Book info

• Title Bleachers
• Author John Grisham
• Year 2003
• Genre Sports

Glory never dies. Neely Crenshaw was the best quarterback ever to play for legendary high school football team, the Messina Spartans. But fifteen years later, with his glory days far behind him, the man everyone remembers is Coach Eddie Rake. When Neely returns home to bury the dying Coach Rake, he's not alone. Many Spartans veterans want to pay tribute to the man who moulded them. But stories soon emerge that could tarnish the coach's legacy. As Neely struggles to come to terms with his explosive relationship with the coach and the choices he made as a young man, the stakes have never been higher...

Thoughts

A lot of the reviews for this book are complaints that it’s nothing like what you’d expect from a John Grisham novel - there’s no courtroom drama to be found. But if you go into it knowing that, then it’s quite a good, relatively short novel. It tracks that difficult thing of going back home after a lengthy absence when things are so different and yet, also very much the same. There’s a lot of insight into the challenges of being a hometown hero, and when things go wrong, and burying the past before moving on. Great characterisation and very readable, but have to agree that not a lot actually happens. You just have to go with it to get the most out of it.

Rating: 4 / 5