sleeper54's Full Review: John Grisham - Skipping Christmas
The premise is promising. An analytical accountant--facing the absence of his only child and acutely aware of the true cost of celebrating Christmas--decides skipping Christmas and all the costs and the customary...uhh...customs might be a good idea.
But in the process of fulfilling this premise, the author produces a padded short story rather than a true novel. A story that fails to flesh out the characters or make us care about what motivates them or what happens to them.
--SPOILERS FOLLOW--
The daughter is never given a sense of character that tells us why she makes her decisions. Why does she decide to join the Peace Corps? She is absent from the story (other than the occasional thought of the mother) until the end when she suddenly decides to return home with her fiance. We have no way of knowing whether this is something that might be expected of her or out of character. The reader is left with accepting this convenient plot twist that is so necessary for the conclusion the reader is being driven toward.
The main characters, Luther and Nora (husband and wife), are shallowly portrayed as being more worried about whether they can trust the privacy of the tanning bed and whether to buy the annual Christmas traditions that once again are proffered to them. While this may touch a nerve in many readers, it does not enhance my involvement in what might happen to these cardboard characters.
The only point at which I even began to feel some honest human emotions from either of these people is when they offer a neighbor couple the use of their cruise tickets when they can not use them. Luther's realization that this may truly be the last Christmas together for this husband and wife (she is dying from cancer) is the one true, emotional, 'involving' moment that I remember from the story.
When they realize that their daughter is returning for Christmas and bringing her fiance(!?) they make a 'slapdash' decision that they must have the traditional Christmas of the tree, the party, the customs. Although no where previously in the story/novel do we get the idea that any of this would be important to them or to their daughter.
I am left with the impression that they do this because it is expected rather than because they want to do it. To me this just diminishes the impact of the story and the supposed 'moral of the story' that others have found.
--SPOILERS PRECEDE--
"Skipping Christmas" is like that one Christmas tradition among many others that you do each year. You surely could survive without 'doing it' (whatever 'it' is) this year, couldn't you? Which uncannily fits the premise of this book. But does little to convince this reader to encourage others to buy or read this book.
Sleeper54
--NOTICE--
This is the 17th review of this work. It is not intended to 'stand' by itself. Were it the first or third or even the fifth perhaps I might be 'more complete'. Please read this and as many other reviews as necessary for you to decide whether this book might be one you would like to read or own.
Luther and Nora Krank are fed up with the chaos of Christmas. The endless shopping lists, the frenzied dashes through the mall, the hassle of decorati...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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