A Painted House

Written by John Grisham

Narrated by David Lansbury

The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a "good crop."

Thus begins the new novel from John Grisham, a story inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas. The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents 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, the fatigue, and sometimes each other. As the weeks pass Luke sees and hears things no seven year old could possibly be prepared for, and he finds himself keeping secrets that not only threaten the crop but will change the lives of the Chandlers forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House UK Audio
• Release date: Sep 29, 2005
• ISBN: 9781846575112

Reviews for A Painted House

[alwaysbooktime · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is to me is one of is best books. It was a book that made you love the characters who struggled through hard times. At the end you wanted to know what happened to them in years to come. Mr. Grisham? A sequel please, he could become a lawyer. I have given this book to many as gifts, recommended it and re-read it. All but one person loved it and was disappointed it was not about a lawyer or trial. It's sad when authors are only given credit for writing about one thing. Writers aren't one dimensional folks! They dream about many things just as we all do. Give this little book a shot, I think you'll love it!

[neale_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A different book for Grisham, but a good one. A simple story well told - I enjoyed it.

[donagiles · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

boy tells story of life in Arkansas on a cotton farm. He is 7 yrs old and life is not easy, secreats seam to rule his life. 80 acres of rented land does not earn much. They hire 10 Mexicans & a family from Ozarks to help pick the cotton. Life with all these extra people proves for a extra helping of horries for a small boy.

[midkid88 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The summer of 1952 brought migrant workers to Luke's home along with a brutal murder, a fatherless baby, and a painted house. I like John Grisham, but this isn't one of my favorite books. I had a hard time finishing it although I still needed to figure out who done it.

[theprincess_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Since legal thrillers are not a genre I read I balked when someone tried to convince me to read this book. I'm sure John Grisham is a good writer but he's just not my thing. However...I'm grateful now that I gave in. It was a touching story of a child growing up in very rural, cotton-growing Arkansas and the things he sees, hears and deals with over the picking season during his seventh year. A big criticism I keep seeing about this book is the conclusion and I have to disagree. I thought it was appropriate. It leaves us thinking about a lot of things that didn't get tied up neatly and the end. Well, real life is like that, too, it just keeps going. Maybe someday there will be a sequel.

[jaimitaylor · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What can I say! I loved it...

[alisonb60 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As someone else said, this book reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird. I did enjoy the characters, and yes it is different from any other Grisham book, so it shows how versatile he is as a writer. It didn't finish properly though.

[dadbrazelton · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Okay read. I prefer stories that have a more complete conclusion.

[carolfoasia_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is only my second Grisham. My husband says that it is different from the rest of his. He is a good story teller, and the first person narrative from a seven year old was really interesting. Good story. I listened to an audio version.

[cherilove · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Like any Grisham book, this one is full of drama, but this is more personal, more relatable. The seven-year-old narrator is charming, yet wily, one you would want as your nephew or the kid next door. The book shows much of the social strata of southern farmers' lives in the mid-50's. You'll care about nearly all of the characters, in different ways, see parts of your own life in many.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Pleasant enough, but it needs something else to offset the endless, grinding, back-breaking rural nostalgia. If it had been written 50 years earlier it would have been a wonderful starting point for a Rogers and Hammerstein musical.Obviously, if you have a story with a child narrator set in the rural southern US, you are expecting poverty, prejudice, rape, murder, and miscarriages of justice. Or some kind of melodramatic climax, anyway. This book does have its moments, it's true, but they all seem to fizzle out rather: Nothing that happens in the story really has any serious consequences for the main characters. Life goes on, there'll be another church picnic next year, and the Cardinals will have another crack at winning the baseball competition. That's pretty much how real life works, but transferred to fiction it's rather dull. It's a bit strange to have something that looks as though it's meant to be a coming-of-age novel, but where the characters don't develop at all in the course of the story. Young Luke is just as worldly-wise at the beginning as he is at the end.A child narrator automatically implies that the author has to cheat a bit to get the right mix of immature perception and adult hindsight, so that we believe it's really a child talking to us, but get a story that is interesting enough to retain the attention of an adult reader over a few hundred pages. Grisham evidently doesn't have the Harper Lee touch, and entirely fails to make Luke a plausible seven-year-old. Eleven or twelve he might just get away with, but even allowing for the fact that we're talking tough kids in the depths of the countryside, seven is just too young for the voice Luke talks to us in.

[conniejackson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Little Luke's World Comes Alive with Mr. Grisham creative genius! In "A Painted House", Mr. Grisham reveals the thinking of the 7 year old Luke Chandler I just loved the scene in which Mr. Grisham explains how Luke, the only son of a cotton farmer family that are living on the edge of poverty in the state of Arkansas feels about sitting through a Baptist church sermon on a very hot morning. I had to smile as Luke tried to understand how the Sisco boy would go to heaven even though he never had to sit in church every Sunday like he had too.There are many wonderful scenes in the novel and won't expound on them.It's a great story for adults and young adults. And it's refreshing to read this "home grown" story from Mr. Grisham. Highly recommend.

[librisissimo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Substance: Faithful recreation of cotton-farming in Arkansas in the fifties. The narrator is maybe a little young for what he does, at age 7 (9 would be more believable).

[faitharo5_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not your typical John Grisham legal drama but still a good read.

[cas_ar_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A book that proves John Grisham can write other than law stories. A very good story of living in southern cotton country of the early 1950's.

[danajean_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I began reading this, I was a-skeered it was going to be like The Grapes of Wrath which I couldn't stand. (Just writing The Grapes of Wrath made be seize--oops, there I go again.) Fortunately for me, the story was told from a young boy's point of view and I enjoyed it very much. Just a nice snapshot of growing up in Arkansas--busting a living picking cotton, back in the days when there were more have-not people than haves.Reminded me of the stories my grandparents told.

[shesinplainview · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this very much, although different from Grisham's others. Believable tale of mid-century southern life. I was impressed.

[jco123_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very good - extremely well written. Expected an ending like Grapes of Wrath so it didn't live up to the great billing everybody gave it, but still a great book.

[oogod · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was the first book by Grisham that I have read. Not a bad story but a bit slow at times, the ending did not wrap things up in my opinion.

[qofd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'd never read a Grisham novel before as I don't like courtroom drama but this book was given to me by a friend and I really enjoyed it. Reminded me a lot of To Kill a Mockingbird. Loved the simplicity of Lukes story telling of his life living on a cotton farm.

[tyuiop159 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's not really my style of book, but I had to read it for school. It was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. It can be slow at times, but it's great writing. It has a great plot, good character development, high vocabulary, and many more well done parts/components. I may have hated it to begin with, but now I'm glad I read it. This is true writing perfection at it's best.

[karrieskorner · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a coming-of-age story about a boy who lives on the family farm. His life is profoundly affected when migrant farm workers come to the farm to harvest the crops. This isn't a shocking story, or even a suspenseful book as so many Grisham books are. It is well-written and tells a good story.

[booksweremyfirstlove · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A charming little novel about a boy who lives in the country at a time when life is still simple.

[readingrat_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is one of a handful where Grisham has departed from his usual courtroom drama genre. I was really impressed with his writing here. This is a richly detailed and enthralling character-driven period tale told from the point of view of a 7 year-old boy during his last cotton harvest on his grandparents' Arkansas farm.

[gilly1944 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very good "yarn", transports you into the life of a young boy in the cotton fields.

[pippi9longstockings · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love his law novels but not any books written outseide this genre, so I was pleasantly surprised when I read this book. It is a beautifuly written book. I will add this to my xmas list of books to give people.

[santhony_35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a rather short, but pleasantly surprising departure from Grisham's bread and butter, legal thrillers. It deals with a hardscrabble east Arkansas farm family enduring hard economic times. A nice change of pace.

[madamejeanie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm a big fan of Grisham and have read almost all of his works, but Iwasn't too excited about the three that he's written (so far) that move awayfrom his established territory of the legal thriller. Last month I read"Bleachers." This week I finally got around to reading "A Painted House."I bought it in paperback, which is unusual for me and a Grisham book. Iusually buy them hot off the press. This one is a quiet tale, the story of a poor cotton farming family inArkansas in 1952. It is told from the perspective of a 7 year old boy, sonand grandson of the family. It's time to pick the cotton crop and everybodyworks like dogs. The family hires some "hill people," a scruffy familynamed Spruill, and manages to hire 10 Mexican illegals who came into town ona cattle truck. It's late summer and hotter than Hell itself. One of thehill people is a huge hulk of a man with a sour attitude and a chip the sizeof a cinder block on his shoulder, and one of the Mexicans carries aswitchblade and isn't afraid to use it. When the coming autumn bringsunseasonal torrential rain, the entire crop is threatened, and with it,their very way of life.There's tension and tenderness in this book, and Grisham tells the story sowell I felt like I was there. This certainly wasn't his usual work, but itwas a very satisfying read, nonetheless. I hated to see it end. I'd giveit a 4.

[koalamom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Different from his "lawyer" mysteries, though a murder does take place. The story centers around a 7-year old boy who suddenly finds himself inundated with terrible secrets that he can't share with anyone - a lot to ask for a kid that age.

[jua_46 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was an audio book. I wanted to get in my car and ride around, just so I could hear the story.