Book Review 1: Weak Grisham

Playing For Pizza
John Grisham
272 Pages
Doubleday

I hate John Grisham. Why should he be allowed to get a legal education, practice law a little bit and then go write best seller after best seller while coaching little league baseball and generally not aging and being good looking and... well... I digress. I would like to tell you I hate him because he cannot write but that would be... a lie. he can write. he can write his pants off on almost any subject. He draws big oversimplified characters that identify with our own personal traits in the broadest manner possible. They are likable, hate-able, believable, incredible. Most of his legal thrillers have nothing to do with the law and everything to do with lawyers and once you have been practicing long enough... all the characters are believable.

“Playing for Pizza” like “The Painted House” veers away from his genre of legal thriller. Instead (and this is what I really hate) he writes about something that interests or in this case amuses him. he takes a dumb football quarterback from Iowa with a great arm and a bad head. The book starts with him reviving from a coma in a Cleveland hospital with his small time agent keeping vigil. He has just come in as third string quarterback and blown the division championship for the Browns in an almost surreal way. The descriptions of him blowing the lead and the homicidal reactions of the Browns fans are painful to read.

The bottom line is that he cannot cut it in the NFL with his head issues and after this prime time blow up he is not hirable even as a third string quarterback and even Canada is not interested. He heads for Florida to play some golf, sleep around a little bit and get his head back together (sounds like a lovable character, right?) and his agent calls with an unusual job playing in Italy. Not exactly the NFL Europe but his agent lures him there with the idea of a vacation and 20k in pay for a few months with an apartment and a car and alleged Italian cheerleaders (a lie as it turns out).

He gets there and through some ups and downs and a little personal growth leads his team inexorably forward and to a championship. Even though he acknowledges the football is not much better then Division 3 college ball it is a huge victory and he has things luring him away and messing with his head. A falling opera singer, a possible new contract (and professional life) in Canada but somehow, improbably, with the help of a good coach and another screwed up (but not too screwed up) college girl (tourist) he perseveres and wins the day.

It is not a great morality play and it is not a great book but it was a good and easy read. The book is worth it for the descriptions of the food and Italian culture alone. You do get caught up in the characters and he never asks you to invest too much in a story and he gives you more then enough payback for it to be worthwhile. 6 1/2 Slingers on the 10 scale.