The Testament

By John Grisham

On the plane down to New Orleans, I started reading The Testament by John Grisham, and now that I’ve finished it, I can say that it’s a book I’d definitely read again.

Having read a few of Grisham’s novels before (my favorite of his, till now, being The Runaway Jury), I began with the expectation that it would be a smart and gripping legal thriller. Imagine my surprise when I discovered just how much more to it there was than that.

The Testament is the story of an elderly billionaire who gathers his very greedy family together to watch him sign a will (on camera) splitting his estate equally. Then, once they leave, he signs a completely different will on camera leaving everything to an illegitimate daughter and jumps to his death from the building, sparking a storm of chaos that will send one lawyer deep into the heart of the Brazilian Pantanal to find her.

Quite a few novels go for the mind, to entertain. Some novels head for the heart, to make us feel. What sets The Testament apart is that it bypasses both and pierces the soul as Grisham intricately (and quite beautifully) interweaves a moving story of redemption and reckoning with a high-stakes legal battle. Grisham lures the reader in with the personal account of the will writer and the promise of an adventurous legal battle on the horizon; then he holds us as a broken man finds his way through the heart of the Brazilian jungles and the wreckage of his life.

This is different than Grisham’s usual style, but it ties together so beautifully as he balances moral lessons about compassion and accepting the past in order to build a brighter tomorrow. His protagonist Nate O’Riley is an instantly likeable character, but the more the novel progresses, he evolves into a loveable character. Until, by the end of the novel, the reader is left only with a sense of hope in the midst of a bittersweet resolution.

One of the only sections I found troubling for Grisham’s narrative was his crowd control during the setup. In the first two opening chapters, he introduces a large cast of family characters whose backstories were all wildly different and yet, thematically similar. There’s never an easy way for a writer to accomplish this feat without either dumping a large volume of information on the reader or potentially hindering the pace of the tale. Grisham chose the former (probably because it was the lesser of two evils), and it made it somewhat difficult to distinguish which Phelan heir was currently the focus of attention. A few times, I found myself flipping back to the first few pages to ascertain I had their names and stories right.

But once I was settled in with their characterizations, the rest of the novel flowed like a steady crescendo—building to an ending I thought wouldn’t be possible to fit into the last 50 pages. If anyone is looking for a novel that balances close character study and entertainment, The Testament is for you. I would say it’s suitable for those looking for hope, an escape, or anyone who just wants to read a hell of a story that’s different than what you’d expect of Grisham. I would consider this my new favorite of his works, and I’m intrigued what other surprises might be in store in his other novels.