Skipping Christmas, by John Grisham
A light story with a yucchy subtext
(Review posted 15 Oct 2006 22:50:45)

Copied here from an old weblog entry.

Speaking of liking things, I read John Grisham's "Skipping Christmas" the other day. (That was John Grisham, wasn't it? See how insecure I become when I can't get to Google?)

M thought it was a fun novel, and would probably call me an old curmudgeon if I told her that I found it horrible.

Oh, the writing was adequate, and it had funny and warm and genuine moments. But there is an icky underlying message: that attempts to escape from the expectations of conventional society are doomed, and that only once you see that and conform will you be happy, and once you do see that and conform, everything will go well and everyone will love you, including the people who were rotten to you while you were nonconforming.

One crowning moment of the icky message was in the midst of the "Wonderful Life" scene, when everyone has rallied 'round the protagonists and welcomed them back into the folds of convention, and everything is going right, and one of the wonderful things that goes right is that our protagonists discover that the man from Peru with whom their daughter has fallen in love doesn't have dark skin.

Sheesh.

(It occurs to me, years after writing those original words, that maybe Grisham is doing this on purpose, as a sort of parody. But there's no actual evidence for this, and it's far too easy an excuse. So I'm not lettin' him off the hook...)