Average Customer Rating: 
A Painted House >
Customer Review #1:
 Lukes Initiation
A PAINTED HOUSE by John Grisham is a classic piece of Americana. Luke Chandlers adventures in an Arkansas cotton field are as eloquent as Tom Sawyers trip down the Mississippi or Huck Finns sneaky excursions in and out of his aunts house. Secrets keep piling up on seven-year old Luke during the summer of l952, a pivotal time for his struggling farm family. He deals with secret knowledge of vicious beatings, an illegitimate baby, and murder. Its much more than an adult could be expected to handle successfully. But Luke does it with great coolness. John Grisham is a lawyer turned writer. His storytelling skills have thrilled readers ever since A TIME TO KILL was published in l988. Plot twists turn up at a fast pace and the reader is left to wonder how young Luke can withstand the steady pounding of one tragedy after another. They engulf his life like the flood waters that creep inch by inch into the cotton fields. But the secret painting of the farm house is a metaphor of hope and change to come. Grisham crafted a story that is complete. It works. Subplots intertwine masterfully creating a tightly woven tapestry of a lifestyle that exists in the poor backwaters of the South. Grisham fans will enjoy A PAINTED HOUSE even though the courtroom has been left behind. The brutal work in the cotton fields becomes real and a perfect setting to display human passions that flare and wreck havoc. Some of Grishams other novels are THE FIRM, THE CHAMBER, and THE BRETHEN.
A Painted House >
Customer Review #2:
A much better book than city people seem to recognise
Having been the age of Grishams protagonist on a crop-growing farm in Australia some 50 years ago, I recognise A Painted Houses excellent picture of life in that period among marginal crop farmers relying on migrant workers. Its a remarkable piece of work, and with minor changes could be about crop farmers almost anywhere -- as they were then. I assume that the hand-run farm on which Grisham based his book would have been amalgamated into a much larger property probably owned by some corporation and watered and farmed with incredibly expensive machinery that only a corporation could afford; and that few members of the families he names would still live in the old rural neighbourhood with the rest having moved to the cities ... but Grisham got the whole thing right down pat. A shame that folks who expect only legal thrillers from him find that hard to understand, and value. The story has the accustomed easy Grisham narrative flow. People wanting to consider the universality of this book would be able to track down the Australian rural poem "Said Hanrahan" through a Google search. Poem and novel run alongside on the issue of farmers, talking about that everlasting preoccupation, weather.
A Painted House >
Customer Review #3:
 What happened to the ending?
1ST let me say I love John Grisham but this was not one of his best works. It was if the story just ended. You want to see what happens to the characters when you read a book and this one just left you hanging. Not one story line was finished. You get to a point in the book and think it must be coming up...then you realize you only have 20 pages left and he cant tie up all the loose ends. The ending of this book was a big disappointment.
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