East of Eden by John Steinbeck

 

Summary (from the publisher): 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 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.

Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the 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. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.

Review: I am struggling to write this review, because how to do this book justice and how can my thoughts add anything to this classic?

This is a sweeping family saga set in Salinas, California at the turn of the twentieth century. I loved all the beautiful description of the land and the way the landscape shaped the characters and the background of the novel. It's billed as a Cain and Able retelling, and it is but it's also much more sweeping and vaster in scale. I've seen themes of this book identified as the complexity of identity and the consequences of love's absence and that rings true to me. The book also seemed like a cautionary tale against money, greed, and jealousy. Indeed, it is the Hamilton family on their barren farm that seem to have the happiest family and enjoy the most satisfaction in life. The book also suggests over and over that evil and goodness are innate and born in us but also that each individual has free will and can choose to give in to the evil or strive for something better. 

This is a long book at 600 pages and yet I never got bored. This book had one of the most unhinged characters I have come across in fiction, and I was very invested at every stage in what these characters would do next and how the plot would continue to unfold. In addition to characters with so much evil, there were also characters with so much good! I loved Samuel and Dessie Hamilton and Lee. 

The frame structure of the narrator being a member of the Hamilton family (one of Samuel's grandchildren, the child of Olive) was an interesting choice. We never learn much about our narrator, but he does speak directly to us and seems to tell the story as a firsthand witness and almost as a cautionary tale. 

While I was approaching the end of this book, I kept contemplating my rating. The final scenes and last page are so perfect I have to give it 5 stars. 

Favorite quotes: 

"You don't believe those men could have goodness and beauty in them. You see only one side, and you think - more than that, you're sure - that's all there is." (382).

"Hate cannot live alone. It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant." (498)

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." (583). 

Stars: 5