Have you ever wondered why sports coaches have such a huge impact on their athletes? In Bleachers by John Grisham follows the main character, Neely, and all the situations he encounters while his high school football coach, Coach Rake, is on the verge of death. This novel begins with Neely meeting his high school classmates after injuring his knee in a football game and disappearing from town for fifteen years. Since the proximity of the town was rather small, almost everyone knew each other quite well. The town had the same banker, Paul, a coffee shop that every citizen frequented, and a soccer field named "The Field" that tens of thousands of citizens and fans visited each soccer season. Bleachers is a fairly well-written novel because it contains possible events that can happen in modern reality, such as the different series of events, characters, and conflicts involved, but the novel is also quite poorly written due to its defects contained. in its context. First, Bleachers is well written from a New Criticism perspective because the characters in the book are believable. The character that plays an important role in this novel other than Neely would be Coach Rake. Coach Rake is involved in every possible situation that arises in the lives of his athletes. First of all, what makes Coach Rake a believable character is that he stayed in the same town and coached for the same school for many generations of football players. Additionally, he tends to exaggerate situations just as much as a normal human being would tend to do when his memory fails. For example, Rake had exaggerated by saying that one of his fellow athletes had completely broken his ankle and was still running on the foot...... middle of paper...... which allows the reader to realize it. But Bleachers contained no universal truth. Therefore, Bleachers is also a poorly written novel. In conclusion, Bleachers by John Grisham is both a good and a bad book because of the characters, conflicts and events that happened in it, as well as some flaws in it. With this combination, Grisham had written a good enough novel to read in one sitting. A little too much of good is bad, and a little too much of good is even worse, but a little of both here and there creates the perfect mix. Works Cited Chen, Anna. Personal interview. May 1, 2011.D at Goodreads Inc. Online book review. October 9, 2009 Web. May 4, 2011. Kevin at Goodreads Inc. Online Book Review. June 18, 2008. Web. May 4, 2011. Grisham, John. Bleachers. New York. Bantam Dell. 2003. Print.