During this challenge, Steinbeck has become one of my new favorite writers. However, Cannery Row (1945) is not a book I enjoyed reading. Maybe it is simply because I cannot really say that i understood the point of it. Once more, Steinbeck writes about his native California during the Great Depression. The setting is the Cannery Row in Monterey and features different members of society. There is the store owner who finds it hard to get his customers to pay, the marine biolgist “Doc”, who studies sea creatures, and then there is Mack, the leader of a group of vagabonds who move into an old abandoned factory together with a dog they spoil rotten.
The characters are colorful and the book depicts an interesting way of life. But as i have already mentioned, when i reached the end, I could not undestand what the point of the book was. Maybe that good intentions do not always have good outcomes, based on the party mack and his friends throw for Doc. Their intentions are honorable, but the party gets out of hand before Doc even comes home and leads to the destruction of his laboratory and home. And when they try to make up for it, that does not go as planned either.
Steinbeck was a phenomenal writer, but this is not a book I will be revisiting.
classicbookchallenge 