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To a God Unknown

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To a God Unknown

By: John Steinbeck, Robert DeMott - editor introduction
Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

While fulfilling his dead father's dream of creating a prosperous farm in California, Joseph Wayne comes to believe that a magnificent tree on the farm embodies his father's spirit. His brothers and their families share in Joseph's prosperity, and the farm flourishes - until one brother, scared by Joseph's pagan belief, kills the tree and brings disease and famine on the farm.

Set in familiar Steinbeck country, To a God Unknown is a mystical tale, exploring one man's attempt to control the forces of nature and to understand the ways of God.

©1933 John Steinbeck (P)2020 Penguin Audio Classics

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All stars
Most relevant  
Beautifully rendered prose made the strangeness and poetry hinted in later Steinbeck front a center. A story about faith.

Strange biblical tone

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Grand, archetypal themes play out with a biblical feel. Early, significant actions set up an engaging drama.

Archetypal

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Steinbeck is a poet like my favourite authors are. But he’s a naturalist too. He can describe flowers or landscapes or creatures in such poetic detail and without overuse of metaphor but in simple description that I wonder where he learned it for I would feel it comes from intimate acquaintance of anything he writes of. But he delves into their natures and writes of good and evil and truth in all their complications as if he’s equally acquainted with those. His observations paint such detailed pictures with words that I listen as well as reading as rewind if I miss a word or phrase and reread the book several times a year consulting East of Eden like some turn to a Bible, when I need comfort, truth or stimulation or hunger for something that the word story seems too simple for. Each time I do I find something new to deepen or widen my feelings or hone the appreciation of the pictures I make in my mind for they have different dimensions so that I smell and touch them. This one will join my favourites although it isn’t fully told yet! It makes me wonder if he observed the world he writes of without sleeping or doing anything else. I’m like a child not wishing it to end and savouring the remaining part.

I have never reviewed a book before finishing it but this is beautiful and I’m still halfway to go

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I loved the story it fires your imagination . Every character I could picture and feel

The reading. Full of feeling yet so gentle

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I love Steinbeck’s work, but this one sadly falls short of the mark. So much so that it hardly seems possible that it was written by the same author. The characterisation and the gripping sense of foreboding that characterises his other work is noticeably lacking. Occasional moments of beauty, otherwise very disappointing. I will come back to this book and try again, this time in written format, to see whether “it’s not you, it’s me”, difficult as it is to accept this is an offering from Steinbeck.

Disappointing to a Steinbeck fan!

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