I was not in the slightest bit looking forward to having to read a novel and then having to write a critical analysis on it. It is difficult for me to sit down and read a book all the way through, but then I picked up the novel The Street Lawyer by John Grisham and I could not put it down. The novel is fast-paced moving from one scene to the next with no unnecessary details and it constantly left me wanting to read more to find out what was going to happen. Another factor I find important about the novel is that it deals with the factual details of the world of the homeless in America. In particular, their barely audible legal voice in a world dominated by large, all-powerful law firms.
Grisham wrote the novel after doing extensive research in Washington D.C., where he met with lawyers and poor people and even a mother with three young children who provided Grisham the inspiration for a fragile family in the book. This novel's portrayal of the homeless is influenced by poverty rates in America during the twentieth century, and Grisham's story may touch the souls of readers because of its harsh reality. The subject of this story is real in America everyday thousands of people live in absolute poverty. Grisham is illustrating the opposite side of the "American dream," a goal that is beyond reach for many Americans. As a result, even if they are not poor, working class and middle class people identify with the reality of the economic struggle in America. Therefore Grisham's novel The Street Lawyer is engaging because it strengthens the reality that in America there are few people that are able to live up to the "American Dream."
In The Street Lawyer, the main character, Michael Brock, a 32-year-old antitrust attorney, has a remarkable transformation that happens over a period of only thirty-two days. Before being taken hostage by a homeless man in his law firm, Michael knows nothing about the homeless community. The reader learns about the issue at the same time as Michael. Therefore, Grisham presents straightforward characters and prose to the readers in order for them to secure the core of the serious issues that he dramatizes. "I played with my soup, which, thanks to Miss Dolly, was really quite good, but couldn't get beyond the fact that I, Michael Brock, an affluent white boy from Memphis and Yale and Drake & Sweeney, was sitting among the homeless in the basement of a church in the middle of Northwest D.C." (83-84).
Grisham's fast-pace nature keeps readers in suspense, "We drove the well-plowed streets of Northwest Washington, blocks and section of boarded-up rowhouses, past projects so tough ambulance drivers refused to enter, past schools with razor wire glistening on top of the chain link, into neighborhoods permanently scarred by riots." (100). After reading the line I could not perceive what would occur next, Would the characters come upon something dramatic. The Street Lawyer is not in the least morsel boring, it hits hard on the first page, and continues to hit until the last page. I would recommend The Street Lawyer to anyone required to write a critical analysis on a novel, in fact I cannot wait to read more John Grisham's works.
Andrea Osborne
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