| Product: |
The Testament - John Grisham |
| Date: |
31.08.01 (218 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: compulsive
Disadvantages: ask my husband about bedtime reading!
I am one of those people who starts 4 books at a time and reads each one on a different occasion… one for the bath, one for bedtime, one for your bag to read when waiting for a bus, and so on. However, I am also the type of person who rarely finishes a book. But recently I was given a copy of John Grisham’s The Testament and finished it within a week. It’s the first Grisham book I have read, so I won’t be able to compare it to his others.
Basically the story goes something like this…
Troy Phelan is one of the richest men in America – he’s worth around 11 billion dollars. He has three ex wives with six children between them. And each one of them wants his money. Troy starts the story by gathering his children and ex wives in his office building for the reading and signing of his new last will and testament – this he does via a video link, each section of the family in a separate room from him and each other. His families have hired psychiatrists to make sure Troy is of sound mind and all that before he signs the will – and of course he is. He knows exactly what he is doing! Once the will has been read and signed and the greedy wives and kids are happy, the monitors are switched off. Troy then produces and signs another will, leaving all his money to his eldest child – an illegitimate daughter which no-one else in the family knew about. And then he throws himself out of the window, landing neatly at the front of his office building just in time for his children leaving. The wives and kids learn about the new will in time, the legal battles begin and the story then splits into two parts… the family legal battles, and the search for the illegitimate daughter, Rachel, by an alcoholic lawyer called Nate.
Very little is known about Rachel – she works for a missionary society in an unknown place in Brazil. And so Nate sets off to find her. We travel with him through rivers and jung
les, his encounters with the drink which he is so desperate for and yet so desperate not to go back to, storms and diseases and finally his meeting with Rachel. She is working with a tribe in Brazil and not at all interested in the money Nate has come to tell her about. She leads a simple life, with none of the luxuries the other Phelan children crave after. She has God and needs nothing else. Rachel’s life has a big impact on Nate, making him realise what is really important in life.
While all this is going on, the family back in the States are fighting, the lawyers are getting greedy and the contrast between the two situations grows. I’m not about to give the ending away, but it’s not quite as obvious as it could have been.
I thought John Grisham built the characters up well (though maybe he could have done more about Rachel’s character). The way he contrasts the two sides of the family was very good – the greedy side who want as much money as possible but have no idea how to handle it and Rachel who is so rich in her love of God and her work with the tribespeople she wants nothing to do with the money.
While the underlying message of the book is based on Rachel’s life and love of God, and finding out what’s important in life, I didn’t think this was overdone. The story was well paced and kept my interest right up to the end. I even started taking the book to work and reading it in my lunch breaks!
In conclusion, this was my first John Grisham book and won’t be my last.
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