At last, at long last, I have finally finished The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I started this book several months ago and I have really struggled to finish it. One of my sisters says that life is too short to finish a book you are not enjoying ... there are so many others to chose from. But I was determined to get to the end of this book as it was one of the BBC Top 100 reads, which was the focus of my reading challenge last year. It is, no doubt, a worthy book, highlighting the plight of poor tenant farmers from Oklahoma - the Joads - who, with pretty much everyone they know, are driven off their small patch of land by wealthy landowners and head off to California, where they have been told there is plenty of work picking oranges, grapes and cotton. The journey is long and hard - with both grandparents dying en route, the husband of the pregnant daughter doing a runner and the constant worry that the not long out of prison son, Tom, will get himself arrested and carted back to the big house. So far, so gloomy ... and so it continues. Deary me, this a desperately depressing book. Full of hardship, poverty, grief and death - there are no bright spots on the horizon. Grim, grim, grim all the way through. If you are feeling low, DO NOT read this book. It is well written in parts, but I felt it was very stop/start and just didn't flow or carry me along. I'm sure many people absolutely love this book, but it just wasn't for me.
My STAR rating: TWO.
Length: 536 print pages.
Price I paid: free, borrowed from local library.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download or CD; ebook.
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