The Street Lawyer John Grisham

This is another classic Grisham.

Micheal Brock works for a Big Law firm Drake & Sweeney. Working most of his waking hours he is due for partnership if he were to continue at the same pace, billing the top notch clients in his speciality - antitrust law.

Of course this grueling lifestyle has taken toll of his marital life. His wife Claire is now a top surgeon and both are now drifting apart.

But ofcourse all this takes a back seat in his life until one day a homeless person "Mister" gets into the same lift as him, climbs the same floor as him and actually takes as him as a hostage Mike along with 7 other colleagues.

Unfortunately Mister gets killed by the SWAT agent and all the hostages are "saved" . What seems to be an end of this drama seems to be the begining of a new life for Mike.

This incident opens his eyes to the horrid and wretched world of homeless people in America. He is moved to such an extent that he decides to leave his plush life and join the ranks of lawyers like Mordecai who have spent their entire careers looking after the plights of the homeless. The other turning point that makes him take this decision is the dark murky association of his law firm and the plight of some of the homeless, one of whom was the captor. At the time of leaving he "borrows" an extremely important file on this particular case. But an unexpected accident prevents him from returning the file and now he is faced with the charge of grand larceny.

So there he is now, Separated from his wife, working as a Street Lawyer with hardly any money to buy a decent apartment, having an annual paypacket which equals what he once earned per hour and a impending threat of losing his License.

How does his skim through this? Is he able to be a proper "Street" Lawyer? Or does he go back to his old firm ? Read the book to find out.

The book was good, it managed to hold my attention till the end although i did feel that the last chapter or two were a bit hurried in pace as compared to the remaining book.

But definitely a Must Read ..

One Night @ The Call CenterChetan Bhagat

I chanced upon this book in my office library!!! Surprising .. coz we do not have fiction in our library. May be the name "Call center" in the title prompted them to get this book... LOL

Neways, Having read his first book before, I was inspired enough to pick this, one off the self. Also I was as curious as a cat about the lives of these guys from Call Centers.

The novel starts well, the flow is good and the writing style is also good.
The language is not superlative. It has the common slang prevailing in the young Indian life. Of course upon reading this book you can be very sure that it has been written by an Indian Author.

The central characters in this book are Shyam - a self proclaimed loser and the narrator of the events, his call center workmates cum friends Vroom, Radhika,Priyanka, Esha and "Military Uncle".

Shyam is a wannabe Team Lead, but lacks the guts to stand up to his abilities before his Boss Bakshi.

Vroom is the more whackier of the lot - the type of person who makes fun of life but ofcourse has his share of problems.

Esha, a Chandigarh girl who wants to make it big in the world of fashion. She is the prettiest of the lot.

Radhika is a modern girl turned sidhi saadhi bahu who accepts her old fashioned in laws lifestyle just because she dotes on her hubby Anuj.

Priyanka is another of the middle class clan who is working in order to save for her further education.

Shyam and Priyanka were at one time romantically involved but then broke up for many reasons.

Military Uncle is incidentaly called so because of his military background.

The book progresses on well with flashbacks and present happpenings.
But All hell breaks loose towards the end. Somehow the thought of GOD calling up Esha's mobile is undigestable!! With this, what could have been a novel of everyday lives becomes some sortaa more "fictionated".

I shall not speak of the events and stuff. I dont want to spoil the book for an eager reader. But Yeah I would like to caution you- If you had high expectations, then ...

I guess the most interesting reads in this book are the epilogue and the prologue. :-)

This is Chetan's second venture in the world of fiction. His first book was a great success. And of course there were more expections from him.