A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America’s most enduring authors, in a commemorative hardcover edition In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the … novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
The masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love’s absence. Adapted for the 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan introducing James Dean, and read by thousands as the book that brought Oprah’s Book Club back, East of Eden has remained vitally present in American culture for over half a century.
more
classic story I haven’t read since school many years ago.
It’s a classic a glimpse into
John Steinbeck wrote about people and places in a way that makes our most human emotions float to the surface. Even if you know no one like his characters, you feel a connection to them and their land. The story takes place mostly in Salinas, California in the early 19th century. Steinbeck had a respectful way in which he unfolded each character’s hardships, happiness, and even horrors. The novel is based on some of his own family members. Steinbeck’s books are witty, philosophical, and compassionate.
This may be a classic, but I found it boring
One of the great books, tremendous character development.
I think this is Steinbeck’s best book, even better than “Grapes of Wrath”.
Classic storytelling by one of the most prolific authors of our time.
Still one the best books that was ever written about the nature of mankind with everything from good to evil. Enjoyed reading this book. Never dull.
Classic Steinbeck there’s not much more to say. I’ve read it about 5 times throughout the years
One of the best books I’ve ever read (read several times) … definitely on my Top 5 list.
A total 5-star read, I’ve re-read many times and I am NOT a novel reader. I have been reading for 85 years. Don’t miss this.
This is the story of two families – the Hamiltons and the Trasks. It takes place in and around California’s Salinas Valley (which is actually where John Steinbeck was born) in the mid to late 1800’s through the 1900s. This story spans multiple generations of these two families introducing many characters along the way. The Hamiltons were a large family of many children who lived and worked on a farm and barely got by. The Trasks were a more well off family with two sons that were raised by their father.
Over the course of the book – both families have children, they grow, get married, move away, start their own families. Their families continue to interact over the years – each weaving into the other among various avenues. There is sadness and happiness, marriage and death, and everything in between.
I enjoyed this book. It was…..long. I thought the writing was excellent. It might have been a little wordy – most in the story than needed to be to get his point across, but for the most part, it flowed nicely. The characters were likable and I found myself wanting to know what was going to happen to them. Sagas make great books because from where it starts to where it ends, entire lives pass through and you become invested in their stories.
Check it out. You need to invest in this book – this is not a light read, or something you can do and watch TV at the same time. But it is worth it.
Too long, hard to read, story is complicated, and I couldn’t see the point. I like Steinbeck, but I don’t like this book.
Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors and I have read every book he wrote. Wonderful characters. I would say Grapes of Wrath was my favorite above this one.
Rereading some of the old high school book assignments and in my old age see them in a different light. East of Eden is such a beautifully written story that wasn’t realized in my youth since it was then mandatory reading and something to just get through. Steinbeck brings the everyday into something magical.
This is my all time favorite book. I loved the characters. It is set in California and is the story of two brothers. Our book club read this and for us we use it as the measuring stick for other books. During our comments someone usually says “It’s not as good as East of Eden but it was a good book.
Better than most . It has a lot of interesting characters and pits good and evil
This is a story about the endurance of the human soul, about choosing to be who you would like to be rather than believing you were cut with a mold that can’t be broken. But also it’s a story about forgiveness, the freedom of choice and the long road one must walk between one’s beginning and one’s end, and all the causes and effects in-between.
Steinbeck’s masterpiece, for to call it anything less is impossible, has left me with a sense of loss. When I came to the end of this epic tale of family and humanity, I felt abandoned simply because I ran out of words to read. I wanted to carry on in his characters’ lives, spying on their darkness, watching them evolve and bloom and outrun the forces haunting them. No book has made me feel quite so much sadness and excitement at once. Perhaps because I’m a writer, I relished the painterliness of Steinbeck’s prose. I turned every single one of its six-hundred and one pages at a furious pace, and yet I indulged and languished and roamed the landscape he had painted for me, and me alone.
The story is so personal, a reader might feel it is written for her. It is a story we must hear, a story we know, a story with which we can connect, as we do with all the ones passed down from civilization to civilization. We commune with great stories, religious accounts, epic tales, because we see ourselves most readily in them, and as Lee (one of “Eden’s” finest characters) says, that’s why we keep telling, and retelling, them from one generation to the next. Steinbeck draws on the “Old Testament,” turning over the story of Cain and Abel and making it his, for us anew. And because we see ourselves in it—our good and evil—we devour his retelling as though it were medicine to save our soul, the cure for all our ails. But perhaps I exaggerate, indulging in the power of the writer a little too much. Or maybe I do feel my soul a little shaken by my experience, swept up in the writer’s magic. Either way, I am satisfied to credit Steinbeck for my joy at venturing into his Eden.
And it is the great landscape, the backdrop of his tale that speaks most readily to the reader. Steinbeck’s setting is in fact a large part of the whole. Like the characters he unearths, the soil on which they stand seems to reach for the sky, yearning to live too. You can’t read “East of Eden” without experiencing the tan valleys of Northern California and the lush green dales of Connecticut. You see his East and his West, you practically smell the air of each, and you believe the world he creates to be the same one in which you live. The opening of the book sets you up for that, tells you, dear reader, you will feel every ounce of nature’s beauty just as the narrator does; her dangerous flirtations, her permanency, her changeability, her gales, her forces, her perpetual and enduring spirit. We do not simply live in nature, but come from it. We embody it; all her forces. I think Steinbeck reminds us of this in such subtle and rare ways it seeps into the subconscious as we follow his narrator through the story of Adam Trask, Samuel Hamilton, and all the characters in-between and after.
“I remember my childhood names for the grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer—and what trees and seasons smelled like—how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.”
Effortlessly, Steinbeck strings you along with his prose, fooling you into not seeing the great and gargantuan task he is laying before you. “Timshel,” he teaches you. “Thou mayest,” the two words from “Genesis” that seem to speak most profoundly, for they admit to free will, and your ability to choose to rule over sin. John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” also speaks of this freedom, one in which man has often stumbled, misunderstanding his disobedience, his choice between good and evil. Steinbeck examines this idea throughout the narrative, and shows you the outcomes of those who struggle with the same, and it is in their differences that choice becomes apparent.
I have said little about the characters, the plot, the style and themes, and yet I have said everything I can about a work that has touched me so deeply. I will leave you with this short quote, said once again by Lee, the Chinese American who is the most philosophical, and enlightened of Steinbeck’s family of characters, the sage most inborn to the writer:
“But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”
Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is – John Steinbeck page 413 of 601 East of Eden
I found it difficult to rate this book. Steinbeck has always been one of my favourite writers as he is so gifted. However, I was disappointed by EoE. Even though disappointed, I fluctuated between 2 and 3 stars. I settled for 2 meaning OK (Goodreads).
I found it ponderous at times and maybe he should have edited the 600 and something pages down to 400-450?
I also got the message. Who couldn’t? It was repeated enough times!
Wonderful descriptions of the Salinas Valley may cut it for some, especially if they know the area, but much of that meant little to me except to admire Steinbeck’s descriptive powers.
Good and evil is at the centre of most novels and movies. It’s life. But I do feel no one, repeat no one, could be as evil as Cathy Trask aka Kate.
Some of the characters were a bit weird too. Adam Trask I found quite bewildering. The best characters were Lee, the faithful Chinese man servant and Samuel Hamilton. They made this novel for me.
Of course any review is one person’s opinion. Timshel Thou mayest agree with me or not. The choice is yours.
One of Stienbeck’ s best writing. Good one for a movie re-do.