Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

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Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

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Buy Skipping Christmas by John Grisham at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Category: General Fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Reviewer: Sue Fairhead
Reviewed by Sue Fairhead
Summary: Skipping Christmas is an amusing book about the commercialisation of seasonal festivities and the empty nest syndrome. It's an entertaining, if light, read.
Buy? Maybe Borrow? Yes
Pages: 200 Date: November 2004
Publisher: Arrow
ISBN: 0099481685

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John Grisham is not an author I have previously read. I understand that his novels are primarily legal or political thrillers, and that's not a genre that appeals to me.

However this book was on our shelves, and reviews suggested it was quite different from the author's usual style, being instead a mildly humorous family book. This turned out to be the case. It focuses on a caricatured American middle-class couple, Luther and Nora, whose only daughter has just gone abroad to work in the Peace Corps. Luther, an accountant, has calculated what vast sum they spent on the previous year's Christmas festivities, and Nora is feeling that Christmas will be depressing without their daughter.

So they decide to skip Christmas entirely, and spend some of the money on a cruise. The majority of the book is taken up with the bewilderment and anger this causes amongst their neighbours and colleagues. I found it both humorous and rather sad... do people really put enormous floodlit snowmen on their roofs, and then expect the entire street to follow suit? Do they insist on new dresses for business dinners? Can anybody really spend as much as $6000 simply on Christmas?

I assume not - and that it is, indeed, an exaggerated caricature. But it felt as if there was a grain of truth in much of the book: that consumerism really has destroyed the meaning of Christmas in some places. As such it felt almost like an Anne Tyler book at times, looking through the eyes of two people who felt more like her creations than any thriller heroes.

Enjoyable on the whole, a light and quick read, and a satisfying conclusion, albeit a little annoying.

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Buy Skipping Christmas by John Grisham at Amazon You can read more book reviews or buy Skipping Christmas by John Grisham at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
Buy Skipping Christmas by John Grisham at Amazon You can read more book reviews or buy Skipping Christmas by John Grisham at Amazon.com.

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