sibyl’s Reviews > East of Eden > Status Update

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good. Is that it?"

❤️‍🩹

And Lee read, "’Dear Father, I'm in the army. I told them I was eighteen. I'll be all right. Don't worry about me. Aron.""
"Funny," said Adam. "Seems like I read it. But I guess I didn't." He rubbed his hand.

Someone has to pay for these crimes

"I was afraid if I didn't get drunk I'd shoot myself," Cal interrupted.
"You'd never do that. You're too mean," said Lee.

"I leave everything I have to my son Aron Trask." She dated the sheet and signed it "Catherine Trask." Her fingers dwelt on the page, and then she got up and left her will face upward on the desk.

!ugh

Kate was not thinking. Her mind drifted among impressions the way a bat drifts and swoops in the evening. She saw the face of the blond and beautiful boy, his eyes mad with shock. She heard his ugly words aimed not so much at her as at himself. And she saw his dark brother leaning against the door and laughing.

;/

"Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time."

"What's she like!
"Pure!" said Abra. Just absolutely pure. Nothing but pure—never a bad thing. I'm not like that."
"Nobody is," said Lee.
"He doesn't know me. He doesn't even want to know me. He wants that—white—ghost."
Lee rubbled a piece of cracker. "Don't you like him? You're pretty young, but I don't think that makes any difference."

Every time I pick this novel back up I’m astonished and how quickly it pulls me back in. Maybe the best prose I have ever read in a book. A masterpiece that I think will always stand the test of time.