Sooley, John Grisham, author; Dion Graham, narrator
This book is not like the legal thrillers by Grisham that I prefer. Instead of an exciting book about crime and injustice, it is about basketball, almost a text about basketball. By way of that sport, it is also about class, race, immigration, violence in some tribal African countries, particularly in the South Sudan, and drugs, as well.
Samuel Sooleyman is a teenager in Lotta, a small village in the South Sudan where he lives happily, often dreaming about a possible life in America. He has been spotted by a scout, Ecko Lam, originally from South Sudan. He is searching for ten kids that might qualify as prospects to be brought to the United States to play for the Sudan under 18 team and then hopefully to be chosen to attend a college there. In Sooley’s case, it was Central in North Carolina. He receives a full scholarship, funding, housing and a job he loves to give him excess cash for what he will need and an opportunity for endless practice.
Grisham refers to Central as “the other school”, since Duke is the more famous school located there. Central is a largely black school. This opportunity for Samuel is the ticket to freedom, fame and fortune, if only he can qualify. Samuel lives, eats and breathes basketball. At 17, he is 6 feet 2 inches and is still growing, but his skills have to grow as well. Ecko has to determine if they will. He makes a gut decision and selects Sooley for the team, believing he will improve and become a star. Samuel jumps like a gazelle, high and graceful and only needs to work on his form and his accuracy. Samuel is all in for the job.
When violence comes to Sooley’s hometown, death and destruction follow. His family is homeless and in dire straits. He wants to go home to help, but he cannot return because it is too dangerous, and he has no place to go anyway. The rebels fighting this Civil War are vicious and relentless, they have destroyed his village completely. He remains in the United States, at first only motivated by the need to save and to work to rescue his family from afar, bringing them to the United States too. He is not motivated by money at all, but by the altruistic thought of saving them. Sooley’s mother has the same kind nature as he evidences. Will he be able to maintain his values as the world of sports begins to corrupt him? Ecko promises to help him and is true to his word. He brings back information from Africa, and helps to ferry messages to and fro.
Alternating between Sooley’s family’s trauma and Sooley’s inevitable progress in basketball, the book moves on until his ultimate goal is reached. He has improved so much, he is being looked at as an early draft for the NBA, even though he is too young to really make mature decisions. He is motivated by money and the hope of freedom for his remaining family. He is encouraged to give up his education and to choose the millions that will be offered to him. The book has a twist at the end, so don’t look ahead, but otherwise, the plot is quite obvious and often tedious. There were too many characters to follow, and therefore it was not easy to become invested with any of them, except perhaps for his dear friend Murray and Sooley. Often it was difficult to follow each thread carefully. There were also too many descriptions of basketball plays and moves, and so someone not totally immersed in the sport, like Sooley, might soon give up on the book and choose to read something else.
There are few unknowns in the novel. One wonders, only occasionally, about whether or not Sooley is going to be influenced by greed, tragedy and other opinions. There is little encouragement by the author to do this, and so there is really no hurry to reach the end of the book. It is slow moving and way too involved in the nitty gritty of the sport and tends to be utterly boring at times with the necessary inclusion, by liberal authors today, of their politics about race, sex and white privilege. If Central beats Duke, what is the subliminal message intended?
The most important message, however, is the one I found least stressed. Education is important for the future of our youth and our country. If students are well rounded, taught good citizenship, and are allowed to mature, they will make more intelligent decisions. However, if they are spoiled by the bright lights and money always being advertised, they might not choose education which has a longer lasting value than a sport that can only be played for a short period of time in life and also involves the possibility of grave injuries.
The book reinforced the idea of the importance of money as a means to happiness and success, not the importance of education and worthwhile contributions to society.
Greed leads to foolish decisions, but this is a theme that the book does not truly embrace. Although it is there front and center, it is not discouraged. This book could have reinforced the idea that drugs are dangerous. It could have reinforced the stupidity of paying ridiculous sums of money to teenagers who are encouraged to give up any other future on the chance that they will be superrich playing for a big name team. It is shortsighted. It could have reinforced the idea that kids need to follow the advice of adults that care about them, family, not friends who are not wise enough to make any better decision than they are. It could have encouraged the young not to experiment in wild sex and drinking explaining that sometimes women, alcohol and other toys, like fancy cars, drugs and partying into all hours of the night are dangerous pastimes. These kids have stars in their eyes that blind them.
I think Grisham missed the opportunity to stress education over athletics, in this book, but that did not seem to be the prominent theme. Instead of encouraging students to work toward improving the world in some way as they improved themselves, it encouraged greed, which, more often than not, leads to tragic ends because it is too much, too soon. It is too hard for immature kids to manage all the “toys” that come with the prize of success in sports.
In no way did this book encourage better behavior. It encouraged “go fund me pages”, but not working for the betterment of America or any country in which one lives. It encouraged greed and selfish pursuits. Winning above all was the major theme of the book. Perhaps, if the theme had been more altruistic, a theme it would have been easy to implant within these pages, I would then have rated the book higher than the two stars I gave it. To me, the book’s main message is self-centered greed. It tried but failed to show how the lights of fame corrupt, how it might be dangerous to pursue only sports, but that was presented as the ultimate goal. There was no moral, no lesson though that would have made the book far more worthwhile for the group it is intended to reach, the group that sees sports only as a ticket to money, not to any other worthwhile pursuit to improve the world.
There were really only two redeeming features of this book, for me. It encouraged me to do some research on South Sudan, and the narrator was excellent, using tone and accent perfectly. Each of the characters was well defined, and most often the emotion expressed was on point and authentic. Is there strife in the world, are our athletes overpaid? Yes, do these themes come through adequately? I didn’t think so, but other readers will decide that for themselves if they can make it to the end of the book.