Gray Mountain was a bit of a departure for John Grisham. It featured a female protagonist... which I think he did in Pelican Brief, but cannot recall another legal thriller in which he does that.
He tries hard to provide elements of the female voice, and while I'm not sure it's an unqualified success, it largely works and isn't distracting.
The structure of the story is kind of curious. My sister recommended the book to me, and, in her view, it was missing a chapter. I think she's right that there is something missing, though I think it's probably more than a chapter.
The book concerns Samantha Kofer, furloughed from her New York law firm to work at a legal aid clinic in Virginia.
I think the novel is about the choice facing Samantha (and by extension many lawyers at early stages in their careers).
Does she want to work at a big firm? Samantha thinks about the big money, life in the big city and the pursuit of large transactions (building her own model skyline), though her own role is largely clerical and her interaction with clients is limited and negative.
Does she want to work as a plaintiff's lawyer, representing a class of plaintiffs and making contingency fees on big class action lawsuits (like her Dad)?
Does she want to be a government lawyer, influenced by political winds and policy decisions as much as legal aspects of cases (like her Mom)?
Does she want to work as a local, small town lawyer (possibly legal aid) meeting face to face with clients and seeing how her advice affects them on a personal basis?
John Grisham has explored each of these in his various novels (I think maybe government lawyer has been given short shrift), and nicely explores the factors influencing Samantha's decisions and career path and gives her life influences to look at each of these.
If the novel was an exploration of how she chose her path in law, I'd say it was okay, though I didn't relate to her general lack of interest in the law and her own life. And even if at the end of the novel some aspects were still undecided or unresolved about how her career would develop, I'd say it was legitimate not to provide that closure, since a career is a work in progress. I'd almost rather the book end with offers from each of the different areas of law and you decide, based on her character development, where Samantha's path would take her.
The difficulty, for me, is that this doesn't seem to be the only focus of the novel. The idea of class action litigation, against Krull Mining as well as Lonerock and Casper Slate (a big law firm) is introduced, but the resolution was not, for me, fully satisfactory. As indicated, I can accept that there's a slice of life aspect to the novel and her career as it's developing. I can even accept that this is not The Rainmaker and the story isn't about her role in class actions (otherwise the author has made her career choice for her). But there are aspects of the plot that feel a little like a bait and switch, leaving a reader wanting more, wanting dramatics and closure.
Thinking of it, I'd have to concede that perhaps it's just my inability to relate to the character. Rudy, of The Rainmaker, made a choice about pursuing the plaintiff side litigation career path, and perhaps Samantha's facing the same choice from a slightly different perspective and doesn't get the thrill of the fight that Rudy had. Samantha of Gray Mountain never seems excited by all the dollars and social impacts of class actions, but is fairly dismissive throughout. She genuinely doesn't seem to care about whether or not she's involved in working on a class action law suit, whether at the individual client level or the research level. So the fact that the novel does not explore these areas in more detail could be more a factor that it's looking through her eyes at her areas of interest.
The third plot line, however is the problematic one. There's a murder, and suspicious thugs working for a secret organization, and a secret mountain fortress and a bit of a deus ex machina. While I can accept that a legal career is a work in progress, and closure and resolution aren't necessarily reasonable to expect in the description of the choices that lead to the lawyer you are today, I think it's fair to expect a resolution to major plot points dealing with the above. So my sister's comment is fair, and the ending is abrupt... as though Mr. Grisham realized he didn't want this to turn into a 600 page novel and ran out of plot point one before plot points two and three had been fully resolved.
I'm trying to find a way to look at this book that does more justice to it than that. I enjoy John Grisham's novels, particularly his legal thrillers, so am prepared to give him credit that the book as published is what he wanted it to look like. There are hints that the murder, mountain fortress and thugs may all be products of a paranoid imagination. That the characters in this (unlike Mitch of The Firm and Darby of The Pelican Brief) really have very little to be afraid of, and there are just a couple of unsettling coincidences which a certain type of personality can build up into excitement, but Samantha just doesn't care enough to do so.
While that's probably mostly a fair reading, it doesn't help me at the end of the day. Samantha does seem fairly apathetic. Maybe it's Mr. Grisham's attempt to write a millennial as bored, disinterested, difficult to engage and entitled and show her development into a true member of the community as well as finding her true calling within her profession. But on that ground I think it fails as well. That too needed more space (probably more than a chapter, a couple of hundred pages perhaps) because at the end she's still feeling and seeming as an outsider at a community funeral and is still not invested enough to generate the sense that she's inspired by passion for these people and her causes. There are a whole lot of plot items that occur in the last couple of chapters, none of which seems to affect Samantha much at all, she just drifts through it all.
In the end, if Mr. Grisham intended to show possible forks in the road for the legal career of a person who cared little for much of anything, and in the end found some level of enthusiasm for her chosen profession it's probably a success. But there were an awful lot of forks and plot points that I as a reader would have been interested in even if his protagonist was not, and her apathy left me, in the end, a little apathetic towards her as well.
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