Bleachers: A Novel by John Grisham (Epub)

Description

High school all-American Neely Crenshaw was probably the best quarterback ever to play for the legendary Messina Spartans. Fifteen years have gone by since those glory days, and Neely has come home to Messina to bury Coach Eddie Rake, the man who molded the Spartans into an unbeatable football dynasty.

Now, as Coach Rake’s “boys” sit in the bleachers waiting for the dimming field lights to signal his passing, they replay the old games, relive the old glories, and try to decide once and for all whether they love Eddie Rake – or hate him. For Neely Crenshaw, a man who must finally forgive his coach – and himself – before he can get on with his life, the stakes are especially high.

User’s Reviews

Review “As taut and twisting as a well-thrown spiral.”—People“A sure-footed storyteller with an undeniable mastery of plotting, pacing, and tone.”—The New York Times Book Review“[Grisham] makes this football game so real that the reader can almost see and hear it.”—The New York Times “Some of the best writing from Grisham . . . [He] makes Bleachers sing.”—Los Angeles TimesFrom the Paperback edition. Amazon.com Review With Bleachers John Grisham departs again from the legal thriller to experiment with a character-driven tale of reunion, broken high school dreams, and missed chances. While the book falls short of the compelling storytelling that has made Grisham a bestselling author, it is nonetheless a diverting novella that succeeds as light fiction. The story centers on the impending death of the Messina Spartans’ football coach Eddie Rake. One of the most victorious coaches in high school football history, Rake is a man both loved and feared by his players and by a town that relishes his 13 state titles. The hero of the novel is Neely Crenshaw, a former Rake All-American whose NFL prospects ended abruptly after a cheap shot to the knees. Neely has returned home for the first time in years to join a nightly vigil for Rake at the Messina stadium. Having wandered through life with little focus since his college days, he struggles to reconcile his conflicted feelings towards his former coach, and he assays to rekindle love in the ex-girlfriend he abandoned long ago. For Messina and for Neely, the homecoming offers the prospect of building a life after Rake. Physically a narrow book, Bleachers is a modest fiction in many respects. The emotional scope is akin to that of a short story, with a single-minded focus on explorations of nostalgia and regret. The dialogue, especially that of Neely’s friend Paul Curry, is sometimes wooden as characters recall Messina history in paragraphs that were perhaps better left to the narrator. But Grisham has otherwise written a well-made, entertaining–if a bit sentimental–story. –Patrick O’Kelley –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly Grisham demonstrated he could produce bestsellers without legal aid with The Painted House and Skipping Christmas, and he’ll undoubtedly do so again with this slight but likable novel of high school football, a legendary coach and the perils of too early fame. Fifteen years after graduation, Neely Crenshaw, one-time star quarterback of the Messina Spartans, returns home on hearing news of the impending death of tough-as-nails coach Eddie Rake. Neely knows the score: “When you’re famous at eighteen, you spend the rest of your life fading away.” It’s a lesson he’s learned the hard way after destroying his knee playing college ball and drifting through life in an ever-downward spiral. He and his former teammates sit in the bleachers at the high school stadium waiting for Rake to die, drinking beer and reminiscing. There is a mystery involving the legendary ’87 championship, and Neely has unfinished business with an old high school sweetheart, but neither story line comes to much. Readers will guess the solution to the mystery, as does the town police chief when it’s divulged to him (” `We sorta figured it out,’ said Mal”) and Neely’s former girlfriend doesn’t want to have anything to do with his protestations of love (“You’ll get over it. Takes about ten years”). The stirring funeral scene may elicit a few tears, but Neely’s eulogy falls curiously flat. After living through four hard days in Messina, the lessons Neely learns are unremarkable (“Those days are gone now”). Many readers will come away having enjoyed the time spent, but wishing there had been a more sympathetic lead character, more originality, more pages, more story and more depth.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From the Inside Flap High school all-American Neely Crenshaw was probably the best quarterback ever to play for the legendary Messina Spartans. Fifteen years have gone by since those glory days, and Neely has come home to Messina to bury Coach Eddie Rake, the man who molded the Spartans into an unbeatable football dynasty.Now, as Coach Rake’s “boys” sit in the bleachers waiting for the dimming field lights to signal his passing, they replay the old games, relive the old glories, and try to decide once and for all whether they love Eddie Rake – or hate him. For Neely Crenshaw, a man who must finally forgive his coach –– and himself – before he can get on with his life, the stakes are especially high. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Booklist Grisham’s latest is a departure for him, perhaps even more so than A Painted House (2001). There are no lawyers on the run or murders to be unraveled. Instead, Bleachers is the story of a high-school football hero returning to the town of his youth when he receives news that his coach is dying. Neely Crenshaw has bittersweet memories of playing football for the Messina Spartans. Without a doubt, his career as the Spartans’ quarterback was the pinnacle of his glory days, but his contentious relationship with Coach Eddie Rake taints his memories of the experience. Eddie Rake is man who is impossible to fully love or fully hate; his “boys” have memories of running miles in the stifling August heat and being yelled at mercilessly by their coach, but they also knew a man who cared deeply about the game and the futures of his players. As Eddie lays dying of cancer, Neely and many of the other former players gather together to remember their coach–his stunning six-year winning streak and many championship games, as well as the tragedy that led to the end of his career, and the incident that Neely cannot forgive or forget. Touching and quiet, this is a meditative, thoughtful tale that should find an audience with anyone from former and current football players to those who cheer them on. Kristine HuntleyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From School Library Journal Adult/High School-A small klatch of players on Messina High School’s 1987 football team assembles on the bleachers of Rake Field, home of the winning Spartans, and named after their controversial coach. Eddie Rake was the bane and bounty of three decades of athletes, and now he is dying. His personality comes to life as his team members recollect what it was like to play for him. As they come to roost on the bleachers, they all have a story from the coach’s school of hard knocks. This is especially true of all-American quarterback, Neely Crenshaw. Coping with setbacks, longing for an old flame, and trying to make sense of the impending passing of the man who pushed him to the brink but whom he ultimately eulogizes is Neely’s lot, and, readers can hope, the beginning of better luck. Teens will jeer and cheer in the appropriate places as they keep turning the pages, and, like the flavorful characters, will gain understanding from the perspective of the stands.Karen Sokol, Fairfax County Public Schools, VACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ Audiobook Review – High school all-American Neely Crenshaw was probably the best quarterback ever to play for the legendary Messina Spartans. Fifteen years have gone by since those glory days, and Neely has come home to Messina to bury Coach Eddie Rake, the man who molded the Spartans into an unbeatable football dynasty. Now, as Coach Rake’s “boys” sit in the bleachers waiting for the dimming field lights to signal his passing, they replay the old games, relive the old glories, and try to decide once and for all whether they love Eddie Rake – or hate him. For Neely Crenshaw, a man who must finally forgive his coach – and himself – before he can get on with his life, the stakes are especially high. Narrated by John Grisham himself…

⭐ At first I thought this book does not read like John Grisham. The more I read the emotions inside of me said “Wow, this is a great book”. The feelings expressed were what most people feel at one time or another. I love the legal-courtroom Grisham. But this book grabs the football lovers and those of us who do not care about football, but really love Grisham.

⭐ This is a high school football story, but it is really about the kids and their coach, not the game. It is also about a terrific player, with great promise, whose career ends with injury. The coach drives his players beyond hard. Grisham always seems to write great stories, and this one of them.

⭐ Despondent and adrift, former high-school All-American football star Neely Crenshaw returns to his childhood home to grieve — for his terminally ill coach, lost dreams and an adult life of frustration, futility and fear. It’s hard not to feel for Neely, and John Grisham trots out every convention to enlist the reader in the star’s legion of fans. “Bleachers” is an effective, sensitive and tidy portrait of the impact of high-school football on the men who played the game and an examination of the enduring legacy of a coach who inspired loathing and love in his players. The novel is also melodramatic, predictable and manipulative, and instead of a being a genuinely moving tribute to a coach’s undying presence, “Bleachers” meanders in familiar territory, forfeiting integrity for clichés.Before there was Neely Crenshaw, there was Chip Hilton, whose wholesome exploits on the athletic field made him an icon for the Baby Boomer generation. Hilton’s coach was a genuine role model, never compromising his athletes’ need for authentic validation to the altar of victory. In turn, Hilton’s inevitable victories comforted readers who needed assurance that right prevails, honor is worth the effort and adult role models exist in America’s high schools.Crenshaw’s Coach Rake is a complicated but flawed man, driven to win, devoted to excellence, and inflexible in his insistence on practice, execution and fearless performance. His former players never seem to grow up, suspended in memory, frozen on the picture-perfect gridiron of Messina High School. As stereotyped as Chip Hilton was in the 1960s, Neely Crenshaw is even less complicated. His angst is tiresome, his hidden secrets obvious. Even before Coach Rake dies, we know his players will revisit the past, confront their ghosts and come out of the valley of death ennobled.What makes this pat formula work is Grisham’s gift with dialogue. Neely confronts teammates (one a model of middle-class stability, one an inmate, one gay) as well as his spurned former girl-friend with a combination of stoic pain and courageous determination. Through this gentle odyssey, we watch a grown man truly become a functional adult. But the observations require us to wade through saccharine vignettes, absolutely contrived conversations and stereotyped characters.In the most painful sense, Grisham is preaching to the choir. Those who are less than enthralled with football or who are aware of its limits will find “Bleachers” effective propaganda but inadequate literature. Those who have played the game, who constantly relive their pasts and faithfully advocate the sport as the salvation of our society will sleep with the novel under their pillows.

⭐ Both the plot and character development were interesting, but all together, the book was slightly boring. I have read lots of other books from this author, and they were all fantastic reads, so maybe it was just this one book.

⭐ This slim (168 pages) novel follows a week in the vigil and funeral for an historic high school football coach in a small town devoted religiously to the sport. Actually, fanatics, crazed, zealots, insane boosters and other, even stronger words come to mind to describe the town’s commitment, The pending death of the coach gives reason for a goodly number of his 700-plus former athletes to come into town. Neely – the knee-damaged super quarterback of the stunning 1987 state championship — is back, for the first time in a long time. He, not the dying coach, is the center of the story.Supporting Neely is a good array of colorful characters, high school jock stereotypes – the gangly, misfooted punter who later comes out of the closet and now owns a book store, the star receiver now managing the local bank, the convict, the ex-convict, and the current sheriff, the scrawny back who suffers a terrible fate, and more. And there is the memory of the perfect, dumb, devilish, blonde cheerleader, who is out of town but on the mind of more players than just Neely. She took Neely away from another stereotype: the cute girl who grows up to be perfect. Neely can’t forget her and she can’t forgive him for leaving her for the legs and lungs of the vixen.There is not much time to develop the characters, not in these few pages. Two threads run through the book: the death that led to the coach’s firing and the mystery behind that 1987 state championship when, trailing 31-0 at the half, Neely and Silo (Yes, he’s built like a silo; there’s also one athlete named Hindu.) lead the team back for a miraculous win. Best of all, one alum drags out a tape of the second half, allowing a radio broadcast to magnify the mystery: Why did the coaches not return to the field for the second half.The funeral and the final showdown with the jilted first love provide answers. While no great novel, and no great work of art, “Bleachers” offers a sweet trip down memory lane for any boy who ever fastened a leather chin strap on an old high school helmet, and who never got the girl, the championship, or the short-lived, bittersweet glory. And you can read it in ninety minutes. Or rent “Everybody’s All-American” to watch Dennis Quaid play someone quite like Neely.

⭐ It has been a while since I have read a John Grisham book, but this is just as good as I remember. Not a typical legal read as expected from Grisham but still his style of writing applied to a football story.

⭐ There will be lots of football fans who will enjoy this story that does really take you inside a high school player and coach experience, and beautifully written of course. But it was more a love letter to a sport and a way of life. Not a typical tension-filled Grisham experience.

⭐ Although the success of the coach in the story is unheard of, some of the things from the book apply as well to my coach in high school. I even quoted one of the statements about what the coach did when talking about my coach. Interesting story as well.

⭐ The best John Gresham so far. Have read all the rest. I have to believe it was based upon a true story. One you want to believe was a true story.Such a good book. One I will long rememberThanks John.

Keywords

Free Download Bleachers: A Novel in Epub format
Bleachers: A Novel Epub Free Download
Download Bleachers: A Novel 2010 Epub Free
Bleachers: A Novel 2010 Epub Free Download
Download Bleachers: A Novel Epub
Free Download Ebook Bleachers: A Novel