Review of
Bleachers,
by John Grisham ISBN 0385511612
Five out of five stars
An unusual look back at the glory days
While a winning
high school football team is the main plot premise of this book, it is much
more about retrospective to the glory days of high school. Under the brilliant
and at times sadistic control of Coach Eddie Rake, the Messina High School
football team was nearly unbeatable. With a winning streak spread over several
seasons, the Rake was a hero, and the team was the biggest thing in town.
Neely Crenshaw
was a high school all-American quarterback at Messina, and he seemed destined for
the NFL until his knee was destroyed in college. It is fifteen years after Crenshaw
starred at Messina and Coach Rake is on his deathbed. Many of his former
players are coming back to town in order to pay their respects. Groups of them
meet in the bleachers at the football stadium, hence the title of the book.
As the former
players reminisce about their glory days and reflect on their lives, what they
have become is a cross section of what people do after high school. Their “professions”
range from prison inmate to career criminal to various professions. It is a
story of how they all both loved and hated Coach Rake and how each of them
dealt with him as well as each other.
In sports, the
number of people that had glorious high school sports careers and then little
after that far outnumbers the number that went on to additional glory in
college and beyond. This book is about them, how they manage to come together
and once again become a band of brothers when their former coach passes away.
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