Some may say that this was the wrong Grisham novel from which to distill his style and substance. On the substance side, I can see how this book is unlike Grisham. It appears to be somewhat short on the thrills and long on the chick lit side - except that the love interest is an unwritten novel.
However, this novel also deals much with writing and writers. Reading this from the narrator's pov on page 106, in addition to other somewhat derisive passages about underselling and literary writers, it is hard not to see an authorial bias in favor of the same straight-forward writing style in which this book is written:
"[The plot] was a nice setup, but the writing was so convoluted and pretentious that any reader would have difficulty plowing through. No scene was clear, so that the reader was never certain Ms. Trane obviously had a pen in one hand and a thesaurus in the other because Mercer saw long words for the first time. And just as frustrating, the dialogue was not identified with quotation marks, and often it was not clear who said what."
I'm beginning to wonder if Grisham himself sees this novel as somewhat of a guide to the writing life, a master spilling his secrets towards the end of his career. Just a thought.
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