The Page Count

Category: Fiction

  • Kingdom

    Jon McNaught, 2018

    Read: January 2024

    Edition Read: NoBrow, pages unnumbered

    Graphic novel

    In contrast to my other recent graphic-novel readings (The Road, Safe Area Gorazde, Ducks), Kingdom is not about crimes against humanity. It is far gentler, a slice of life, specifically, of a family holiday. Nothing dramatic or traumatic takes place. An unnamed mum and her two children (Andrew and Suzie) – the former a teenager, the latter around 10 – go on holiday to a caravan park somewhere on the British coast. It is understated and the pacing measured – as such holidays can be. It is a poignant snapshot of the parts of holiday that are rote, mediocre, uninspiring, and enforced fun that turn out to be anything but. Even the nature that surrounds Andrew and Suzie, the two protagonists, also becomes the minutiae of their life on holiday.

    It is written in lots of very small panes, capturing a scene and all of its details (there are lots of onomatopoeias), shot by shot (up to 35 per page). The colour palettes are monochromatic hues of blues and reds, sometimes mixing together. There are relatively few words, and it takes several pages until someone talks.

    It has its melancholic moments; I got the impression that the shot of the mother and Suzie driving away from Great Aunt Lizzie’s house is probably the last time they will ever see her, and despite Andrew making a friend (who is maybe a local, or perhaps someone just like him – on holiday and bored), there is a telling scene where they scorn a group of children, around their age, having fun in the distance. Whereas Suzie is still young enough to be curious about the world, Andrew seems to be keeping it at arm’s length, generally preferring to spend time alone or playing videogames. The mother is generally depicted as trying to do something for her children; at no point does she ever get to do anything for herself.

    Although the whole point of the book is that not much happens, these memories, captured with all of their minute details, are the sort that will stay with the characters. How these children (and sometimes the Mum) relate to their environment is a big part of the story; the Mermaid’s Cave shows how memories can sometimes be better than the reality, but whereas Mum is disappointed about the reality when compared to her memory, Suzie likes it; and so the cycle continues. As such, Kingdom is about how we remember things. The caravan park that they stay at is called Kingdom Fields, but it is also memory that is a realm – a kingdom – in itself.

    Worth reading? Yes.

    Worth re-reading? Yes.

  • The Firm

    John Grisham, 1991 

    Read: April 2025 

    Edition read: Arrow 1991, 421 pages 

    Legal thriller

    Besides a nice view, slightly wonky drawers and Cornwall’s slowest TV, my holiday accommodation came with this book. It’s a legal thriller and using tell, don’t show (rather than the reverse), it succeeds in being a page turner. This keeps the pace up, a mark of success for a book about a law firm (and Grisham is not shy about the legal terminology). 

    Most of the story is told from the perspective of the protagonist Mitch McDeere. It switches to those of other characters to feed the reader information to smash that plotline out. This makes it a bit too easy a read; for example, there would have been more narrative tension if it wasn’t made explicit that McDeere’s house had been bugged. 

    It also reads as a certain amount of wish fulfilment, with Grisham accentuating the materialistic details; McDeere is a working-class boy (who was also quarterback!) who done good and now wants to drive a car that shows it. His wife, Abby, has great legs. His eventual accomplice, Tammy, has great breasts. The in-laws – who are the wrong type of materialistic – suck. This last point says a bit more than I think Grisham intended to; while masquerading as a takedown of these things – materialism, sexism and racism (on this last point, stereotypes abound), The Firm simultaneously accentuates them. 

    Returning to the issue of narrative tension, there a couple of things that left me scratching my head. The incriminating photos of McDeere with the prostitute never become of any significance. This would have made the story more dramatic in terms of Mitch’s and Abby’s relationship, but in the final paragraph this whole lapse of character – a moment of reckoning – is just dropped. Why does McDeere’s colleague, Lamar Quin, turn a blind eye when he spots his brother, Ray (ultimately allowing Mitch to incriminate him)? When Avery is killed off, it is reported via dialogue between two other characters, without the intimacy of being taken to the scene being granted. Given how much information The Firm does feed to the reader, it feels odd for this sense of distance to be deployed here. Only two of the five murders of former lawyers are delved into; is it realistic for a firm of brilliant, perceptive, high-flying lawyers to not look into the other three? Tammy also receives little in the way of resolution, although I felt that here, Grisham keeping her at arm’s length, rather than drawing her deeper into the narrative, did work, in that the theme of people cutting the ties that bind and reinventing themselves recurs. Likewise, when the stereotypes are left alone, The Firm does come across as a strong piece of Americana; motels, diners, roads, reinvention and losers abound. 

    There are a few other things that work better; the death of the third brother, Rusty, in Vietnam, is mentioned, as is Mitch’s and Ray’s mother, but both of these elements are kept peripheral. The closest the latter comes to entering the story is Mitch almost – but not quite – visiting her. This is one of the more interesting, literary aspects of the novel, with this relationship being shown rather than told, and this estrangement never being fully revealed. The end feels rushed, with the last third dropping the ‘legal’ from ‘legal thriller’. Little detail is given about the ultimate fate of the firm and the mob. Mitch gets his ending. Abby doesn’t (or rather, she gets Mitch’s ending and is apparently completely fine with it). They have loads of money, but it seems like they are limited in many other ways (they can never return home; McDeere, the dedicated lawyer, can never practise law again). Arguably this is more realistic and grittier than everything just working out and the hero getting to carry on as he was (the FBI aren’t depicted as angels, and in some ways, McDeere is their victim), but the closing line of ‘Let’s get drunk and make a baby’ reads like a somewhat Victorian idea of a happy ending. 

    Worth reading? It’s a tempting yes, because it’s a quick, easy read, but ultimately, no.  

    Worth re-reading? No.