East of Eden by John Steinbeck

The most famous book by the famous John Steinbeck is The Grapes of Wrath, but that's the only book of his most people bother to read because he writes particularly large books. I decided to be different and bought another one of his dustbowl classics - East of Eden - to be my first taste of Steinbeck.

While he does a good job of keeping me reading on, sometimes the story line wore thin and I found myself skipping pages. Sometimes it just goes on and on and there is quite a bit of empty dialogue that was begging to be skipped.

I didn't appreciate the story line revolving around the story of Abel and Cain. He does this twice in the book - two generations worth. My main caveat with such a story line is that it has been done to death - so many authors build a story around that of Abel and Cain and it's getting boring and Steinbeck does it twice in the same book.

The most interesting theme of the book is to do with the character of Catherine aka Kate. This was the "Evil Woman" character in the story - a scheming demon of a woman. It was reading about her that made this book. My main criticism of the character was not so much the character (although she dies young for some unexplained reason) but the way Steinbeck lacks the ability to fully explain her psychology - it's lacking in reality to a certain degree and he also has a chapter in the middle of the book where he monologues about Cathy, asking the question: is she really bad or just mad etc... I didn't like the way he attempted to shirk the responsibility of defining a realistic character by abandoning the attempt to justify and explain her behaviour.

Nonetheless, this was a good story and quite useful if you want some choice quotes about the evils of women... though I'm not going to list any quotes here - can't be bothered. I give this book 7/10. It's worth reading if you want to try some Steinbeck.