I’m feeling lazy today, so I’m just cutting and pasting the review I wrote over at Goodreads. (I hope that’s okay according to board rules. It is my own work, just copied from another website.):
This book kept my interest throughout, which is the highest compliment I can give a novel. Most fictional works I read have sections which are a slog to get through. I usually finish a novel despite this, just to say honestly that I have read the book. Here, I did not have that problem.
However, I had some issues with this book. I thought the character of Cathy was sort of wasted, because while she was an interesting character as a sociopathic murderer, I really got the feeling that the only reason she was present in the novel was to serve as a punching bag for Steinbeck’s hatred of his second wife. I mean, why did Steinbeck not describe the scene where Cal takes Aron to meet his mother at her bordello? The whole second half of the story leads up to this event, and Steinbeck whiffs it, omitting this climactic scene. Was he not up to describing it? It was really jarring to read. Sort of like if Steven King had left out the prom scene in “Carrie”.
Another thing that annoyed me were the grand speeches that Sam and Lee would give just off the cuff. Nobody in the world talks like that. And what was that whole thing with Sam Hamilton telling Adam about wanting to describe his wife Cathy as evil and covered with slime? He hadn’t even met her at that point. Okay, John, you think your second wife was a bitch, we get it. Don’t make giant plotholes in your Nobel Prize book about it.
But other than that, I did like this story. It’s very quotable and beautifully written.
I didn’t notice this so much in The Grapes of Wrath. Sometimes the omniscient narrator would launch into flowery diatribes, which in my opinion is permissible, and the characters themselves would ramble a bit, but the dialog seemed natural enough to me. It has been awhile since I’ve read that book though.
It’s been a while, but my experience was similar. East of Eden is the rare classic that required zero effort to get through - thoroughly entertaining throughout. The passages with Sam and Lee that I guess could be described as ostentatious didn’t bother me too much, and I don’t know enough about Steinbeck’s life to make any connection between Cathy and his ex-wife. Cathy was a very memorable character and from what I can recall the most dramatic chapters revolved around her.
Anything similar works you enjoyed? Always interested in recommendations.
If you enjoy the “sweeping saga” genre, there’s the James Mitchner, Leon Uris shelf of mid century American Lit. Maybe too Reader’s Digestible for contemporary tastes. Gore Vidal’s American history novels, starting with Burr and proceeding to the era of McCarthy, are another recommendation, above the level of “high school classics.” Me, I’d want to re-read John dos Passos before anything else.