Until now I had only read Stienbeck's short stories. Not even Grapes of Wrath, which apparently everyone reads in high school. But, I read somewhere that he thought of this book as his greatest work, so I decided to delve into Stienbeck with it. At first I was a little put off by the amount of groundwork he was putting into the descriptions, but somewhere in the middle of one of those narratives, he would inevitably insert a revelation about the human heart. Luckily for him (and my continued reading of the book), it happened early enough in the novel that it pulled me in.
The story itself is very interesting, and kind of loosely based upon the lives of Cain and Abel. But not really at all. In addition to Stienbeck's writing style and way with words, I also enjoyed how the story was generational and the way you could see how the lives of Adam and Charles were reflected in the children. That's always something that interests me -- inter-generational relationships and how that molds who a person becomes.
Sidenote: I watched the movie after reading the book, and my biggest takeaway from the movie was James Dean's performance. I'm not really sure what that says about the film adaptation but I was inspired to watch Giant and then On the Waterfront.
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