Page Count Episode 1

Whats up you sexy mf’s! It is I, Alex, of amateur reading level and comprehension skills. This is something that I want to do more and that is to reflect on the things I’ve done and put them onto paper (or in this case an article online) for my own personal benefit and if it also helps you then great! We both win, and we love that. In the case of this series specifically, I want to write an incredibly amateur version of a book review. And so far the tentative title is called Page Count, not because it is particularly clever but because it was the first thing that came to mind when it comes to anything book related for me. However, the title does not matter, it is the subject that matters, so let us lightly review East of Eden.

One Minutes Summary

Okay so East of Edens is a fantastic story covering multigenerational trauma but mainly through the lens of Adam and Cathy. The storytelling is incredibly fluid and captivating. If you’ve never read anything from Steinbeck before this can serve as a fantastic introduction to his writing although it is a little bit of a long read. I wish there was more written about secondary characters but only because they are so well written. Page Count rates this 9 knee slaps out of 10 knee slaps.

Out of respect to the current title of the series, the page count of East of Eden is about 800 pages on the format that I used, which was a kindle. Your mileage may vary depending on the medium you choose.

With that out of the way, let us move into the meat of this review.

East of Eden

By John Steinbeck

What is this about?

East of Eden mainly covers a moment in time with the Trask Family around the late 19th century and the pivot into the 20th century. There is also a rather in depth coverage of the Hamilton family running in parallel with the Trask family, however the Hamilton family acts as more of a support timeline to prop up the story of the Trask events. We begin with Cyrus Trask as the progenitor of the Trask family but the real focus is on the development of Cyrus‘s kids, Adam and Charles Trask. The Hamilton storyline begins with Samuel and Liza Hamilton who give rise to nine children, one of which is Olive Hamilton whom we learn is the mother to John Steinbeck whom is both a character in the story and also the narrator of the overall story. It is mostly his personal thoughts that the readers are privy to and it is his interpretations of other character thoughts that we further glean information from.

The books journey is one of multigenerational saga, but viewed from the life of Adam Trask as he begins his life as the son of Cyrus and then eventually becomes a father to Caleb and Aron Trask where we begin to see the traumas and mistakes of his childhood get passed down to his own children. The antagonist or opposing figure in this tale is the mother of Caleb and Aron, Cathy Ames, whom Steinbeck introduces as an ”innate monster” whom is “born without a soul”. Despite her darker soul she is described as being angelic and beautifully innocent to a fault. This gives her many opportunities in manipulation, superficially with men, and she uses it as a honed weapon and we see her use it a lot in the book with multiple men but most importantly with Adam Trask.

Personal Opinions

The book reads incredibly well, with Steinbeck himself referring to the book as his magnum opus. It was the first Steinbeck book I had ever read (not including The Grapes of Wrath I read in high school because I barely skimmed though it just to get through class) and so I was incredibly unfamiliar with this writing style. I’m and still unsure if the way this book was written is, in fact, his writing style but i can say without a doubt that it was incredibly gripping and alluring and I found myself easily spending hours at a time reading.

As mentioned before John Steinbeck is the narrator in the story and the narration is used as a glue to hold the different plot lines together but the POV used in the overall story is never just Adams. We saw things from Cathy’s side, we saw life through Samuel Hamiltons life, we experienced hardship with Charles Trask when he was alone on the farm, the story is filled with so many interesting characters and although Adam is the pillar of the story we never found ourselves too long with him and was constantly rewarded with the point of view of a different character and how that fit into the story.

One of the things I discovered while reading is the level of depth he gives his side characters. With 800 pages there’s is a lot to cover with Adam and Cathy’s timeline but what made East of Eden so great to me was the world building and the character building given to side characters like Lee, their Chinese housekeeper turn father figure or Samuel Hamilton, whom we are introduced to in the beginning but unconditionally fall in love with him and his everlasting brightness to counter Adam’s dark timeline. So much time is given to them that you find yourself pining for more airtime for the side characters than you do with the main plot lines.

Leading from that statement then, is my main gripe with this book. I felt that we as the readers were robbed of the potential for the Hamilton family. What I wrote prior is still true, we get so much amazing lore and depth about the Hamilton family but specifically about Sam and Liza, his wife. After the Adam storyline begins to develop and mature the Hamilton lineage takes more of a backseat and slowly but surely we begin to hear less and less from them. My gripe is not that we learn too much about Adam’s life but that in exchange for that we don’t know what happens to the family after a certain point. Sam and Liza have nine kids. There is so much material there. We get dredges of stories here and there within the Hamilton family but none to the same depth as the Trask family and I personally think that is a real damn shame. I’m not sure what the real reason is and maybe I’m being unreasonable but that was my biggest takeaway from this book. I wanted more from him.

Closing Arguments

I’m not sure what the format of a book review should be, but as per usual this is really just a raw mind dump of what I thought about the book. With everything being said though, I rate this book. I had just completed Jurrasic Park prior to this book and while JP (can I call you JP?) is an incredible book, there was a certain depth to this book that JP did not have, “It’s an unfair comparison!” (I know I know) East of Eden also had an extra 500 pages to explore things and JP did not so take my opinions with a huge grain of McDonalds salt. That’s the good stuff.

If you’re an avid reader, chances are you’ve already read this book and even bigger chances are you are not even here reading this dumbass article. But if you’re looking to get into reading or have never read the book before and want to read something that feels like an accomplishment but still is easy to digest and has all the depths of the Mariana Trench this is a great book to get into.

I am currently on a personal reading challenge and so I will be reading many more books so if this was something you enjoyed reading about please follow me for more reading content. I have other things in the process of being developed but this is the most interesting for me so far but stay with me for other mindless ramblings in the future.

As always, thanks for entertaining a fool such as oneself and if you have any opinions about my opinions please leave them in the comments and maybe we can have an uncivil discussion about it.

Struggling,

Alex Chua