Last night I finished Steinbeck’s novel To the God Unknown. I gotta say, what a disappointment.
This morning I went and looked up what the purpose of the book was supposed to be because
I couldn’t figure it out. I discovered this was Steinbeck’s second novel, and it had taken him five
years to write because he struggled with it.
It shows.
I just want to say I didn’t like it and leave it at that, but all I hear is one of my English professors…
“Lisa, you’re an English major, you can’t just say, you don’t like something without unpacking the why.”
Grr. The things that get stuck in your mind.
I thought the plot would have some kind of philosophical twist that would relate back to how we worship
things we shouldn’t. I was thinking of some type of allegory. He makes enough Biblical references,
but alas, there was no substance.
His characters were weak. The main character, Joseph, courted his wife in the most ridiculous way.
Steinbeck took time to build up the wife’s character as being someone that is intelligent, but she
married a man she had no clue about just because he asked her at their second meeting.
Really?
The part that irked me to no end, was the relationship that developed between Joseph and his sister-in-law.
It was totally pointless.
Totally unbelievable.
Totally unnecessary.
Totally unthought out because it unwrapped his overall poorly developed character of Joseph, and it destroyed
what Steinbeck tried to build up as in the relationship of Joseph to his brothers to each other and to the land.
In the end, I gave this book a one star. It is hard to get such a low rating from me because I feel that an author
should naturally get two stars for effort. Writing a book is hard. I get it, so I believe in two stars for effort.
In the end, I think Steinbeck should have just axed this book and moved on to something else. Five years is a
long time to work on something that goes nowhere. Of course, it’s not like I can tell him that now, but I can
spare you from reading something I wish I had been spared.
Good books can be so hard to find.
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