East of Eden

By: John Steinbeck

Narrated by: Richard Poe

Length: 25 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, 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.

©1952 John Steinbeck; Renewed 1980 Elaine Steinbeck, Thom Steinbeck, and John Steinbeck IV (P)2011 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"A novel planned on the grandest possible scale...One of those occasions when a writer has aimed high and then summoned every ounce of energy, talent, seriousness, and passion of which he was capable.... It is an entirely interesting and impressive book." (The New York Herald Tribune)

"A fantasia and myth...a strange and original work of art." (The New York Times Book Review)

"A moving, crying pageant with wilderness strengths." (Carl Sandburg)

Epic story of Love and Loss

This is a story of family, nuclear and global. The story centers around twin brothers Aaron and Caleb Trask, yet it becomes perhaps more a story of their parents, Adam and Catherine. Cathy is a dark character, a friend of murder, perversion, blackmail, and prostitution, devoid of humanity and Adam is just the opposite.
And there is Lee, the family servant who becomes both mother and father to the twins as the two parents abandon the boys for their own disparate reasons.
The mood and setting are tangible; the story epic. I'm so happy to be able to listen ( terrific narrator) to one of my favorite authors.

Powerful book.

This book has helped me better understand myself and other people from my life. Powerful message and griping story. Nararator Richard Poe does an amazing job.

Fabulous story -- flabby ending

Loved the book, couldn't wait to get all the outcomes of each very interesting character. Lots of them die, which I am not sure is terribly realistic, though this was an epic of three generations, and yes, folks die. But I am thinking that JS killed some off just to get back to the main story of the Trasks. I have read some analyses of the story, and many critics panned the book for its poor structure and irrelevancies. I think it was a terrific book/story. As the climax began to build, I was expecting a bigger bang at the end. I am sorry that it sort of fizzled. As I look back on it and think over all the characters, I might charge Steinbeck with using the character of Lee as too obvious a device for Steinbeck's own voice.

Much like Tolstoy, JS is quite the philospher/moralizer, and he needed to constantly pound home his personal ideals; he used Lee to do that. The character of Cathy-Kate was obviously made from JS's own vengeance over something, yet he is not a mysoginist. in fact other women characters were very likable, respectable, flawed and generaly human. I tried very hard to impose the template of the Cain & Abel story on the book, but there were so many generations and so many brothers, it's hard to know just what he was trying to do. JS did a great job of using the Biblical story and changing it to a modern day (early 1900s) fiction; the hand of God was everywhere.

It's a good investment of time, and yet I needed the Kindle copy to have and read along. Some passages were very deep, very lyrical, very thought provoking. I needed the text to be able to work through some of it.

Only the ending kept me from making this a 5-star read.

I will take on Grapes and Mice/Men. Since East of Eden was later than both of those, it will be interesting to see if the critics who cited the former as his peak and East of Eden as his less polished work were right. Did Steinbeck peak and wane with E/E? I look forward to both of them.

East of Eden

There isn’t much to say other than this: Although ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ is generally considered to be Steinbeck’s best novel; certainly his most celebrated, it is ‘East of Eden’.
I am so glad that for this unabridged audio edition, the performance by Richard Poe is excellent. I have heard too many classic works of literature ruined by bad readers. But Richard Poe was made to perform this audiobook.
A word of caution: East of Eden is extremely powerful. It will stay with you forever.

An American Treasure

Steinbeck manages to captivate the human soul by placing the very essence of freedom into his characters. Through tragedy and betrayal, the reader will experience a literal life time of human experience. Additionally, one will find him or herself inside each character, for good or bad. American ideals flood the pages, yet they are not reserved to the nation. If you desire an opportunity to grow as a person, I sincerely encourage you to listen to this novel.

A Greater and Lesser Novel

I would have bet that Steinbeck wrote this long before The Grapes of Wrath because it is the lesser novel, but evidently he wrote this much later. It is too sprawling for even his control and stretches rely on narrative exposition rather than dramatic action or nuanced description. Perhaps it should have been longer still! No doubt my world is enriched for having read this and it is still a masterly work of fiction--it's in the top 500 novels ever but not the top 10 like Grapes of Wrath, and some of the characters will endure long into the future. Thematically more ambitious than Grapes of Wrath, the Cain and Abel structure is enlightening but less meaningful and less tangible than the historical forces at play in Grapes, at least for me. No Steinbeck enthusiast should miss this but a newcomer would be advised to start with Grapes. The reader is excellent and helps shape the experience.

Solid

This is life, that’s it. The book is everything we know and do. People are not good or bad, just people.

An epic story

I loved the book. Such a intricate story of family and relationships. One of his best works.

Whew! That’s a long book

It physically hurt me to listen to all this, well almost, really it just humbled me. It is loosely based on the story of Cain and Able. The characters of two generations are locked into an intense, even violent, sibling rivalry. It’s more relevant than ever, since we live in a time of pride and competition, including racial and ethnic struggles that pit people against each other who have far more in common than different. In fact the things they have in common and the desire to distinguish themselves is what causes the conflict. It speaks of human flaws and pride. Be prepared to have your beliefs about yourself challenged and be prepared to be humbled. Be prepared to experience both absurdly evil and sometimes good characters that you meet on the way.

Absolutely stellar storytelling

I cannot believe I waited this long to listen to this story. Steinbeck's descriptions of humans and their humanity is amazing.