Cannery Row is a novel by John Steinbeck. It was published 1945 and there is also a film version of it. Steinbeck is known for his comic novels Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat. Cannery Row is a short book, it only has 115 pages, so you can read it through in few days.
The main characters in Cannery Row are Mack and his friends Eddie and Hazel, and marine biologist Doc. There are many side characters. Mack and his friends are unemployed except Eddie, who works as a part-time bartender. Doc is a gentle and the smartest man in Cannery Row. The novel is set in Monterey, California.
Mack and the boys want to do something nice for their friend Doc, so they decide to throw a party for him. The party gets out of hand before Doc even gets there and his home and lab were ruined. The boys want to make it up to Doc somehow, so they decided to ask Dora what to do. Dora suggests the boys to throw another party where Doc could actually attend. The party is a success, and the novel ends the morning after the party. There are also few subplots tied to the main plot.
The book was quite easy to read. There weren’t many complicated sentence structures so someone with basic English skills could read this book, though there were parts that had some strange words that i had to translate with my phone. The narrator in Cannery Row is omniscient. He knows what everyone’s thinking and feeling. The book teaches the reader that if you screw something up, you have to make it up somehow.
Cannery Row was a good book, even though i don’t really like reading books. The characters were funny and there wasn’t too much of them. Some books have a problem that they have too many characters, but i’m glad this didn’t. The plot was easy to follow and the novel was easy to read.