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Apr 27, 2010

Jason rated it:

This is a collection of stories about morons. What i mean by that, is that everyone is engagingly simple, "good country people," and their amusement and fear is what makes this story tick. They are all good farmers, moral people without having the dredge of scripted morality, and finally adept to the understandings of both the simplicity of their environment as well as each other's characters. Simplicity drives them, and degardes all progression, for the better. Hence, the maybe un More...

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Oct 12, 2008

Steve rated it:

I feel that Steinbeck’s short stories are overlooked because they’re simple without being simplistic and they plod along at a pace that can feel like watching crops grow. The Pastures of Heaven was written before he became a star and you can trace the outlines of what was to come.

The setting is a valley that a Spanish Corporal finds while chasing runaway Indian slaves. He’s so taken by what he sees that he christens the valley “Las Pasturas del Cielo” or "The Pastures of Heaven. More...

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Apr 20, 2010

Joyce rated it:

In his early California novels, Steinbeck focused on the land he loved and the people who lived there. The Pastures of Heaven (which is based on a real valley and whose characters have roots in real people) is one of those novels and uses the same format he employed in Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row a collection of stories around an organizing theme. One of his earliest books, The Pastures of Heaven, focuses on the people who work the land and live in its town. The stories are fairly independ More...

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Nov 30, 2008

Tara rated it:

This is one of Steinbeck's very very early works, and you can see a lot in the writing style that suggests good things that have come since.
Pastures of Heaven is a series of interconnected stories all set in a tiny valley south of Monterey, called Pasturas del Cielo [or something]. Each chapter is the story of one of the families or people in the community, connected by their interactions with the Munroe family, well-intentioned newcomers to the area who nonetheless seem to devastate every More...

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Feb 09, 2011

Tony rated it:

Steinbeck, John. THE PASTURES OF HEAVEN. (1932). ****. This is an early novel of Steinbeck’s that consists of a collection of short stories that are interrelated. The common thread among all the stories is the valley named, in the stories, Pastures of Heaven. This piece of land and its enchanted surroundings was originally named Las Pastures del Cielo by the early Spaniards, and was later settled by a variety of white men who saw it as an opportunity to make their mark as farmers and ranch More...

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Mar 04, 2010

Clark rated it:

Another stellar work of fiction from Steinbeck. What impressed me about this series of interconnected short stories was the extent to which Steinbeck establishes each character in their own private world before exposing that world to the light. If any narrative thread ties everything together, it has to be the corruption of innocence by clumsy exterior elements. Each of these characters lives an active fantasy or dream life, but they all to one extent or another understand that this fantasy is n More...

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Oct 06, 2010

Mike rated it:

This is a cycle of interrelated stories, an early Steinbeck work which is most notable for establishing the setting and style for which the author became famous. I was impressed at the freshness of the language, 70 years later, as well as the sinister atmosphere that floats over these tales.

The "Pastures of Heaven" is a fictional, but genuine, region of valleys near the central California coast, modeled on the fertile farmland where Steinbeck grew up. The name derives from More...

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Nov 19, 2011

John rated it:

Disclosure: I am an unapologetic, hopeless Steinbeck addict. I cannot recall him ever writing a bad word and have found enrichment in the more than 20 books of his I have digested.
This short novel spins a series of interesting stories set against the Salinas/Monterey/Carmel locale where so many of Steinbeck's major works are set. He offers up the history of a unique valley from its initial settlement through succeeding generations, protraying ironies, tragedies and triumphs. Better than More...

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Oct 13, 2009

Anca rated it:

A long, long time ago, I visited The Pastures of Heaven with a bit of unconsciousness and I got impressed with it. It was lent to me along with other "Christian" books (probably because of the title). (Of course after I finnished it I realized it wasn't a Christian book at all - no clichees and lectures specific for the bigger part of that literature.) It's the only one from that stack that I can remember.

Actually, as I was re-reading, I realized certain scenes and facts w More...

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Apr 20, 2010

Suzy rated it:

My son was more impressed with this collection of interrelated stories than I, but I did like it. I read it after I read Sweet Thursday, which was a much later book, and which I thought was fabulous. It was interesting, historically, to read that Pastures of Heaven was the book that found Steinbeck what became his trademark California setting. What emerged for me was the theme of place. What struck me most was the fragile hold even the "Pastures of Heaven" can have on inhabitants wh More...

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Sep 05, 2009

Nick rated it:

I chose this as one of the books I took along to read on vacation in San Francisco because it is about Northern California and because I had recently read "Travels with Charlie" and really enjoyed it. And because I could borrow it from my friend S. It's a lovely book, consisting of several somewhat-related vignettes about people living in a rural valley near Monterey, CA. They're very well-rendered characters, with less sentimentalism than the characters in "Cannery Row." The More...

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Jul 22, 2010

Linda rated it:

I picked up Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven from the free paperback section of the library to take it along for some summer reading. I hadn’t heard of this particular novel and later realized that it was one of the author’s first writings and that some of the character studies therein can be found in his later works. I have recently read Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge and Sherwood Anderson’s Wineburg, Ohio and get the same feeling in that there are several stories woven through one li More...

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Jun 28, 2009

Tom rated it:

My journey through the lesser works of John Steinbeck yields another minor gem!

Another reviewer refers to The Pastures of Heaven as Steinbeck's first book, and although that's not true, it might as well be - Cup of Gold, his actual first book, is a steaming pile, for sure.

Anyway, this one is a whole lot better than Cup of Gold. Steinbeck wasn't suited for pirate stories, and The Pastures of Heaven finds my longtime-favorite American novelist in much more comfortable terri More...

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Feb 06, 2011

Susan rated it:

I love Pastures of Heaven - one of my now favorite Steinbeck books from 1942. It's a collection of interwoven stories of families, old and new, who live and work in Las Pasturas del Cielo near Salinas and Monterey, California. Primarily farmers and orchardists, Steinbeck speaks of their trials and triumphs. Indians, "natives," immigrants, ne'er-do-wells, teachers and proto-hippies inhabit the valley. I especially like the stories of teachers and chicken farmers and those who let the la More...

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Apr 06, 2010

Zach rated it:

I've read Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club with all the stories from mothers to daughters. This storytelling over a specific place which evokes memories seemed cliche then, at first as not all the stories seemed to meet up someplace somewhere. I enjoyed that of this story because it made the whole more realistic to have a bunch of really, interesting people set around a place, whose lives sometimes do but not always intersect at points. I didn't expect as much of the tangled lives to be in the separate c More...

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Aug 12, 2010

J. rated it:

As a Steinbeck fan, I must first and foremost admit to possible bias. That being said, there are Steinbeck novels that I don't necessarily care for. Pastures of Heaven is a series of short stories of a people that have settled in California's pristine era. There are several allusions to Eden and Steinbeck's descriptive nature makes the reader nostalgic for times before their birth. Many of the stories alone are captivating, but the fact that the characters are interwoven throughout the entir More...

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Mar 27, 2011

John rated it:

Not as powerful as later works, you can tell this is Steinbeck finding his own voice and writing about what he knows best; the Salinas area, which would later be called "Steinbeck Country."

These are twelve independent yet overlapping stories that is set in and seemingly in love with the landscape of the Monterey/Salinas area. Almost a pastoral love letter of the area. Each chapter is complete as a short story, however the stories as a whole tell one bigger story.
Very am More...

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Oct 20, 2011

Roberta rated it:

"L'uomo non vuol soltanto vivere e riprodursi. Egli vuole anche lasciare un ricordo di sé, una prova, forse, che è realmente esistito. E lascia la sua prova sul legno, sulla pietra o, addirittura, sulla vita degli altri. Questo desiderio profondo c'è in tutti noi, dal ragazzo che scrive parole oscene sui muri al Budda che incide la propria immagine nella mente dei popoli. La vita è così irreale che noi non siamo mai sicuri di esistere..."
Ed è questo che Steinbeck fa in questo libr More...

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Dec 22, 2009

Nomi rated it:

It is an accidental but interesting juxtaposition to have just read this book for the first time after having recently read Olive Kittredge. The structure is similar: stand-alone chapters which read as short stories but interweave around a single repeating character or family of characters and place. My mother and I found the Steinbeck sorting through books she is no longer able to read. What a fantastic writer he is! Published in 1946 and perhaps not the most noteworthy of his books, it is defi More...

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Jun 24, 2011

Mary rated it:

I love to read John Steinbeck; picking up one of his books has so far, with the exception of one, been a most pleasant experience. This book is his first published work and in it he sets the tone for his future works. There are ten interrelated stories in this small volume and although the style is similar to Winesburg, Ohio, I found it much more enjoyable. The story is set in a valley in California, called The Pastures of Heaven, for its beauty and serenity. It is not far from Salinas, an a More...

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Feb 14, 2011

John rated it:

This is an early Steinbeck work (1932), and marks the moment where he really discovered his trademark style, a kind of naturalism-sentimentality mix. The stories are all set in a fictional California valley called Las Pasturas del Cielo, which seems to represent the last frontier space in America, a place where people believe they can go to regenerate their lives and fortunes. But as the characters discover, there is no escaping human nature, no escaping the curses of heredity, bad luck, or soci More...

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Jan 08, 2009

Tony rated it:

This is Steinbeck's first book, a collection of short stories all connected by one location (a town in California called Pastures of Heaven) during the beginning of the century. He presents us, as usual, with a clear and concise view of life in rural California of the era, but because they are short stories, it's hard to really get too involved with any of the characters. Also most of the tales are very bleak and forboding, as if Steinbeck had no hopes for any of them. All in all it's a nice More...

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Jun 27, 2010

Katherine rated it:

“ ‘Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do’” (49).
“He had stopped wearing shoes because he liked the feeling of the warm earth on his feet, and because he had no shoes” (78).
“They were surprised at the strange fruit their conversation bore, for they didn’t direct their thinking, nor trellis nor trim it the way so many people do” (79).
“It was good, she knew, to put off joy, for by doing so, one increased joy” (107) More...

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May 26, 2007

Christopher rated it:

This short story cycle was penned by Steinbeck early in his career. All the stories are connected by the Munroe family and the fact that they take place in a part of California's Salinas Valley Steinbeck called "Las Pasturas del Cielo," hence the title. The stories themselves are all about very down to earth people that exist in this part of California in order to shape the experience of one another. My personal favorites are stories IV--"Tularecito," about a mentally and More...

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May 10, 2010

Bethany rated it:

Ok, but not as good as all of his other books I've read. I think it's because for the most part the chapters all feature different characters. By the time you get attached to them, the chapter's over and he's on to new people. This undermines Steinbeck's great strength - drawing characters you will care about. That's what drives Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and all the epic stories, but he does it even in a really short book like Of Mice and Men. Not in this one.

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May 24, 2011

Keith rated it:

Steinbeck's first mature work. This is a fantastic book. It is a compilation of stories about a small valley in California, setting of so many Steinbeck books. The intersecting lives of the members of the community provide fodder for otherwise disconnected short stories. Steinbeck here puts forward a novel and enjoyable way of connecting shorter works. If you have not read Steinbeck this might not be a bad place to start. I highly recommend it.

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Oct 08, 2011

Tristan rated it:

Steinbeck's The Pastures of Heaven is a collection of short stories, all focusing on one area in California.
All the stories are reasonably short. But if you are a fan of Steinbeck, this is not one of the books to pass up. The characters are very good, and the small life lessons, or stories in each one carries a lot of depth.

So If you enjoy Steinbeck, I recommend you check out the Pastures of Heaven

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Aug 21, 2011

J rated it:

I'm a big Steinbeck fan so it's hard to give a honest review. I enoyed some of these characters in this book and you can see some of them become characters in some of his later works. There were some moments of this book that I thought were wonderful but then I thought it lacked in as it pregressed. The writing is great and it's written by one of my hereos. So, I guess 3 stars sounds fair

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Nov 07, 2010

Christopher rated it:

A cleverly planner set of interrelated stories centered around a place: the Pastures of Heaven, a small valley in Northern California. The characters and situations are interesting and the writing is minimalist in the right places and ways. It seems to me that this book perhaps influenced such similar books as Ray Bradbury's _The Martian Chronicles_ or Clifford Simak's _City_.

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Apr 18, 2010

Sonya rated it:

This is a collections of amusing short stories. Certain stories have you laughing, others leave you quietly reflective. The stories are well written and hold your attention well. I would have preferred a little more continuity with the central theme - The Pastures of Heaven. The location was the only thing that made these stories somewhat related. However, it was hardly spoken of.

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