The Associate
by John Grisham
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Book Reviews of The Associate
Book Review: What happened to The Firm, Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker?
Summary: 2 Stars
I had great hopes for this book, but was disappointed. Kyle McAvoy is finishing up his last year at Yale Law School. His dream was to put in a few years time doing public interest work in West Virginia before deciding his ultimate career plans. However, that dream gets cut short when his past comes back to haunt him. One fateful night in undergrad, him and his frat brothers seemingly took advantage of a girl, and part of it was caught on tape. Even though it was 5 years ago and McAvoy was not seen doing anything wrong, he understands that the video will be damaging to him and his friends. In order to keep the video under wraps, the owners of the tape have made McAvoy join a prestigious law firm in New York City to get access to documents to one of the litigation cases ever.
The plot itself, if not a bit boring, is mediocre. I can live with that. But I thought there were too many other problems with the novel. The one that irritated me the most? The ending. Or lack thereof. The story is OK, but then all of a sudden it ends, and there seems to be no resolution. What happens to the bad guys? Who are they? None of these questions are answered.
And therefore, because I did not like the ending, it brings to light the other problems with the novel. There was no character development, and although characters like Dale, Tabor, and Peckham were introduced, nothing came of them. Why bring them in in the first place? Why did Tate meet his fateful ending? Who was behind that?
This would have been a much better novel if the loose ends were tied up at the end. As is, I felt like there must have been a huge power outage or a shortage of paper since it seems like Grisham didn't finish the novel.
Book Review: Could have been so much better
Summary: 2 Stars
The Associate is a mildly interesting thriller which had the potential to be significantly better than it is, but which is let down by several fundamental flaws.
What is wrong with the book? Well for starters, the hero has no motivation for his behavior. The premise is that some mysterious guys blackmail Yale law student Kyle McAvoy into going to work for a prestigious law firm and passing on inside information to them. They do this based on his involvement with a group rape five years previously. The problem is that he wasn't actually involved and there is no evidence that he was. So rather than having something that he didn't do come out, he agrees to abandon his career plans and participate in illegal activities. It doesn't make any sense.
The next problem: There's no tension. The book does get more interesting in the middle section when Kyle enlists an ally and starts to devise a plan to turn the table on his blackmailers. However rather than building the tension (something that he did so well in The Firm), Grisham just lets it dissipate. For the majority of the book, Kyle doesn't do any spying and his handlers seem okay with that. Nor does he ever seem to be in serious danger of getting caught at work.
Finally, there's the ending. There's no pay-off for the reader. The book just peters out and many key plot points are left unresolved. A very unsatisfying note to end on.
It's frustrating because there was a decent book buried somewhere in this mess but unfortunately it never saw the light of day. A better novel that follows a similar premise is Paranoia by Joseph Finder.
Book Review: Very sad to have spent money on this one
Summary: 1 Stars
"The Associate" began so well and brought back fond memories of paging frantically through "The Firm" because I could. Not. Put. It. Down.
Instead, I read along and began to notice nervously that the book, which is not very long, was growing perilously close to the end with seemingly no possible way to tie up all the loose ends and provide a good, solid resolution of the plot.
It pains me to note that I was completely correct about this observation. "The Associate" just kind of...ends. You get the feeling that it should have been about a hundred pages longer in order to systematically go through and address each plot construction that Grisham had built and put the roof on, so to speak. That never happens. I was left wondering, "But what about....?" and "He never said what happened with...." and "But why didn't [_insert character name__] ever [__insert anticipated action__]?"
The character development was also disappointing. Kyle, the protagonist, was the only person who seemed like he was fleshed out. Everyone else was very one-dimensional and some characters went along through practically the entire novel and then just disappeared with no word as to what ever happened to them.
Frankly, I'm kind of wondering if John Grisham even wrote this thing. It has Grisham-esque elements, but as far as being a fast-paced, tightly structured, well-constructed legal thriller, forget it.
It was very frustrating, especially considering the money I spent. Do yourself a favor and DO NOT buy it. If you're a rabid Grisham fan, check it out of your public library so that you can say you've read it, but don't say we didn't warn you here at Amazon.
Book Review: Okay, but unsatisfying ending
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a mildly satisfying book with an extremely unsatisfying end. Fans of Grisham will recognize echoes of The Firm in the pages of this book, especially when Mr. Grisham describes the torturous gruel that new associates are supposed to endure. I am not sure if such organized torture is the norm in the legal profession, but if Mr. Grisham's motive is to dissuade people from becoming lawyers, I must say he succeeds. But I digress ... back to the story. This book proceeds along nicely until the end, and then it finishes abruptly without any closure. The antagonist vanishes completely, no explanation is given (unless you are a conspiracy buff, and then you will divine the heavy hand of the government in all events that occurred in the book.) The story revolves around corporate espionage, except that the espionage part is conducted not in the corporate world but in the legal domain. A fresh Ivy-League graduate with an unsavory past but a stellar future is blackmailed in attaining employment in a huge law firm and encouraged to steal secrets in the form of discovery and deposition papers. Our intrepid hero, being the good-to-the-core person that he is despite his insalubrious past ("I was drunk and passed out; I have no recollection of what happened ..."), outsmarts an antagonist with deep pockets and even deeper connections. The protagonist is painted in broad enough strokes that the reader dosen't really care much for him. This is certainly not one of Mr. Grisham's best efforts, but I suspect that even a mediocre Grisham spinner has a high enough visibility quotient that people -- including me -- will read it. It is a short book that will test your endurance mostly for a day or two.Book Review: Poor
Summary: 2 Stars
Like most other reviewers here, I was frustrated by the sense of deja vu and the unsatisfying ending. Although I was pleased to see Grisham return to the "honest young lawyer versus an evil entity" formula he did so well in the nineties, this book is too similar to "The Firm" and those other books. And if Kyle isn't implicated in the video, why does he do any of the things they make him do in the story?
SPOILERS. The ending of the book really falls flat. Grisham plagiarizes himself, having Kyle opt to leave the corporate world for a low paying advocacy-type job, like in "The Street Lawyer." But the real frustration lies in the way the basic plot is resolved.
We wait for the delicious moment when the tables are turned and the bad guys get their just desserts. But Grisham fails us here. There is no confrontation, no chance for Kyle to assert himself, George Kaplan-style.
After you finish the book, you can't help but wonder a long list of questions. So where did the video come from? Who was Benny working for? Who was the second betrayer working at the firm? One can't help but conclude that Grisham wasn't a good enough writer to address those issues, and so he simply didn't. He never should have written this book if he was unable to do so. He promised more than he could deliver. (When the book is made into a film, I suspect that ending will be changed.)
But endings have frequently been a problem for Grisham. In books like "The Firm," "The Brethren" and "The Client," he gets his characters stuck in no win situations, only to fail to find a satisfactory way to resolve the character's dilemma.