You know this country has gone loony for football when even the king of the legal thriller puts down his briefcase and picks up a pair of shoulder pads. In this short novel Grisham cheers the autumnal splendor of high school football as played under those glowing, and often cruel, Friday-night lights. The central characters—a cocky quarterback and a coach with a God complex—are as thinly drawn as those in Grisham's holiday stinkeroo Skipping Christmas, but the author's passion for the game—and sharp play-by-play writing—lead the book to a narrow victory.
Neely Crenshaw is in a glory daze. The thirtysomething loner with a bum knee and a failed football career returns to his hometown, where he remains beloved for his high school quarterbacking heroics. The only bigger celeb is his former coach, the tyrannical but near-unbeatable Eddie Rake, now on his deathbed. Unsure whether he loves or hates Rake, Crenshaw dives into the past for answers. Grisham can be cheesy when waxing on about how boys become men. But when the talking stops and the tackling starts, most notably in a championship battle, his writing is as taut and twisting as a well-thrown spiral. (Doubleday, $19.95)
BOTTOM LINE: And the crowd goes wild
By Sabin Willet
Critic's Choice
This Beantown Bonfire of the Vanities tracks Tom Wolfe closely, at times slavishly, but in his breakthrough third novel, Willet, a Boston lawyer, is nearly as hilarious as the master. And he adds something Bonfire lacks: someone to root for. Brilliant but easygoing, Fritz Brubaker coasts as a mid-level exec at a toy company, leaving time for sailing. His lawyer wife, Linda, a pinstriped piranha who checks e-mail during dinner, thinks he's lazy. Then a lying CEO and a panicky post-9/11 stock market bankrupt Fritz's company. The deeply honorable Fritz faces prison.
Willet dissects America's business class, from how they cheat on their spouses (quickly, so they can get back to their Blackberries) to how they cheat stockholders in bankruptcy, and he bares their secret motivation: the fear, above all, of being "subject to criticism." Willet's stock is going through the roof. (Villard, $24.95)
BOTTOM LINE: Smart investment
By Jhumpa Lahiri
A strong and satisfying follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning story collection Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri's first novel addresses the problems confronting Indian immigrants in this country. They attempt to remain loyal to their traditions amid the dizzying demands, dislocations and seductions of modern American life.
The hugely appealing hero is a young man, Gogol Ganguli, named after the Russian writer his father was reading on the night when he was saved from a train wreck. Gogol's name becomes a perfect symbol of the misunderstandings and confusions that he must sort out in order to forge an identity that combines his family's values with those of the utterly dissimilar world he experiences at school and in the course of his love affairs with American women. Gracefully written and filled with well-observed details, Lahiri's novel--like her hero--manages to bridge two very different societies and to give us the absolute best of both. (Houghton Mifflin, $24)
•KRISTIN DAVIS Any Human Heart by William Boyd: "It's a beautiful book. I had Charlotte [on Sex and the City] reading it in a scene too."
•MANDY MOORE To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: "I haven't read it since eighth grade. After a couple years, my memory started to get fuzzy."
•RACHAEL LEIGH COOK Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich: "This writer gave up everything she had for a few months, moved to different cities, got minimum-wage jobs and tried to live off of them. It reminds you how thankful you should be."
JIMMY KIMMEL Positively Fifth Street by James McManus: "It's about the World Series of poker. Great book."
•WILLIAM H. MACY The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown: "It's a rollicking mystery I can't solve. It has me thinking 'What if?' all the time."
•DANA DELANY Mystic River by Dennis Lehane: "I was so enthralled I bought every other Lehane book."
•KELLY ROWLAND Knight in Shining Armor by RB. Wilson: "It's about being patient for the right man. It has a lot of good things to say about dating."
•HILARY DUFF Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding: "I loved the movie. Summer reading is fun because I don't have to do it for school."
- Contributors:
- Sean Daly,
- Kyle Smith,
- Francine Prose.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
