May 2008
Time Out - Books
The Appeal
by John Grisham;
Doubleday, 2008
For decades, the vile Krane Chemical Corpora-tion dumped toxins in the groundwater of a Mississippi town. Years later, an unusual number of residents are dying from cancer and the sinister connection seems obvious. One local woman—who lost both her husband and son within weeks—wins a $41-million settlement with the help of trial lawyers Wes and Mary Grace Payton. The triumph is short-lived, however, as no money can be paid out until the company’s appeal is heard by the state’s Supreme Court. According to Krane head Carl Trudeau, “not one dime of Krane money will ever be touched by those ignorant people.” Yet, Trudeau’s plan is not to hire better lawyers with stronger arguments; nobody seriously questions Krane’s culpability. Instead, he plans to unseat a Supreme Court judge so as to swing what is expected to be a 5–4 decision. The ordeal unfolds over 300 pages, during which a judicial election is fixed, the public are cynically manipulated, hard-earned reputations are besmirched, and justice is methodically subverted. Though the plot seems far-fetched—and Grisham has crafted more thrilling narratives in the past—this is a stirring piece of popular fiction that depicts a story eerily familiar in the world of corporate America.
The Ball is Round:
A Global History of Soccer
by David Goldblatt;
Riverhead Trade, 2008
In a few weeks the European Soccer Championships will kick off in Austria and Switzerland. Even if you can’t brandish a couple of coveted stadium tickets, perhaps you would like to impress your friends with soccer trivia or profound knowledge of the social and economic implications of the sport. This information and more is provided in a single book by David Goldblatt, who undertook the Promethean task of depicting the “global history” of the game, from its infancy on the playing fields of elite nineteenth-century English public schools, to its global hegemony today. Among the highlights of the vol-ume is a convincing theory on how Fordism influenced the game’s early tactical innovations. Darker chapters deal with the promotion of soccer by Fascist regimes in the 1930s or the secretive bureaucrats at FIFA, presently in the grips of turbo-capitalism. Ultimately, it’s all just a game. The European Championships will be a celebration on par with the 2006 World Cup, bringing together thousands of fans of the round ball, and, naturally of the players!
The Story of a Marriage
by Andrew Sean Greer;
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2008
Pearlie and Holland Cook were high school sweethearts, separated by World War II and reunited by chance several years after. In 1953, the two are living in California’s Bay Area with their son, who is afflicted with polio. Holland is in poor health as well. Life is generally happy, but her husband and son’s problems keep Pearlie from true contentment. Then, one afternoon, a stranger calls on Pearlie: an attractive man named Buzz Drummer, who turns out to be one of Holland’s war buddies. Buzz becomes a regular guest at the Cook home, until Buzz shocks Pearlie with the revelation that he and Holland were more than just friends during the war, and offers to pay her to help them reunite. Following Greer’s second novel,
The Confession of Max Tivoli, the author once again displays his gift in portraying people trapped by the social confines of their era, and the desperate measures they are prepared to take in an attempt to escape them. <<<
