BOOK REVIEW: The Client by John Grisham
1. Book:
Title: The Client
Author: John Grisham
Publisher: Arrow Books
Price: £8.00
Name: Kelly Wong
Age: 16
Class: 4a1
2. Theme:
The Client is about a boy named Mark Sway, who knows a secret information about the murder. He heard it from the lawyer of the murderer, who has commit suicide. The FBI is very interested in this information, but the Mafia is threatening him to kill him if he tells the secret. Since he heard the secret, his life takes a drastic change. He finds a lawyer, Reggie Love, who is willing to help him with his problem. She seems to be the only person to trust.
One of the themes is lying will get people nowhere. In the novel, Mark is forced to talk to the cops and the FBI. He is very scared of doing this, because he thinks that he might go to jail for witnessing a suicide, and because of that, lies to cops about what he witnessed. However, this backfires on him, as his lies continue to snowball, putting him at risk of getting into even more trouble than if he had just told the truth in the first place. For example: "Mark braced himself and breathed deeply. In a flash, he knew it was over. He'd blown it. Said too much. Lied too much. He'd lasted less than an hour with his story." This quote shows how Mark lied, he ended up making things worse for himself and has the possibility of getting into even more trouble.
The story shows how difficult it is to make such a choice: Tell the police about a murder, change your identity and move to another city and get out of this awful life, but always keep the feeling of being followed by the Mafia. Or just say nothing and be safe, but return to a very poor and unpleasant life.
3. Characters:
The two most important characters are Mark Sway and Reggie Love.
Mark Sway is 11 years old. He lives in Memphis, on a trailer site. He has one 8-year-old brother, Ricky and a mother, Dianne. His father had mistreated him, he was an alcoholic. Mark was not the only one, once his father mistreated his wife with a baseball bat. The marriage between his parents was only misery. He is interested in things about lawyers and justice and so on.
Reggie Love, 52 years old, is a lawyer specialized in children cases. Reggie Love is not her real name. Her old name is Regina. She was married to a rich man, a doctor. They got divorced and he ruined her life. He had enough money to get her on therapy. After many years of sadness, she got back to a normal life and she changed her life.
Reggie is the lawyer of Mark Sway. Mark despised Reggie at first, knowing that a woman was not capable of fulfilling his needs like a man could. Then something happened where Reggie grew on him, he got more used to her, and he found himself telling her personal things, spending tons of time with her, and starting to care for her.
She was the mother figure he never had. Mark and Reggie were in the tangle of the mess together. Mark realized through the whole ordeal he could not do everything by...
