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A Painted House
by John Grisham

The author of such classic legal thrillers as The Firm and A Time to Kill breaks out of the mold with his latest novel, A Painted House (available February 6, 2001). Inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas, Grisham's new novel follows the tale of farm boy Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his family in a little house that's never been painted. The Chandlers farm 80 acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready, they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it.

For six weeks they pick cotton, battling the heat, the rain, and fatigue, and, sometimes, each other. As the weeks pass Luke sees and hears things no seven-year-old could possibly be prepared for, and finds himself keeping secrets that not only threaten the crop but will change the lives of the Chandlers forever. A Painted House is a moving portrait of one boy's journey from innocence to experience.

Read our Q&A below with John Grisham -- in which he tells about his new novel, his ideal independent bookstore, his writing influences, and what he's reading now. Or, have a peek at an excerpt from A Painted House!

BookSense.com Q&A with John Grisham

A Painted House is considered straight fiction, as opposed to a legal thriller, your usual arena. What inspired this shift?

There is no shift, just an aberration. When you write the same type of book ten or eleven times, you feel compelled to try something different. A Painted House is my attempt to step outside the legal thriller, briefly, and try a different type of fiction.

How was your approach to the writing different, if at all, with this change in genres? Were you aware of writing for a different audience for A Painted House?

The writing was different because it occurred over the period of a couple of years, as opposed to about six months for a legal thriller. I don't really think about the audience when I write. I try to tell a good story, something that is very readable.

A Painted House was originally serialized in The Oxford American. How did readers respond to the suspense of anticipating each installment, and would you publish this way again?

It's difficult for me to answer and try to explain the response of the readers. I'm not sure I will serialize another story. Our attention span is too short to stay hooked with a story over a period of ten months.

There are some autobiographical elements in A Painted House. How did you balance the need to move the story forward with a desire to infuse it with the events from your life?

Most of the stories that have been handed down in my family were fictional to begin with. It was quite easy to add another layer of fiction to move the story along.

You've had a long-standing relationship with The Oxford American. How did that start and why are you so committed to its success?

It started because of my friendship with Marc Smirnoff, the founder and editor of the magazine. I wrote a few pieces for the magazine back in the early days, and when it was about to go under, I invested some capital to help it survive.

You start your promotional activities for each new book at a group of independent bookstores in Mississippi and Tennessee. Why is that?

I sign copies of my books each year at five bookstores, and only five. These stores are owned by friends who helped me in the beginning when I was peddling A Time to Kill out of the trunk of my car.

Describe your ideal independent bookstore experience, from the customer perspective.

An old store, with a worn carpet, saggy bookshelves, pipe tobacco lingering somewhere in the back, a good coffee pot, unusual and eccentric characters, and customers hanging around as if they have for decades, a good selection of books and magazines, a knowledgeable staff, and a place where writers enjoy coming to autograph books.

Some writers don't like to read while they are in the midst of their own work. Do you read others while you are writing, and can you give some examples?

Not much. I am writing right now and reading The Constant Gardener by John Le Carré, Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik, and a bunch of flying magazines because I've started flying planes.

Which one book or author has most influenced your writing?

The book is The Grapes of Wrath, and the author is John Steinbeck. I fell in love with Steinbeck when I was in high school, and I've always striven to write as clearly as him. I am still trying.

You're on a desert island, without even a volleyball for company, but you have three works of fiction, and three works of non-fiction. What would they be?

Fiction: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner; The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. Non-fiction: The Bible; The Spirit of St Louis by Charles Lindbergh; The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball 2001.

• Read an excerpt from A Painted House
• See the winners of our bookshop display contest!

 

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