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The Associate
If you thought Mitch McDeere was in trouble in The Firm, wait
until you meet Kyle McAvoy, The Associate
Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father’s small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential.
But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn’t want—even though it’s a job most law students can only dream about.
Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed.
With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains—from Baxter Tate, a drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist, to Dale, a pretty but seemingly quiet former math teacher who shares Kyle’s “cubicle” at the law firm, to two of the most powerful and fiercely competitive defense contractors in the country—and featuring all the twists and turns that have made John Grisham the most popular storyteller in the world, The Associate is vintage Grisham.
From the Hardcover edition.
until you meet Kyle McAvoy, The Associate
Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father’s small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential.
But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn’t want—even though it’s a job most law students can only dream about.
Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed.
With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains—from Baxter Tate, a drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist, to Dale, a pretty but seemingly quiet former math teacher who shares Kyle’s “cubicle” at the law firm, to two of the most powerful and fiercely competitive defense contractors in the country—and featuring all the twists and turns that have made John Grisham the most popular storyteller in the world, The Associate is vintage Grisham.
From the Hardcover edition.
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First published January 26, 2009
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About the author
John Grisham
490 books90.2k followersJohn Grisham is the author of more than fifty consecutive #1 bestsellers, which have been translated into nearly fifty languages. His recent books include Framed, Camino Ghosts and The Exchange: After the Firm.
Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.
When he's not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.
John lives on a farm in central Virginia.
Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.
When he's not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.
John lives on a farm in central Virginia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 4,773 reviews
February 2, 2009
I was so disappointed in Grisham's latest work. He took more than half the book to create this wonderfully detailed plot and then three chapters to close the book. Three chapters in which he untwisted some of the elements of the plot, didn't resolve anything, and quit to early. I felt so unfulfilled at the end.
It kills me that his latest books haven't been up to par with his earlier works. In the beginning, his books were well-crafted and well-executed. After he began seeing his books turn into movies, they became a little fluffier but he eventually returned with The Street Lawyer and The Broker. But alas, we are back to the fluff and I'm sad to say that he is falling in my list of fav authors..
It kills me that his latest books haven't been up to par with his earlier works. In the beginning, his books were well-crafted and well-executed. After he began seeing his books turn into movies, they became a little fluffier but he eventually returned with The Street Lawyer and The Broker. But alas, we are back to the fluff and I'm sad to say that he is falling in my list of fav authors..
March 2, 2009
Good books don't necessarily have to provide all the answers to every plot thread introduced into them. We want our characters to feel like they have lives beyond the confines of the printed page and that their story exists before, during and after the book we're reading. But a good book should at least provide the reader with some sense of closure and not the feeling like an editor was standing over the writer, pointing out that he or she had x-number of pages left or he or she was slowly reaching the word count for the novel and that wrapping up the book soon would be a good idea. There should be some sense of closure, not just a sense of wrapping things up.
There's a distinct lack of closure to John Grisham's new novel.
"The Associate" spents 275 pages setting up the situation Kyle McAvoy faces. Years ago, his roommates at a frat party took advantage of a young woman, while she may or may not have been passed out. The young girl had a reputation and when she tried to press charges for rape, the investigation hit a quick dead end and the matter was dropped. Or so it would appear. While Kyle wasn't one of the participants, he was in the room when it happened. Now, years later video from a camera phone has surfaced in the hands of men who want Kyle to do thier bidding. He is to accept a job with a high-prestige law firm and spy on them for these men.
This mysterious group seems to have their fingers in a lot of pies an a lot of power, though it's never explained why or if they're manipulating certain aspects of Kyle's life and that of his friends. They hold the tape over Kyle's head throughout the story, saying that while it may not lead to charges it will certainly ruin the life of Kyle and his friends.
Kyle is pressed into service in an impossible situation and slowly begins to try and find a way out of it. By reading spy novels, he routinely sheds those tailing him and begins to slowly fight back, forming a plan of his own. Meanwhile, he's got the soulless first year job at a law firm and maybe a connection with a fellow female associate.
It's a lot to take in and Grisham does a nice job of keeping the plot moving for the first 300 or so pages. But it's right around a huge turning point in the novel that things slowly being to unravel. I won't say the turning point, but if you've read the book, you can probably peg it. It involves one of the group of the accused who went to Hollywood seeking his fame and fortune. Suddenly, things kick into a different gear and Kyle makes some decisions. These are things that could and should change the story and ratchet things into a higher gear, adding to the suspense and making the pages turn faster. And they do...except these things all happen 30 or so pages before the novel ends.
And the novel just wraps up. In one of the more unsatisfying endings I've read in a while, Grisham just finishes the story. In the end, justice isn't really served and you can see how Grisham is trying to create a morally ambigious ending, but yet it just doesn't feel satisfying. Kyle isn't a purely innocent character, but it'd be nice if it felt like some or any of the bad guys got what was coming to them in the end. Instead, it's one of those--hey, life sucks but what are you going to do? endings that left me frustrated and wondering where the rest of the book was.
We could at least know that Kyle got the girl or something. A hint, anything besides what we go.
And that's a shame. Because Grisham works hard in creating Kyle and allowing us to identify with him and feel sympathy for him as the net closes in around him.
This could have been great Grisham. Instead it's just mediocre Grisham.
There's a distinct lack of closure to John Grisham's new novel.
"The Associate" spents 275 pages setting up the situation Kyle McAvoy faces. Years ago, his roommates at a frat party took advantage of a young woman, while she may or may not have been passed out. The young girl had a reputation and when she tried to press charges for rape, the investigation hit a quick dead end and the matter was dropped. Or so it would appear. While Kyle wasn't one of the participants, he was in the room when it happened. Now, years later video from a camera phone has surfaced in the hands of men who want Kyle to do thier bidding. He is to accept a job with a high-prestige law firm and spy on them for these men.
This mysterious group seems to have their fingers in a lot of pies an a lot of power, though it's never explained why or if they're manipulating certain aspects of Kyle's life and that of his friends. They hold the tape over Kyle's head throughout the story, saying that while it may not lead to charges it will certainly ruin the life of Kyle and his friends.
Kyle is pressed into service in an impossible situation and slowly begins to try and find a way out of it. By reading spy novels, he routinely sheds those tailing him and begins to slowly fight back, forming a plan of his own. Meanwhile, he's got the soulless first year job at a law firm and maybe a connection with a fellow female associate.
It's a lot to take in and Grisham does a nice job of keeping the plot moving for the first 300 or so pages. But it's right around a huge turning point in the novel that things slowly being to unravel. I won't say the turning point, but if you've read the book, you can probably peg it. It involves one of the group of the accused who went to Hollywood seeking his fame and fortune. Suddenly, things kick into a different gear and Kyle makes some decisions. These are things that could and should change the story and ratchet things into a higher gear, adding to the suspense and making the pages turn faster. And they do...except these things all happen 30 or so pages before the novel ends.
And the novel just wraps up. In one of the more unsatisfying endings I've read in a while, Grisham just finishes the story. In the end, justice isn't really served and you can see how Grisham is trying to create a morally ambigious ending, but yet it just doesn't feel satisfying. Kyle isn't a purely innocent character, but it'd be nice if it felt like some or any of the bad guys got what was coming to them in the end. Instead, it's one of those--hey, life sucks but what are you going to do? endings that left me frustrated and wondering where the rest of the book was.
We could at least know that Kyle got the girl or something. A hint, anything besides what we go.
And that's a shame. Because Grisham works hard in creating Kyle and allowing us to identify with him and feel sympathy for him as the net closes in around him.
This could have been great Grisham. Instead it's just mediocre Grisham.
February 22, 2009
The most anti-climactic book ever. What happened to the Grisham I used to love?
April 20, 2021
Some very smart book publicist opted to not include the fact that the whole blackmail scheme is centered on a girl who “cried rape” — Grisham’s words. I read the pelican brief in high school and don’t remember what I thought of it, but I’d be shocked if Grisham is capable of writing a female character in anything but a sexist way. It’s not even slightly subtle. Every woman is described by her legs, her boobs, her chatter, her frigidity, her emotional state, her promiscuity, her penchant for expensive clothing and shoes, etc. It’s eye-rolling stuff, and I’m shocked this has not been mentioned by more readers.
I only finished this book because 1) not doing great on my goodreads goal, and 2) I was waiting to see if anyone was ever held accountable for the rape that DRIVES THE WHOLE PLOT. The use of rape as a plot device is generally lazy, but this is beyond lazy.
Let’s be clear: what Grisham describes is rape. An unconscious person cannot consent to sex. How that is up for debate by the male characters and evidently by Grisham is beyond my imagination. Also, a girl can consent yesterday and then be unconscious and unable to consent today. She can also consent and then change her mind or pass out at which point STOP HAVING SEX WITH HER. And yes, a girl who is a general screw-up who parties too much and does drugs can still be raped. Rape is a verb. It’s something someone does to another person. Who that other person is doesn’t matter. It’s the act that matters.
I know some guys from law school who spew similar crap to Grisham — these are guys who undoubtedly had some questionable encounters with overly drunk and possibly incapacitated women and so they wax poetic about fickle mind-changing women and how “things were different back then” because they are terrified that maybe this dirty word “rape” applies to something that they did. “Kyle” may not have raped anyone but he is evidently gung fucking ho about rape culture. As is, it seems, his creator.
Zero stars. One hundred red flags.
I only finished this book because 1) not doing great on my goodreads goal, and 2) I was waiting to see if anyone was ever held accountable for the rape that DRIVES THE WHOLE PLOT. The use of rape as a plot device is generally lazy, but this is beyond lazy.
Let’s be clear: what Grisham describes is rape. An unconscious person cannot consent to sex. How that is up for debate by the male characters and evidently by Grisham is beyond my imagination. Also, a girl can consent yesterday and then be unconscious and unable to consent today. She can also consent and then change her mind or pass out at which point STOP HAVING SEX WITH HER. And yes, a girl who is a general screw-up who parties too much and does drugs can still be raped. Rape is a verb. It’s something someone does to another person. Who that other person is doesn’t matter. It’s the act that matters.
I know some guys from law school who spew similar crap to Grisham — these are guys who undoubtedly had some questionable encounters with overly drunk and possibly incapacitated women and so they wax poetic about fickle mind-changing women and how “things were different back then” because they are terrified that maybe this dirty word “rape” applies to something that they did. “Kyle” may not have raped anyone but he is evidently gung fucking ho about rape culture. As is, it seems, his creator.
Zero stars. One hundred red flags.
July 7, 2019
Fun reading.
July 27, 2023
This story had the potential to be a real wing-dinger, but the ending was anticlimactic.
The writing was exceptional and had me engaged all the way through.
That's all.
The writing was exceptional and had me engaged all the way through.
That's all.
October 1, 2012
I enjoyed this one quite a bit, but....
I got into the intrigue, especially once Kyle started attempting to turn the tables on Bennie & Nigel. But then came the ending. What is with Grisham these days? I didn't like the ending. I did not DESPISE the ending, as I did with Grisham's last book (The Appeal), but I found it entirely unsatisfying. Just give me a good, old-fashioned, bad-guys-get-their-butts-kicked ending anyday!
I got into the intrigue, especially once Kyle started attempting to turn the tables on Bennie & Nigel. But then came the ending. What is with Grisham these days? I didn't like the ending. I did not DESPISE the ending, as I did with Grisham's last book (The Appeal), but I found it entirely unsatisfying. Just give me a good, old-fashioned, bad-guys-get-their-butts-kicked ending anyday!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 10, 2020
When you write as many books and as many pages as John Grisham does,I suppose there is bound to be a certain amount of repetition.
The Associate was published nearly two decades after Grisham's blockbuster,The Firm.It feels very similar.
A bright young lawyer gets out of law school.There is,unfortunately,a secret in his past.That could compromise his future career.
He is asked to join a prestigious law firm,something which on the surface,looks like a dream job.But he is asked to lie and steal information.
And just like in The Firm,he is being constantly watched and his apartment is bugged.This one goes on for nearly 400 pages,but is not half as compelling as The Firm.
One of Grisham's more forgettable efforts.
The Associate was published nearly two decades after Grisham's blockbuster,The Firm.It feels very similar.
A bright young lawyer gets out of law school.There is,unfortunately,a secret in his past.That could compromise his future career.
He is asked to join a prestigious law firm,something which on the surface,looks like a dream job.But he is asked to lie and steal information.
And just like in The Firm,he is being constantly watched and his apartment is bugged.This one goes on for nearly 400 pages,but is not half as compelling as The Firm.
One of Grisham's more forgettable efforts.
November 20, 2021
Kyle McAvoy might be a brilliant legal student with a bright future ahead of him, but he has a secret from his past that has the potential to destroy all of it. Kyle is on the verge of a deadly game of blackmail, but can Kyle protect his secret from the past or will his career be over.
It has been years since I’ve read a John Grisham novel, but I’m glad I picked up The Associate to read as I found it quite entertaining with a few twists and turns this book was well worth reading. I look forward to reading more by this author in the future. Recommended.
It has been years since I’ve read a John Grisham novel, but I’m glad I picked up The Associate to read as I found it quite entertaining with a few twists and turns this book was well worth reading. I look forward to reading more by this author in the future. Recommended.
August 22, 2020
Despite its 2009 copyright date and thus some 12-year-old tech and dollar amounts, John Grisham's THE ASSOCIATE is well worth reading.
While it is unbelievable that a YLS law journal editor-in-chief would have the time Kyle McAvoy does as he finishes law school or that he would be as combative as he is with people who could kill him, Grisham's reader-accessible style remains attractive.
He opens with a less-than-heroic (and thus believable scene) in which McAvoy can't wait for the last kids' basketball game he is coaching to be finished.
The scene between Kyle's father and another small-town lawyer who represents McAvoy's accuser is also true-to-life.
Yes, Grisham has included a signature beach scene toward the end.
He especially gets right the still-valid excruciatingly stressful grind of NYC law firms (pressure to bill) and why protagonist Kyle McAvoy initially seeks to avoid that life, until he is blackmailed into doing so.
Grisham leaves some good unresolved twists at the end--we never know who antagonist Bennie was working for--and yet the hints about a foreign government or the U.S. government (including the FBI itself) ring presciently true. The author trusts the reader to appreciate that the mystery won't be neatly tied up.
Highly recommended.
While it is unbelievable that a YLS law journal editor-in-chief would have the time Kyle McAvoy does as he finishes law school or that he would be as combative as he is with people who could kill him, Grisham's reader-accessible style remains attractive.
He opens with a less-than-heroic (and thus believable scene) in which McAvoy can't wait for the last kids' basketball game he is coaching to be finished.
The scene between Kyle's father and another small-town lawyer who represents McAvoy's accuser is also true-to-life.
Yes, Grisham has included a signature beach scene toward the end.
He especially gets right the still-valid excruciatingly stressful grind of NYC law firms (pressure to bill) and why protagonist Kyle McAvoy initially seeks to avoid that life, until he is blackmailed into doing so.
Grisham leaves some good unresolved twists at the end--we never know who antagonist Bennie was working for--and yet the hints about a foreign government or the U.S. government (including the FBI itself) ring presciently true. The author trusts the reader to appreciate that the mystery won't be neatly tied up.
Highly recommended.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 8, 2009
With every book, Grisham gets worse. I keep telling myself I should stop reading the garbage he his dishing out, but I keep going back just to find out how bad it can get. What can I say? I give one star because for effort, just to type the words in. Otherwise there is not much to recommend in this book. The plot is weaker than Bud Lite, the ending is anti-climactic.
July 21, 2015
It seems like lately when I read Grisham, its a good story with some interesting twists and turns, but the climax is not really super exciting and there tends not to be all that much resolution. That was the case again here. A good book - but not tons of excitement.
April 12, 2020
I'll start this review by saying I LOVE KYLE MC AVOY. He's an idealistic, brave, intelligent not to mention a good looking law student. I wish I can find someone like him at the law school I'm going to be accepted at. (HAHA. Sorry, the girly side of my brain started to speak up. lol)
Some people say that this is a suffice to John Grisham's highly acclaimed novel, 'The Firm'. And after reading this, I found out that it is real and adequate. For the reason that in both novels, young lawyers are on the run chased by fraud FBI agents or blackmailers from pathetic law firms. At the end, when our heart is very thrilled about a young lawyer being chased and all. Both characters (Mitch The Firm and Kyle The Associate) change their mind and set about trapping the blackmailers. And that's it. The ending is unbelievably unwrapped up.
However, despite the fact that I was thornly disappointed about the idea of how "The Associate" has been written. I have this feeling of LOVING IT. The novel has a very fast pacing because I was thoroughly caught up in this book from page one (1) until the very last page. Very exciting!
The idea of working at a big law firm started to bug me (in a good way). I feel like I want to work as a litigator or as an associate at a law firm after passing the bar exams (Always look forward and think positively! :p)
In the end, I gave this book an awesome verdict, 4 stars! :)
Oh! I forgot to mention: I found Kyle's dad very similar with the street lawyer (also by J. Grisham). It's kind of cool actually. :)
Some people say that this is a suffice to John Grisham's highly acclaimed novel, 'The Firm'. And after reading this, I found out that it is real and adequate. For the reason that in both novels, young lawyers are on the run chased by fraud FBI agents or blackmailers from pathetic law firms. At the end, when our heart is very thrilled about a young lawyer being chased and all. Both characters (Mitch The Firm and Kyle The Associate) change their mind and set about trapping the blackmailers. And that's it. The ending is unbelievably unwrapped up.
However, despite the fact that I was thornly disappointed about the idea of how "The Associate" has been written. I have this feeling of LOVING IT. The novel has a very fast pacing because I was thoroughly caught up in this book from page one (1) until the very last page. Very exciting!
The idea of working at a big law firm started to bug me (in a good way). I feel like I want to work as a litigator or as an associate at a law firm after passing the bar exams (Always look forward and think positively! :p)
In the end, I gave this book an awesome verdict, 4 stars! :)
Oh! I forgot to mention: I found Kyle's dad very similar with the street lawyer (also by J. Grisham). It's kind of cool actually. :)
December 24, 2024
I do not have law degree. And I can related to the main character. the brutal hours you have to work to make it to the top. the politic you have to play to get recognition. And yet there is always someone better than you.
But i think the moral story here is do the right thing even the right things sometimes hurt the most. But it will set you free.
But i think the moral story here is do the right thing even the right things sometimes hurt the most. But it will set you free.
January 17, 2021
I read so many books written by John Grisham in the past and this is a re-read. Even though I still enjoy his writing, all the suspense and the question of moral, the reading experience is not the same anymore unfortunately. I guess I loved him so much years ago because I was younger. And at that time, I would have surely given him 5 stars. My taste in fashion, food and so on changes year by year so I guess it's no surprise that my reading taste has changed over the years as well.
February 25, 2025
“What was I thinking when I chose law school?”
A promiscuous sexual encounter with a drunk co-ed lies somewhere on a spectrum between ill-advised debauchery and non-consenting gang rape. Kyle McAvoy, one of the participants in the “occurrence” and a recent graduate of an Ivy League law school is dismayed to learned that a video exists, perhaps explicit enough to result in criminal charges but more than explicit enough to derail his career as an associate in a high-powered law firm before it had even really begun. The game is extortion and the game is afoot. McAvoy is up to his eyeballs in an obvious corporate espionage scheme with billions of dollars at stake!
Full marks to John Grisham on the suspense front. From the opening paragraphs to the climax, Grisham generates and maintains suspense that will have every reader turning pages in thrall to the story. But, for the first time in my experience of reading and thoroughly enjoying Grisham’s body of work, the ending was worse than a train wreck. It was a derailment that occurred simply because the locomotive ran off the end of a set of rails that hadn’t even been constructed.
In short, plainer words, the story fell off a cliff and ended most unsatisfactorily with no resolution and no explanations. Such partial endings as did occur were, frankly, trite and banal. In the words of James Patterson, one of Grisham’s contemporaries, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.
Paul Weiss
A promiscuous sexual encounter with a drunk co-ed lies somewhere on a spectrum between ill-advised debauchery and non-consenting gang rape. Kyle McAvoy, one of the participants in the “occurrence” and a recent graduate of an Ivy League law school is dismayed to learned that a video exists, perhaps explicit enough to result in criminal charges but more than explicit enough to derail his career as an associate in a high-powered law firm before it had even really begun. The game is extortion and the game is afoot. McAvoy is up to his eyeballs in an obvious corporate espionage scheme with billions of dollars at stake!
Full marks to John Grisham on the suspense front. From the opening paragraphs to the climax, Grisham generates and maintains suspense that will have every reader turning pages in thrall to the story. But, for the first time in my experience of reading and thoroughly enjoying Grisham’s body of work, the ending was worse than a train wreck. It was a derailment that occurred simply because the locomotive ran off the end of a set of rails that hadn’t even been constructed.
In short, plainer words, the story fell off a cliff and ended most unsatisfactorily with no resolution and no explanations. Such partial endings as did occur were, frankly, trite and banal. In the words of James Patterson, one of Grisham’s contemporaries, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.
Paul Weiss
December 4, 2010
Boy, that John Grisham really can write!
By that, I mean that he is capable of putting nouns, verbs, and punctuation in order to form sentences, because that is what The Associate is: basically just a lot of sentences. Sentences describing parties, lunches, bed linens, apartment interiors, and hunting trips, with half-assed attempts at intrigue and characterization thrown in here and there. Of course that's what "comfort fiction" and "beach reads" are all about. But I had it in my head from reading The Client and The Chamber when I was younger that Grisham could write a sort of thrilling legal mystery too.
One thing that Grisham CANNOT do, if this book is really representative of "vintage Grisham," is build a character on anything except cliches. This would be another excellent reason to avoid Ford County (its garish paperback cover is number one), although I have to admit that I was curious about the idea of a non-genre Grisham book that's mercifully not about Christmas, football, or pizzas.
So, here we've got the Hispanic ex-gang member (of course) who's made it his life's work to help alcoholic frat boys reform and who also sort of resembles Che Guevara when he wears a beret (that Grisham actually wrote this sentence is still cracking me up). We've got the tough, man-hating female lawyer named "Mike," who we're told has multiple divorces under her belt and represents the book's lesbian client while outfitted in black leather and stilettos, the product of either a BDSM-LGBTQ combo fantasy run amuck or casual sexism or maybe both. We've got the hot blonde female lawyer who, despite being cold and reclusive, is sleeping with Kyle in less than 100 pages and whose back (her BACK) is described as "trim with a nice curve to it" or something crazy like that. The thing about all of these stereotypes is that they're all just a little bit wacky, and this makes me think that Grisham is sincerely trying and sincerely out of touch. When I got to the part where Kyle tells hot blonde lawyer that he'll watch "anything but a chick flick" with her, I found that I wasn't even irritated at this (definite) casual sexism. I just flicked my wrist and thought, "John Grisham, you cad!"
SPOILERS from here on out:
With regard to the legal intrigue that's only intriguing for the first 50 pages and probably about 75 towards the end, I have nothing else to say except that the ending is HILARIOUS.
For those of you who haven't read the book, I'm going to summarize what happens now: top Yale law student Kyle is blackmailed into spying on a top law firm from within, by villians of high intelligence and indeterminate motive. This motive remains undetermined through the ending -- so, thanks a lot for that, Grisham -- but along the way they follow Kyle's every move, wiretap his apartment, assassinate one of his college friends in a gas station bathroom, and manage to foil the FBI coming to take them down. Kyle is terrified of them with good reason. Yet, at the very end of the book, when the bad guys have gotten away, Kyle "heroically"....turns down the security of the witness protection program??? Because he assumes the bad guys have fled??? And decides that he's just going to go back home and get on with his normal life after thoroughly pissing off the guys who assassinated his friend and who just eluded capture???
The last sentence of this book is "They shook hands and said goodbye, and Roy watched [Kyle] stride nonchalantly along Broad Street and disappear around a corner." I know that Grisham intended for this to be such a badass moment, but I felt like the unfinished continuance of that sentence should be "where he was then shot." No one is that stupid. Kyle is a Yale graduate. A lawyer! Was terrified of these people a few chapters ago! It's like Grisham wrote up to page 415, had an aneurysm, and went back to finish it off without rereading.
This book is not not terrible. But I can't give it the one star that it probably deserves. I laughed a lot. I craved pizza at the appropriate moments. It served its purpose. Bravo, John Grisham.
By that, I mean that he is capable of putting nouns, verbs, and punctuation in order to form sentences, because that is what The Associate is: basically just a lot of sentences. Sentences describing parties, lunches, bed linens, apartment interiors, and hunting trips, with half-assed attempts at intrigue and characterization thrown in here and there. Of course that's what "comfort fiction" and "beach reads" are all about. But I had it in my head from reading The Client and The Chamber when I was younger that Grisham could write a sort of thrilling legal mystery too.
One thing that Grisham CANNOT do, if this book is really representative of "vintage Grisham," is build a character on anything except cliches. This would be another excellent reason to avoid Ford County (its garish paperback cover is number one), although I have to admit that I was curious about the idea of a non-genre Grisham book that's mercifully not about Christmas, football, or pizzas.
So, here we've got the Hispanic ex-gang member (of course) who's made it his life's work to help alcoholic frat boys reform and who also sort of resembles Che Guevara when he wears a beret (that Grisham actually wrote this sentence is still cracking me up). We've got the tough, man-hating female lawyer named "Mike," who we're told has multiple divorces under her belt and represents the book's lesbian client while outfitted in black leather and stilettos, the product of either a BDSM-LGBTQ combo fantasy run amuck or casual sexism or maybe both. We've got the hot blonde female lawyer who, despite being cold and reclusive, is sleeping with Kyle in less than 100 pages and whose back (her BACK) is described as "trim with a nice curve to it" or something crazy like that. The thing about all of these stereotypes is that they're all just a little bit wacky, and this makes me think that Grisham is sincerely trying and sincerely out of touch. When I got to the part where Kyle tells hot blonde lawyer that he'll watch "anything but a chick flick" with her, I found that I wasn't even irritated at this (definite) casual sexism. I just flicked my wrist and thought, "John Grisham, you cad!"
SPOILERS from here on out:
With regard to the legal intrigue that's only intriguing for the first 50 pages and probably about 75 towards the end, I have nothing else to say except that the ending is HILARIOUS.
For those of you who haven't read the book, I'm going to summarize what happens now: top Yale law student Kyle is blackmailed into spying on a top law firm from within, by villians of high intelligence and indeterminate motive. This motive remains undetermined through the ending -- so, thanks a lot for that, Grisham -- but along the way they follow Kyle's every move, wiretap his apartment, assassinate one of his college friends in a gas station bathroom, and manage to foil the FBI coming to take them down. Kyle is terrified of them with good reason. Yet, at the very end of the book, when the bad guys have gotten away, Kyle "heroically"....turns down the security of the witness protection program??? Because he assumes the bad guys have fled??? And decides that he's just going to go back home and get on with his normal life after thoroughly pissing off the guys who assassinated his friend and who just eluded capture???
The last sentence of this book is "They shook hands and said goodbye, and Roy watched [Kyle] stride nonchalantly along Broad Street and disappear around a corner." I know that Grisham intended for this to be such a badass moment, but I felt like the unfinished continuance of that sentence should be "where he was then shot." No one is that stupid. Kyle is a Yale graduate. A lawyer! Was terrified of these people a few chapters ago! It's like Grisham wrote up to page 415, had an aneurysm, and went back to finish it off without rereading.
This book is not not terrible. But I can't give it the one star that it probably deserves. I laughed a lot. I craved pizza at the appropriate moments. It served its purpose. Bravo, John Grisham.
January 2, 2016
Reminds you of "The Firm" by the same author. But the Firm was way more intense & thrilling. Overall a good read.
March 8, 2009
I was thoroughly caught up in this book from page 1 and could barely put it down until the last page. Very exciting even though at times I wanted to yell at Kyle, the main character, not to fall for the blackmail scheme laid out before him. For anyone who has been to a few too many drinking parties in college, this will bring back those memories of regrets and situations that could have gotten out of hand. Kyle was involved in the latter, and thought it was all behind him, until he is approached by strange men who threaten to expose everything and ruin his promising law career unless he helps them. He goes along with it, not because he's guilty of anything, but because there are other lives that could be ruined along with his, should the story come out in full. This, along with his other relationships, makes him likeable and sympathetic.
May 22, 2012
It was ok but no more than that. Young trainee lawyer blackmailed into working for an enormous law firm so as to steal information on a major case they are working. As with all Grisham novels it is an exciting enough story which means you want to turn over the next page but unlike previous Grisham novels I have read I was quite able to put it down when normal life demanded. I was interested to reach the denoument but not 'step over an injured puppy' type interested.
Erik Singer narrated and he did a good job but for the liverpudlian/Australian/whatinthenameofallthat'sholy accent he inflicted upon one of the baddies called Nigel. You would think being called Nigel might be burden enough but no Singer decided to curse the poor bloke with a monstrous concoction spanning not just cities but continents and maybe even planets.
Erik Singer narrated and he did a good job but for the liverpudlian/Australian/whatinthenameofallthat'sholy accent he inflicted upon one of the baddies called Nigel. You would think being called Nigel might be burden enough but no Singer decided to curse the poor bloke with a monstrous concoction spanning not just cities but continents and maybe even planets.
February 5, 2009
No spoiler alert needed because there are no spoilers. Every aspect of this novel has been done in earlier works of 'legal fiction' by Grisham, and sections bolted together for this new novel. It was enjoyable and a prototypical Grisham read, but there was absolutely nothing new under this literary sun...
Grisham should parody the creation of the next Grisham novel, where a bright young legal graduate is coerced into a secretive law firm. On his first day, he is spirited into a basement vault, where he and other new lawyers read through all the existing Grisham works, and use them to build a new one....
Grisham should parody the creation of the next Grisham novel, where a bright young legal graduate is coerced into a secretive law firm. On his first day, he is spirited into a basement vault, where he and other new lawyers read through all the existing Grisham works, and use them to build a new one....
December 13, 2022
I do like a good legal thriller, and I think Grisham’s body of work shows that he writes them as well as anyone. I spotted this one in my local library’s audiobook collection, and given it was published in 2009 I’m not sure how it had passed me by until now. It features a young man, Kyle McAvoy, who flew through college academically and was set to embark on career in law, with the top firms in the country all keen to sign him up. But he has a skeleton in his cupboard and now someone has discovered his secret - he’s at their beck and call.
It’s a skilfully woven tale which teases and asks a range of moral questions too as Kyle is backed into a corner it’s hard imagine he can escape from. His best hope – and perhaps the only sensible action he could have taken - would have been to have refused to be backed into it in the first place. However, I had fun trying to work out what actions Kyle would take next and enjoyed the interactions between he and his tormentor. In truth, it’s all a little far fetched but I had great fun with it all the same. The only real let down here is that the ending felt to me like a complete cop out, possibly the weakest I’ve seen in any Grisham novel.
It’s a skilfully woven tale which teases and asks a range of moral questions too as Kyle is backed into a corner it’s hard imagine he can escape from. His best hope – and perhaps the only sensible action he could have taken - would have been to have refused to be backed into it in the first place. However, I had fun trying to work out what actions Kyle would take next and enjoyed the interactions between he and his tormentor. In truth, it’s all a little far fetched but I had great fun with it all the same. The only real let down here is that the ending felt to me like a complete cop out, possibly the weakest I’ve seen in any Grisham novel.
February 14, 2009
In most circumstances, the "quick reads" or "beach books" are so lame-brain and cornball that I skim the book in a half-hour (i.e. James Patterson) However, I have read (really read, not skimmed) every one of Grisham's books. I enjoy Grisham because his stories are the same. You have the same kind of characters, the same dialogue, but it's always suspenseful. You always want to know what's going to happen next. I am comforted by his predictability, for some odd reason.
October 22, 2012
Every couple of years, I like to remind myself why I stopped reading his books. And this one was a really good reminder.
I was a big fan back in the nineties, when he first came out. I read all the books, watched most of the movies. But the stuff he writes now is so. . . different. In the last couple of books of his I've read, it seems like when the time comes for the crap to hit the fan, he just flushes the crap instead. Sure, it's nice and clean, but not nearly as exciting. Nowadays, he seems far more interested in preaching his ideals on the legal profession than in writing actual thrillers.
The Associate is Kyle McAvoy. A different name, but basically the same character that stars in every Grisham novel. A wet-behind-the-ears kid, fresh out of law school, who has to take on the world and figure out how to outsmart everyone. He's Mitch McDeere, he's Darby Shaw, he's Rudy Baylor.
Kyle is just finishing up law school at Yale and is planning to work for a public-interest firm after graduation when a bad guy surfaces with a video, secretly taken by a cell phone, which reveals the bawdy details of a drunken frat party five years earlier. The video contains evidence that a couple of Kyle's buddies had relations with a girl who may have been unconcious at the time. Although the video contains no evidence than Kyle did anything worse than dancing in the nude, he's shaken that the evidence exists.
The bad guy offers Kyle a deal. In exchange for keeping the video and the potential rape allegation under wraps, Kyle must accept a position in New York City with the largest law firm in the world and steal documents related to a gigantic lawsuit between two defense contractors. High-stakes blackmail!
The first few pages of this book are great, and I admit that I was immediately sucked into the plot. The pace slows as the book progresses. The bad guys patiently wait for the chance to have Kyle make a move. Meanwhile, Kyle spends most of his time trying to figure out how to outsmart them while also being the hardest working first-year associate at the firm.
I don't know that the bad guys were actually super hard to outsmart. They actually seemed a little lame to me. When Kyle started his job, they demanded a look at his company-issued laptop and phone. He refused to do so, and they never bothered him about it again. Seems like pretty lame surveillance to me.
***SPOILER ALERT (IF YOU CARE)***
Somehow, Kyle manages to hire a lawyer, who notifies the FBI. They organize an operation to catch the bad guy when Kyle brings stolen files to him. But the bad guy somehow gets wind of it and disappears. And that's it. They don't catch him. So, who was this bad guy? Who was he working for? Why did they want the files? Where did he get the cell phone video? How did he know the FBI was coming for him?
NONE of these questions get answered. Grisham suggests a bunch of possibilities, but I guess decides to let the reader ponder them eternally. It seems like maybe he wrote himself into a corner and said, "Ah, screw it, I can't figure this out either. The end."
***END OF SPOILER ALERT (IF YOU CARE)***
I'm not the only one who feels this way. Many other readers are furious about this one. They can't figure out why he would just decide not to write the end of the book. There won't be a sequel, because who would buy it? Most people seem to think that Grisham is so rich he doesn't really care about pleasing the reader anymore. Others are speculating that The Associate was (gasp) ghostwritten.
I'm glad that I checked this out at the library. Some folks actually paid full cover price to read it.
I was a big fan back in the nineties, when he first came out. I read all the books, watched most of the movies. But the stuff he writes now is so. . . different. In the last couple of books of his I've read, it seems like when the time comes for the crap to hit the fan, he just flushes the crap instead. Sure, it's nice and clean, but not nearly as exciting. Nowadays, he seems far more interested in preaching his ideals on the legal profession than in writing actual thrillers.
The Associate is Kyle McAvoy. A different name, but basically the same character that stars in every Grisham novel. A wet-behind-the-ears kid, fresh out of law school, who has to take on the world and figure out how to outsmart everyone. He's Mitch McDeere, he's Darby Shaw, he's Rudy Baylor.
Kyle is just finishing up law school at Yale and is planning to work for a public-interest firm after graduation when a bad guy surfaces with a video, secretly taken by a cell phone, which reveals the bawdy details of a drunken frat party five years earlier. The video contains evidence that a couple of Kyle's buddies had relations with a girl who may have been unconcious at the time. Although the video contains no evidence than Kyle did anything worse than dancing in the nude, he's shaken that the evidence exists.
The bad guy offers Kyle a deal. In exchange for keeping the video and the potential rape allegation under wraps, Kyle must accept a position in New York City with the largest law firm in the world and steal documents related to a gigantic lawsuit between two defense contractors. High-stakes blackmail!
The first few pages of this book are great, and I admit that I was immediately sucked into the plot. The pace slows as the book progresses. The bad guys patiently wait for the chance to have Kyle make a move. Meanwhile, Kyle spends most of his time trying to figure out how to outsmart them while also being the hardest working first-year associate at the firm.
I don't know that the bad guys were actually super hard to outsmart. They actually seemed a little lame to me. When Kyle started his job, they demanded a look at his company-issued laptop and phone. He refused to do so, and they never bothered him about it again. Seems like pretty lame surveillance to me.
***SPOILER ALERT (IF YOU CARE)***
Somehow, Kyle manages to hire a lawyer, who notifies the FBI. They organize an operation to catch the bad guy when Kyle brings stolen files to him. But the bad guy somehow gets wind of it and disappears. And that's it. They don't catch him. So, who was this bad guy? Who was he working for? Why did they want the files? Where did he get the cell phone video? How did he know the FBI was coming for him?
NONE of these questions get answered. Grisham suggests a bunch of possibilities, but I guess decides to let the reader ponder them eternally. It seems like maybe he wrote himself into a corner and said, "Ah, screw it, I can't figure this out either. The end."
***END OF SPOILER ALERT (IF YOU CARE)***
I'm not the only one who feels this way. Many other readers are furious about this one. They can't figure out why he would just decide not to write the end of the book. There won't be a sequel, because who would buy it? Most people seem to think that Grisham is so rich he doesn't really care about pleasing the reader anymore. Others are speculating that The Associate was (gasp) ghostwritten.
I'm glad that I checked this out at the library. Some folks actually paid full cover price to read it.
September 1, 2017
NYT #1 list - Sept 15, 2009
http://www.hawes.com/2009/2009-02-15.pdf
*
* Reread 2013 - I had no review from 2009
*
Kyle McAvoy, graduates Yale Law with honors, the Yale Law Review editor, ready for his dream to be a public interest moral & ethic lawyer. Unfortunately, he meets Bennie Wright with a Yale Beta Fraternity "party" video with a girl "Elaine Keenan". He is blackmailed to work for one of the largest prestigious NY law firms - Scully & Persening. The "party" video of Kyle, Baxtor Tate, Alan Strock & Joey Bernardo were the 4 Brothers with Elaine. Kyle sends Joey (stockbroker) to find what she wants?
Kyle does not like S&P, great bar exam help, start at $200,000 per year, spying on his life with a FirmFone & "bugged" apartment - firm's unethical apprentice demands getting client business information. Is Kyle risking being disbarred & going to jail?
Who is Bennie Wright really working for? Kyle created a "BlueBox" with confidential client copies as requested. A set-up by NY FBI (Mario Delano) & US Justice (Drew Wingate) fails to capture Bennie, but will he return to kill him? Can Roy Benedict (criminal defense lawyer) prevent Kyle to be fired by S&P and disbarred for stolen property...... His clients included - Placid Motgage, Baxter Tate & Trylon Aeronautics.
After dust settles, his dream is back to be a "public interest moral & ethic lawyer" in a new firm, McAvoy & McAvoy (his dad, John McAvoy in Pennsylvania). Dale Armstrong, S&P apprentice, also quits, still in love, she promises to meet in the near future.
http://www.hawes.com/2009/2009-02-15.pdf
*
* Reread 2013 - I had no review from 2009
*
Kyle McAvoy, graduates Yale Law with honors, the Yale Law Review editor, ready for his dream to be a public interest moral & ethic lawyer. Unfortunately, he meets Bennie Wright with a Yale Beta Fraternity "party" video with a girl "Elaine Keenan". He is blackmailed to work for one of the largest prestigious NY law firms - Scully & Persening. The "party" video of Kyle, Baxtor Tate, Alan Strock & Joey Bernardo were the 4 Brothers with Elaine. Kyle sends Joey (stockbroker) to find what she wants?
Kyle does not like S&P, great bar exam help, start at $200,000 per year, spying on his life with a FirmFone & "bugged" apartment - firm's unethical apprentice demands getting client business information. Is Kyle risking being disbarred & going to jail?
Who is Bennie Wright really working for? Kyle created a "BlueBox" with confidential client copies as requested. A set-up by NY FBI (Mario Delano) & US Justice (Drew Wingate) fails to capture Bennie, but will he return to kill him? Can Roy Benedict (criminal defense lawyer) prevent Kyle to be fired by S&P and disbarred for stolen property...... His clients included - Placid Motgage, Baxter Tate & Trylon Aeronautics.
After dust settles, his dream is back to be a "public interest moral & ethic lawyer" in a new firm, McAvoy & McAvoy (his dad, John McAvoy in Pennsylvania). Dale Armstrong, S&P apprentice, also quits, still in love, she promises to meet in the near future.
February 6, 2009
As usual with Grisham, I can't put a book down for very long until I've picked it up again. I would hope that there might be a follow-up to this one so I can learn about what happens to the "bad guys".
November 19, 2024
John Grisham is known for writing fast-paced escapism novels consisting of entertainment value more than of realism. "The Associate" deals with Kyle McAvoy, an ambitious law student in his last semester who later becomes an associate with one of the largest law firms in the world. However, not everything takes course as planned - Kyle is confronted with an unsettling detail of his past, a girl who claims to have been raped by two of his friends while Kyle himself watched dead drunk. A mysterious undercover agent blackmails him with this information and forces Kyle to spy on his new employers and to pass important data if he does not want his future to be destroyed by one fateful night.
Initially, I went to our local library, knowing they have tons of Grisham novels on their shelves, with the intention to borrow either "The Firm" or "The Client". I have watched the movie adaptions of both novels and enjoyed them immensely, so I wanted to figure out whether or not Grisham's novels are able to surprise me even more. Anyway, it turned out the library features all Grisham novels except for "The Firm" and "The Client". Dissatisfied, I randomly picked one of his other works without previously checking via Goodreads how popular the book is and which basic sentiment the average opinions represent, as I would usually have done. Soon afterwards I realized that not only is "The Associate" one of his younger works, but also one of his more criticized ones, and not without good reason.
Grisham introduceds an interesting protagonist I was able to sympathize with. Over the course of 300 pages, he establishes an intriguing atmosphere and makes his reader want to know how Kyle will eventually get out of his intricate situation. And then, just as everyone else seems to have criticized, he spends twenty pages on a disappointing climax and lets the story swash along for the rest of the book. All in all, it remains an average story, not necessarily good, but neither frustrating or badly disappointing. I kind of lost interest in the book after 250 pages or so, yet it remained entertaining and provided some interesting thoughts on life as an attorney in the Wall Street. I have never been to New York, don't know much about lawyers and am not too interested in law as a subject of study, so I cannot judge how realistically Grisham has portrayed an attorney's life, but he managed to pull me into a world of power struggles and intrigues in spite of an anticlimatic ending, so it finally deserves a decent three-star rating.
Initially, I went to our local library, knowing they have tons of Grisham novels on their shelves, with the intention to borrow either "The Firm" or "The Client". I have watched the movie adaptions of both novels and enjoyed them immensely, so I wanted to figure out whether or not Grisham's novels are able to surprise me even more. Anyway, it turned out the library features all Grisham novels except for "The Firm" and "The Client". Dissatisfied, I randomly picked one of his other works without previously checking via Goodreads how popular the book is and which basic sentiment the average opinions represent, as I would usually have done. Soon afterwards I realized that not only is "The Associate" one of his younger works, but also one of his more criticized ones, and not without good reason.
Grisham introduceds an interesting protagonist I was able to sympathize with. Over the course of 300 pages, he establishes an intriguing atmosphere and makes his reader want to know how Kyle will eventually get out of his intricate situation. And then, just as everyone else seems to have criticized, he spends twenty pages on a disappointing climax and lets the story swash along for the rest of the book. All in all, it remains an average story, not necessarily good, but neither frustrating or badly disappointing. I kind of lost interest in the book after 250 pages or so, yet it remained entertaining and provided some interesting thoughts on life as an attorney in the Wall Street. I have never been to New York, don't know much about lawyers and am not too interested in law as a subject of study, so I cannot judge how realistically Grisham has portrayed an attorney's life, but he managed to pull me into a world of power struggles and intrigues in spite of an anticlimatic ending, so it finally deserves a decent three-star rating.
February 7, 2013
This story lacked a decent ending and consequently leaves an empty taste. Nowhere near the effort of his best works. 4 of 10 stars
January 7, 2022
My Summer reading schedule has entered its experimental phase. Since starting law school I had been keen to revisit the John Grisham books that I read in high school, excited to see how they would read the second time. However, despite several trips to the op-shop, I couldn’t get my hands on either The Firm or The Pelican Brief, so thought I would take on one of JG's more recent novels, almost with the preunderstanding that it would not be a good time. Although this book exceeded my expectations, it is not a good book.
Like all Grisham protagonists, Kyle McAvoy is the star of ivy league law (editor of the college law review, which there (as here) is shorthand for ‘best law student'). He is planning on forsaking the offers from the blue chip firms that fill his inbox and work in community interest law in any-town USA. However, when a mysterious bunch of bad guys (hilariously, Grisham never tells us who) catch wind of Kyle’s dark past, they blackmail him into accepting a role at one of Wall Street’s most powerful firms to steal legal secrets for them.
This plotline is ludicrous. You could almost feel Grisham straining not to simply rewrite The Firm (my ugly paperback edition even says “Grisham’s return to Firm” (fucking lol)). So, by route of messy compromise, there are two storylines, one in which a Harvard star gets the job of his dreams and another in which he is a spy for a shadowy cabal of cyber punks. Grisham barely attempts to make these storylines interact.
Because the whole action hinges on the protagonist being blackmailed, Grisham faces a stumbling block with how to dress Kyle’s dark past. Unsurprisingly, landing on “being involved in the rape of an unconscious girl” was not a good choice. How on earth are we supposed to feel any affection for Kyle McAvoy when a pillar of the story is him trying to smother that he was involved in a sex crime? Grisham obscures the exact extent of Kyle’s involvement, but going too far in that direction exposes the plot hole that Kyle wouldn’t be culpable and so this whole section of the novel was an offensive mess. And not just offensive to the reader’s intelligence.
Relatedly, this is the most misogynist thing I have ever read. It’s not simply a case of the novel’s passive ideology being dismissive of sexual assault (the rape “messiness” goes away in the end), but there is overt and offensive sexism throughout. A section towards the end includes a man lawyer negotiating with a woman lawyer about dropping the rape charge, and Grisham peppers the whole section with comments about the woman lawyers’ legs, the firm Kyle works for is considered progressive for hiring 30% women, and it is stated more than once that woman pressing the rape charge “enjoys playing the victim”. It would be overly charitable to Grisham to say that this was a decade before Me-Too and things have come a long way, this stuff would turn heads (and stomachs) in the 70s. I kept wondering if Grisham was cynically playing to an awareness that middle Americans enjoy being reminded that corporate America remains a man’s world, or if this is what Grisham genuinely thinks. (Which is worse?)
Even at his worst, the qualities that make Grisham a feature of middle-class bookshelves everywhere are on display. The guy knows how to tell a story (even a bad one). The pacing is fast as a whip and there is not an ounce of fat in these 400 pages. But the effortlessness of this book really showed. You can so tell this was his 21st novel, that he knew that not good was good enough.
Unsurprisingly, aside from a slight sense of guilt for enjoying this as much as I did, this book left me feeling nothing. Now, will chewing through The Associate make the reading experience of the Firm better or worse? Stay tuned capitalism fans.
Like all Grisham protagonists, Kyle McAvoy is the star of ivy league law (editor of the college law review, which there (as here) is shorthand for ‘best law student'). He is planning on forsaking the offers from the blue chip firms that fill his inbox and work in community interest law in any-town USA. However, when a mysterious bunch of bad guys (hilariously, Grisham never tells us who) catch wind of Kyle’s dark past, they blackmail him into accepting a role at one of Wall Street’s most powerful firms to steal legal secrets for them.
This plotline is ludicrous. You could almost feel Grisham straining not to simply rewrite The Firm (my ugly paperback edition even says “Grisham’s return to Firm” (fucking lol)). So, by route of messy compromise, there are two storylines, one in which a Harvard star gets the job of his dreams and another in which he is a spy for a shadowy cabal of cyber punks. Grisham barely attempts to make these storylines interact.
Because the whole action hinges on the protagonist being blackmailed, Grisham faces a stumbling block with how to dress Kyle’s dark past. Unsurprisingly, landing on “being involved in the rape of an unconscious girl” was not a good choice. How on earth are we supposed to feel any affection for Kyle McAvoy when a pillar of the story is him trying to smother that he was involved in a sex crime? Grisham obscures the exact extent of Kyle’s involvement, but going too far in that direction exposes the plot hole that Kyle wouldn’t be culpable and so this whole section of the novel was an offensive mess. And not just offensive to the reader’s intelligence.
Relatedly, this is the most misogynist thing I have ever read. It’s not simply a case of the novel’s passive ideology being dismissive of sexual assault (the rape “messiness” goes away in the end), but there is overt and offensive sexism throughout. A section towards the end includes a man lawyer negotiating with a woman lawyer about dropping the rape charge, and Grisham peppers the whole section with comments about the woman lawyers’ legs, the firm Kyle works for is considered progressive for hiring 30% women, and it is stated more than once that woman pressing the rape charge “enjoys playing the victim”. It would be overly charitable to Grisham to say that this was a decade before Me-Too and things have come a long way, this stuff would turn heads (and stomachs) in the 70s. I kept wondering if Grisham was cynically playing to an awareness that middle Americans enjoy being reminded that corporate America remains a man’s world, or if this is what Grisham genuinely thinks. (Which is worse?)
Even at his worst, the qualities that make Grisham a feature of middle-class bookshelves everywhere are on display. The guy knows how to tell a story (even a bad one). The pacing is fast as a whip and there is not an ounce of fat in these 400 pages. But the effortlessness of this book really showed. You can so tell this was his 21st novel, that he knew that not good was good enough.
Unsurprisingly, aside from a slight sense of guilt for enjoying this as much as I did, this book left me feeling nothing. Now, will chewing through The Associate make the reading experience of the Firm better or worse? Stay tuned capitalism fans.
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