A Painted House is about Grisham’s own childhood in
rural Arkansas,
which is one of the less industrialized states
in US. The protagonist
Luke Chandler is a 7 year old boy who stays on a large cotton farm with
his father, his mother, and his grandparents. Pappy as he calls his
grandfather is a man firmly wedded to his land, and most of the books
revolves around Luke’s interaction with him and Gran his grandmother.
Not much is written about Luke’s father, except the fact he fought in
World War II. Luke’s mother is a housewife with a kind heart. The book
begins with the cotton picking season starting, and his family
employing the Spruills who come from the Ozarks a mountainous region in
US which is very poor and under developed. Even now in US, a Hilly
Billy or a resident of the hills is a derogatory term used to refer to
a person who is not very well educated or cultured. And there is also
another group of dirt poor Mexicans who work as laborers on the farm.
The Chandlers are a fiercely Baptist family and very religious. The
rest of the novel deals with how Luke handles his growing up pains, and
his exposure to the less savory aspects of life. He is witness to a
murder, a pregnancy out of wedlock, the poverty of the people around
him, and the problems his people
place. The novel ends a bit of drama
and action.
Reading the book, what strikes one immediately, is the fact that
this is something which takes place in India every day. The action
takes place at Black Oak, Arkansas but substitute Black Oak for some
remote mofussil town in the Indian hinterland, and the Chandlers for
any Indian family, and the story remains the same. The problems faced
by the American
farmers are no different from that of Indian farmers.
Most of them are heavily in debt, and just manage to scrape around.
Though I am not from a rural area myself, I used to go to my Grandma’s
place during holidays as a kid, and I am well acquainted with the rural
scene. The scenes where the Chandlers try to accommodate the Mexicans
and arrange for their food, as well as the problems they have to face
with hill people, strikes a chord with us immediately. Also for all
it’s talk of freedom and equality, there exists a clear sense of
hierarchy in the town, with the traders on the top and the share
croppers at the bottom, with the medium level farmers like the
Chandlers coming in somewhere between. As for the Mexicans, well they
are not even considered as human beings. Again Grisham brings out well
the regional biases in the US, with the people of Black Oak looking
down upon those who stay in the hills.
The attitudes and characterization of the main characters again
sounds very much like us. Pappy, Luke’s grandfather, is a crusty, proud
old man who inspite of the grinding poverty, always maintains his self
respect and would never leave his land. Reminds me of many farmers who
I encountered here in India, who would never leave their land at all.
Luke’s mother hates the rural life and wants to go to the city where
the standard of living is certainly better. The problems faced by the
farmers in US, is very much like in India. Heat, drought,floods, labor
costs, not much difference between the farmers in India and the US. And
the scene where Luke and his parents leave for a job in the Industrial
North, again strikes a familiar chord for us in India, where every
factory worker belongs in the sense to the hinterland or a rural area.
In fact this could well be the story of a Konkani or Marathi family
migrating to the mills of Mumbai.
But this book does have its share of flaws also. For starters the
way the narrator talks don’t seem to be that of a 7 year old. He seems
too mature for his age, and it jars at many places. It would have been
much better if the protagonist had been a teen. Also the book’s pace is
quite slow, and you really don’t have those flashes of drama that would
grip us. At times the narrative just keeps on rambling, and it looks
more like Grisham’s memoirs of his childhood than a novel. Grisham had
a great idea and it works also, but why the novel fails short of being
a classic is that at times it sounds more like a rambling account than
a tale. And again the novel is not such a deep analysis of the rural
poor like The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck nor an incisive look at the
Southern way of life like To Kill a Mocking Bird. Grisham makes it look
more like a personal memoir and while certain parts of the novel do
grip you, it doesn’t really stay along with you. But all said do go and
read this book, if for nothing, just to get a view of the America about
which we really do not know much.