It did feel cruel, and not a little unfair, to give up all hope of good prose as early as page four, but that’s where it happened. It was right there in capital letters: “IT’S GRISHAM DAY, PEOPLE.” As in John Grisham, whose looming visit to Aunt Orsa’s — the fine-dining restaurant in a Midwestern university town in which the novel is set — gives the book the tension that propels it along. Grisham’s books are a great holiday read, but the man is not known as a stylist. If he is one of Rebecca Kauffman’s literary heroes — and, given she’s framed a book around him, it feels fair to conclude he must be — then, you think, anyone who reads seeking beauty in words is in trouble.
