secret that he would rather keep hidden. Certain individuals would be happy to broadcast his youthful indiscretion all over the media unless he is willing to go along with a plan that is both illegal and unethical.
John Grisham explores familiar territory here: the abuse of young lawyers by their arrogant superiors ("they pamper the clerks, then kill them when they become associates"); corporate skullduggery; and, taking center stage, a young attorney's crisis of conscience. Should Kyle cooperate with a "ruthless little cutthroat who worked for some group with unlimited resources and great determination" in order to protect his reputation and career? Playing along will enable him to remain "the golden boy, the handsome young man with an unlimited future and an unblemished past." Before he makes a decision that could destroy him, Kyle confers with his old Duquesne University buddy, Joey Bernardo, who also has a great deal to lose if Kyle stands up to his blackmailer. Another former acquaintance, Baxter Tate, is in no condition to care about tomorrow, since "he's a hard partier, lots of booze and drugs and girls." He's been in and out of rehab, with no noticeable improvement in his attitude.
"The Associate" resonates in today's "anything goes" climate of selfishness, where looking out for number one is the norm rather than the exception. If Kyle agrees to the scheme that is being shoved down his throat, he will make a great deal of money and live the good life. If he balks, he will risk everything that he has worked so hard to achieve. One reason that Kyle hesitates is that he respects his dad, John, at whose feet he learned the beauty of practicing law for the right reasons.
Grisham, as usual, writes clearly and crisply and, to the author's credit, he avoids profanity, scenes of explicit sex and violence, and silly chase scenes. The subplot dealing with Baxter Tate's struggle with sobriety is both comic and tragic; ironically, Tate, who is a wealthy wastrel, will ultimately help Kyle decide what he must do. Unfortunately, "The Associate" is a fairly conventional thriller with few surprises and too much heavy-handed dialogue. An obnoxious partner who represents extremely wealthy clients intones, "Look at where we are, Kyle. Wall Street. The absolute pinnacle of success in America." He goes on to say, "We are entitled, Kyle, and don't forget it." How's that for irony at a time when Wall Street is in free-fall? Although it does not rank with Grisham's best work, "The Associate" raises timely questions about the importance of sticking to one's principles--a rare enough stance in these troubled times.
Book Review: "The Firm Lite"
Summary: 2 Stars
There are several stories being told in The Associate, but they don't seem interwoven properly. A bunch of current "headlines" thrown together. The first is of a supposed frathouse rape video. This is interesting since our protagonist Kyle McAvoy, the smart but selfless law student, is scared to death of it. When he sees it, he really shouldn't be. He's not really part of the action. This leads to Kyle taking a job as a highly paid associate at the backbreaking firm from hell, thanks to "Bennie", his tormentor/blackmailer. He is forcing Kyle to steal firm secrets for reasons that are explained in only vague detail.
Then we have Baxter and Joey, Kyle's former roommates/frat brothers who are actually implicated in the video. Baxter has an entire rich boy rehab storyline that was written freshly, but felt like it belonged in another novel. Joey, who is someone Kyle comes to trust and depend on in his predicament, is not really given a backstory except that he used to be a player/tough kid. We're never given a reason why Kyle would want to cover for these guys over confiding in his lawyer father that he's supposedly so close to. The victim, Elaine, is just a plot device who was a slut back in college and is currently a lesbian.
Which brings us to "Bennie", our villain. Many say a book or movie is as good as its villain. Kyle tries to figure out who Bennie really is for a good part of the book, but we never learn this or what his true motivations are. All we get is Kyle's frustration and annoyance with his meetings and constant shadowing. Maybe that was the point, to leave him a mystery. But to dump the character well before the book ends? Also, we never find out which partner sold out or even who's phone captured the video. It's all an enigma. It's also lazy.
I enjoyed the introductory chapters where Grisham does manage to hook us in, as well as the parts about the firm itself. Grisham's colorful and open contempt for money grubbing lawyers is always at the center of nearly every novel he writes. It continues to entertain and enlighten, especially in the times we're living in! There is also a romance, but one wished Kyle confided in Dale early on so she could help outsmart the bad guys. Same goes for John, Kyle's father, who finds things out much too late. The fathers of Grisham's protagonists are always interesting.
The ending is insulting because there really isn't any. Compared to this, The Firm's "ending" was like a separate book. Are we sure Grisham's son didn't write The Associate? Because then I'd say a job well done. The irony is that this book is so thin on details that it might actually make a better movie.
Grisham should also move into this century and include characters from other cultures and backgrounds in his law firms, especially since he took this story to New York. Not just to reflect our current society, but also to mix things up in his storytelling.
Book Review: Grisham bilking his readers for $400 per hour.
Summary: 1 Stars
This book is a massive disappointment. Let me say from the outset that the best part of this book was borrowing it from our public library, so I didn't have to lose 25 bucks along with the five hours reading time I wasted.
Don't get me wrong. The book has much potential in dealing with timely issues like corporate espionage, wall street corruption and cynicism, and the like. But it seems the author wrote without any enthusiasm at all. Almost like he was going through the motions the way he describes his law firm characters. Just watching the clock and billing away.
The plot is very amateurishly done. The characters have no character at all, just shallow one dimensional people who are almost impossible to empathize with. The ending leaves the reader hanging in totally unnecessary ambiguity (unless it is a set up to a possible sequel).
On top of all this, I noted two very disturbing sub-themes:
1. One of the characters, whose life is almost ruined by drugs, sees a dramatic turn around through Christian counselling. When this character seeks to make amends for a past mistake, his friends discourage him, telling him that it will cause negative fall out for them. The first friend persists nevertheless and meets a sorry end. Grisham almost seems to snicker in the background at this person's religious gullibility and naivette. And considering the cynicism with which he portrays the world of big city corporate law, Grisham leaves his readers with an extremely bleak and hopeless world view.
2. The other disturbing thing is a very subtle kind of anti-Semitism. Early in the book the main character speculates about the identity of one of his blackmailers. He wonders if he might be Israeli. All such speculation is dropped until the very end of the book, when he seems to conclude that the blackmailer might be from among those "to whom we pay our taxes" [sic]. The implication is that a shadow Jewish or Israeli group runs the US government, exactly as many conspiracy theorists state on the internet. I don't know if Grisham meant to imply this, or if it was sloppinness on the part of his editor, but the disturbing implication kind of hangs in the air. (Grisham also seems to flirt with the popular and widespread claim about 9-11 being an inside job, but again he won't venture too far into the realm of reality, prefering to titillate with meaningless fluff fiction.)
I think Grisham is very multi-talented and quickly gets bored with any single kind of occupation or profession. He now seems to be as turned off to writing as he says he was to law early on in his career.
He ought to do himself and his readers a big favor and find a new line of activity, so we won't have to waste our time and money on hollow reading material like this and he won't have to have a guilty conscience for ripping off his reading fans.