Technically, I’ve bought John Grisham’s “The Rainmaker” thrice
already. The first two instances served as a gift for two different people, and
the third was of course for myself, for collection purposes. J
I started reading sometime in June, with high hopes I’d
finish it with ease just like the books I’ve whipped over the summer, but
school happened and time for reading was scarce.
If not for the Kadawayan holiday, I wouldn’t have finished The Rainmaker.
What’s the Story?
Rudy Baylor is a struggling lawyer, fresh out of law school,
with mounting debt under his belt. His one shot to fame and fortune is a
bad-faith case against an insurance company entrusted by a client who had
nothing more to offer. He is young, and hungry and competent, but the biggest
question is: how can a rookie – innocent and inexperienced - wage a war against
legal giants defending a multibillion-dollar insurance company?
In his 6th novel, Grisham takes us back to the
courtroom, with less FBI chasing and people getting killed. There was however
one big, bloodless murder that centers the story: an insurance company denied a
cancer patient the bone marrow transplant he needed to have saved his life.
Now it’s too late. Donny Ray Black is dead and the only way
to serve justice is to put an end to Great Benefit, the insurance company, by
exposing its ways and evils.
In this gripping tale of corporate greed, John Grisham
teaches us to be wise in the face of deceit and shows us that the road to
courtroom success is tailored with careful planning, heavy research, and
sometimes, dirty tricks.
Grisham, just like in his other novels, displays his knack
for cunning, wit and sarcasm in his writing through the characters’ thoughts
and dialogues.
Few of my Fave Parts are these:
- When Baylor and side-kick
“paralawyer”, Deck, played a scripted conversation over his office’s bugged phone, knowing that his
courtroom nemesis, the great Leo F. Drummond, is on the other end eavesdropping. Ingenious, that one!
- The courtroom sessions. Especially
during the parts when he grills the Great Benefit executives before the
jury, and most often than not, catches them red in the face for lying.
That’s a kick-ass fo sho! Such parts were delicious to read!
- When Rudy realized that he
reached the top too soon; hence, there’s no other way to go but down. He
was a rookie who got a record-breaking 50 million dollar verdict from the
jury, the highest ever in the state. What makes it poignant, however, is
when Great Benefit files for bankruptcy and it turns out that the promise
of luxurious future is a million miles away for someone who was once
desperate enough to barge through every law firm door, begging for a job.
And this dream, surprisingly, is something he wants buried deep ASAP.
How was it?
The ending was kinda frustrating for me because seriously
I’d be glad for him to enjoy an immensely wealthy life after all he’d been
through. To begin with, his character was a well-developed one: he was a broke
law student who worked his way through school, he experienced a roller-coaster
ride in his career, he achieved short-lived greatness for putting down a
billion-dollar insurance company in court, but in the end, he decided to turn
his back in all-things-‘lawyery’ to become a history teacher.
On the other side, I think the ending was also what makes Rainmaker humanizing. And
beautiful. Grisham has a natural way of humbling people down. He has his own
way of telling us that sometimes, you have to forget everything you are and
everything you wanted for a shot at normal life.
Rainmaker may not contain the action-pack, cutthroat police-mob-chasing
and string of murders that would leave you guessing who’s next unlike in his
other books, but the intense courtroom drama that transpired in the book’s
pages is compelling enough for me to open another Grisham book.
Labels: books, Books Movies and TV, John Grisham Rainmaker, must-read books, rainmaker book review
