Author: John Steinbeck
Publisher: Penguin Books
Year published: 1947
How I got this book: School library
Why I read this book: I read Of Mice and Men a couple of years ago and fell in love with his writing, so when I saw this at the library I just had to pick it up
My rating: 5 stars
Goodreads synopsis:
Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistence. Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as large as a sea gull's egg, as "perfect as the moon." With the pearl comes hope, the promise of comvort and of security.
A story of classic simplicity, based on a Mexican folk tale, The Pearl explores the secrets of man's nature, greed, the darkest depths of evil, and the luminous possibilities of love.
My thoughts:
Wow, I don't even know what to say about this. Steinbeck's writing is absolutely fantastic. In 85 pages he made me care for the characters and break my heart. I had forgotten how much I actually liked his writing, and I'm so glad that I read another story by him.
Steinbeck's writing style is unlike anything I've ever read before, and I love it. He doesn't write long, boring sentences. He writes them simple, like it is. And he doesn't only write as one character. We follow the main character, but still get to know what the people they interact with are thinking and what they want, and I haven't read any stories by any other authors that writes like that.
In this novella we follow Kino, his wife Juana and their child, Coyotito. I had no idea what this story was about when I picked it up, and in the beginning I did not see how this story would develop.
My favourite thing about this novella was the relationship between Kino and Juana. It's so evident how much they care about each other, and how much they value the other person's wishes. We need to see more relationship like this in the YA-genre.
I would recommend this to absolutely everyone I know. It's less than a hundred pages, and can be read in such a short amount of time there's no excuse to not read it. It's captivating, and it made me feel a lot more than what several novels have done.
No comments:
Post a Comment