As with any book that grabs me like this one did, I didn't want it to end. I started reading it about a week and a half ago and I couldn't put it down but as I fell completely in love with it and neared the end I tried slowing my reading pace down because I couldn't bear the idea of it ending.
There are many books in this world that I like a great deal but there are few that suck me into their world so intensely and have me so invested in the characters that I feel I am also a character in the book. Where, if someone I love in the book is injured or dies or is betrayed I feel as though it happened to my own father/mother/sister/friend. Along with this book the others that come to my mind are The World According to Garp and A Fine Balance.
I'm a big fan of epic family stories that span years. From the first sentence I was hooked. I've rarely read a novel that had so many interesting characters whether they were pure evil or the kindest souls you could ever have the pleasure of knowing.
The story begins with Adam and Charles Trask, two brothers and the sons of Cyrus and Alice Trask (Adam has a different birth mother) living on a farm in Connecticut. The boys grow to be very different. Adam is a kind, loving boy and although Charles loves his brother fiercly, he has a wicked violent streak that comes out of jealously causing him to twice beat his brother to a pulp.
It is after these beatings that it becomes obvious to Charles and the reader that Cyrus favours Adam.
Cyrus, an army enthusiast (and liar but that's a whole other story!) raises his sons in a strict military style and once old enough he demands that Adam enlist however, he chooses to keep Charles at home on the farm knowing that his violent temper will do him no good.
The Trasks are only one family this story follows. We also have the pleasure of getting to know the Hamiltons, Samuel in particular. Sam was by far one of my favourites. An Irish immigrant who made his way over with his wife to the Salinas Valley and their barren farm where they raised nine children. Sam was a warm, honest, self educated man who eventually becomes friends with Adam Trask once Adam as an adult relocates to the Salinas Valley with his pregnant wife Cathy.
And this is all just in the beginning. It also follows the evil Cathy along with Cal and Aron Trask, her twin boys whom she deserts as babies, leaving them with a wounded Adam.
Along the way there are so many memorable characters including another one of my favourites, Lee. Lee is introduced as the simple minded Chinese servant to Adam Trask's family but he soon reveals himself to Sam as an intellectual Chinese-American who only speaks 'pidgin' because: “It’s more than a convenience,” he said. “It’s even more than a self-protection. Mostly we have to use it to be understood at all . . . . If I should go up to a lady or a gentleman, for instance, and speak as I am doing now, I wouldn’t be understood.”
John Steinbeck
I beg you to read this if you haven't already! Today, as I sat and ate my lunch at a local diner, I sadly came to the end. I was filled with such emotion as I read the last page that I walked back to work wiping tears from my eyes. I don't know whether I was crying because of events in the book or if I was crying out of pure joy at having been afforded the luxury to read such a wonderful story.
I just don't know how I will be satisfied by the next book I pick up.
-Amanda
East of Eden
by John Steinbeck
Published 1952
601 pages
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