Sooley: The Gripping Bestseller from John Grisham - The perfect Christmas present

Is John Grisham deliberately trying to alienate his international fans? It certainly looks that way. Eight years ago, he wrote the absolutely appalling baseball novel, 'Calico Joe', which, as an Englishman unfamiliar with the game, I struggled to follow, finishing the book with the opinion that I had just finished one of the worst books I have ever read.Now, with 'Sooley' ,John Grisham appears to have written the second most tedious book he has ever produced. A totally incomprehensible novel,(to non-basketball fans, at least) taken up with detailed narrative about the basketball matches that the eponymous central character plays in.As a long-time John Grisham fan, I found this book extremely disappointing, and not of the usual standard that we have come to expect from this author. Unusually for me, seventy-three pages in, I found the book so mind-numbingly boring, I threw it in the bin. Stick to courtroom thrillers in future, Mr Grisham!!!!!!!!!!

I pre-purchase Grisham as soon as Amazon lets me know that another novel is coming. Oh, I wish I hadn't wasted my money. This is the most disappointing book the man has ever written. Grisham, supposedly an international author, goes into endless, tedious detail of basketball - a sport that is significant in only three or four countries throughout the world. Chapter after chapter is devoted to move-by-move analysis of a game that most people couldn't care less about.I buy Grisham for fantastic thrillers about people and the law. I'm guessing that he's either climbed onboard the woke bandwagon or decided that's where the money lies. If he wants to write this type of novel he could at least use a pseudonym - or make it very clear that he has abandoned the genre that made his name.Unless you're a hard core basketball fan with a desire to understand the implications of a vicious ethnic conflict DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.

Sooley is the thirty-sixth novel by that consummate master of storytelling, John Grisham. It is, however, a different kind of story to that normally expected of Grisham, and it may not please every one of his literary fans. The reason for this is that Sooley is not the normal type of story emanating from Grisham’s literary imagination, that is, it is not a story that focuses on the law, law breaking, and court procedures. Its range is more widespread.Sooley, which is sub-titled “One man, One Hope, One chance to become a legend”, is located in the two different world; one world is the sport of basketball, the other is the world of the African refugee camp. Samuel Sooleyman is a young man from Lotta, a village in South Sudan. He is a promising basketball player from a poor family, who is chosen to play for his country in a basketball tournament to be held in the United States of America.The early part of the novel follows his efforts to get into the team and its participation in the tournament. Samuel’s story is told against the poverty of his village, and the fact that there is warfare in South Sudan. This warfare has a huge impact on Samuel Sooleyman’s family. These two primary scenarios are set back-to-back in the initial stages of the novel.The middle stages of the narrative focus on Samuel’s success at basketball whilst in the USA, and the reason he was given the nickname “Sooley”. To this stage of the novel, Grisham tells a straightforward narrative that is full of descriptions of, and events surrounding, games of basketball – always interspersed with accounts of how his dislocated family fares in a Ugandan refugee camp. The descriptions of the basketball encounters are often very technical and this may annoy some readers of the novel.However, for this reviewer, who knows little of the technicalities of basketball, there is minimum impact on the enjoyment of reading the novel. The story-telling variations necessitated by the focus on the details of playing on a basketball court, is little different in its literary and imaginative impact to that experienced by reading of detailed accounts, descriptions of the law, and proceedings in a court of law that occur in many of John Grisham’s other novels. Indeed, this shows the variety of novelistic skills possessed by the author. His knowledge of basketball, as with law, seems quite profound – and it is instructive!To reveal many of the details of the second half of the book would be to lessen its narrative drama and the impact of its human story. The fact needs to be stated, however, that it was increasingly difficult to put the book down, and this reviewer was eager to turn each page. As has become customary with Grisham’s writing style, the different aspects of the interwoven stories are not allowed to remain on the pages for any great amounts of time – each segment of each aspect of the story is as long, or as short, as it is required for story-telling and organisational purposes. The story unfolds methodically, with plenty of narrative colour, as well as understanding of the depths of human suffering and tragedy. The conclusion of the narrative comes all too soon.As a novelist, John Grisham has received many accolades. With the publication of Sooley, Grisham has been called “a superb, instinctive story-teller”, “a master of plotting and pacing”, and, for this reviewer, perhaps the highest praise of all, in that his books are “smart, imaginative, and populated by complex, interesting people”.There is no doubt that, in his thirty-sixth novel, John Grisham has been “willing to strike out in new directions”. This reviewer welcomes these new directions and warmly commends Sooley to the many Grisham aficionados, as well as to those who might consider an invitation to discover what this author offers in literary delights

I know little about basketball and this book has taught me a lot. It needs to be read with a dictionary or google for interpreting the terms as therir is no glossary in the book. I jump bombs and knew what a slam and a dunk were and hence a slam-dunk but now understand bombing and what "finding only net" means too!I have not finished the book yet so no spoilers from me!John Grisham can tell a good story about anything and his research is amazing. I need to be reminded constantly that this is fiction it is so real.

I bought this book because I like John Grisham's work, the way he writes, and his convoluted plotlines.But there ought to be a disclaimer, on the front cover, and on the first page as well, warning the prospective reader that, if they are not up-to-speed on how basket ball is played, how the very sport is organised, as well as the term of the bloody game; you would need a sports dictionary before you begin.A great disappointment!!!!