I am a big fan of Steinbeck. While Of Mice and Men was enjoyable, it was The Grapes of Wrath that truly sold me on his writing. I do not consider myself that well read, but if you said you had you were and had concluded Grapes of Wrath was the best novel ever, I would find that totally believable. His graphic deception and insisting of emotion and hopelessness has been surpassed by no other book I had read.
It was for this reason that I picked up East of Eden.
Given the success of his earlier work, it seemed odd to discover that Steinbeck believed that everyone has one great novel in them – and that East of Eden was his.
I am glad nobody really asked me what it was about in my first few weeks reading it. The truth is I had no clue. It wasn’t about something notable like the Great Depression. It was just about life. Life in Salinas Valley, particularly the life of two families, the Hamiltons and the Trasks.
Is it Steinbeck’s finest work? That I am not sure. However, I did enjoy reading it just as much as any of his other work.
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Tags: fiction, john steinbeck, novel
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2015 at 11:13 am and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.