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Aug 06, 2011

Bird Brian rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

25 comments like (26 people liked it)

May 03, 2008

Jessica rated it:

You may have heard that this is one of Steinbeck's weakest books, owing to a heavy handed moral. I have to say that I disagree, though I may change my mind as I read and reread his earlier works.

It was really the details of this book that did it for me. Ethan's peculiar dismissive compliments toward the wife he seems to love very much, the odd sexual tension that seemed to crop up between him and his emotionally cruel half-grown daughter, the bit with his son towards the end where a More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Oct 02, 2007

Del rated it:

John Steinbeck's The Winter of our Discontent is a study of morality in the individual and in the community. Set in a New England town where everyone knows everyone else's business and history, Ethan Hawley narrates his experience with the various moral temptations one season offers him.

Under pressure from associates and his own family, Ethan becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his diminished station in life and begins to consider a brief transformation, a temporary suspension More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 01, 2007

Matthew rated it:

there was a time in my life when i read this each fall, as the the michigan winter was about to make my psyche turn to salt. i first read it by accident, finding it in my co-op on the floor in a room that had been abandonded and now was only used for smoking this and that. the walls of the room had been painted different superheroes from the previous tenant's childhood. i liked the rendition of green hornet, although the renderer claimed he was an after-thought, someone to fill the space bet More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jan 09, 2008

Marsha rated it:

I learned a lesson about why I should finish books, even if the story does not grip me and I find the protagonist boring. (Thanks, book club) Initially, I thought... oh man... middle aged man making bitter jokes out of his miserable life. I felt sorry for his wife.

However, as I realized what was happening as I got farther and farther into the book, I found myself wishing there was a sequel because I want to know what happened to Ethan a year or two down the road. Was he able to More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Feb 08, 2011

Julia rated it:

The “Winter of our discontent” held my interest. It is the story of a man and his family, the story of the conflict between ambition and honesty. The subject matter is interesting and complex: the hard examination of life, love, marriage and friendship.
The main hero called Ethan Hawley is a person between an honest, ideal-bound clerk and shrewd profit-seeking businessman. His simple philosophy is if he is rich, he would be definitely content with his life. He knows if he can achieve this More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 14, 2009

Becky rated it:

Despite it's rather odd opening, The Winter Of Our Discontent held my interest. It is the story of a man, Ethan Hawley, and his family, his good wife, Mary, his son, Allan, his daughter, Ellen. It's a story of the conflict between ambition and honesty. Ethan has always found himself to be a good man, a just man, an honest man. A man who plays by the rules.

Ethan comes from a legacy, a family with a long history in the area. He's as "established" as he can be. But he's not weal More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 07, 2011

Thomas rated it:

I feel like it's cliche to say that The Winter of Our Discontent is well-written. If you've taken ninth grade high-school English, I'm confident you've encountered John Steinbeck at least once. There's no doubt he's a fantastic writer. Of Mice of Men or East of Eden, anyone?

However, The Winter of Our Discontent was not as fluid as Of Mice and Men nor did it possess the sheer strength in characterization or plot as East of Eden. It may be my underdeveloped adolescent mind at work here More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Aug 03, 2008

Meghan rated it:

I think I have a crush on John Steinbeck. But even if I met him somewhere -- a cocktail party, a barbeque, even my own bookstore -- I don't think I'd talk to him. Maybe make eye contact in a brave and silent way. Sometimes I get the feeling that he is friendly and easy-going, compassionate and kind, and really interested in people in general and persons in particular ... but I know that he is deeply brilliant, and I would say something ridiculous that I would turn over and over in my head (menta More...

2 comments like (7 people liked it)

Nov 26, 2011

Psheryl rated it:

I enjoyed "The Winter of Our Discontent" although for me it doesn't come close to my favorite Steinbeck novel, "East of Eden." Still, it's similar in that it's a morality tale, albeit a much more cynical one. Steinbeck has written Ethan Allen Hawley as a man at a crossroads during a time in America when nothing seems to make sense anymore. To Steinbeck, America and maybe the entire world has lost its moral compass by 1960 and maybe he was correct. The cynic in me thinks the w More...

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Nov 17, 2011

Aine rated it:

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Nov 26, 2008

Dj rated it:

Having read Of Mice and Men in high school and The Grapes of Wrath recently, I turned with delight to one of Steinbeck’s later novels, The Winter of our Discontent. It was a slow book to start, the pace was a bit uneven and stumbled a bit, but I did finish it last night before bed. The last one hundred pages flew by.

The story is told in first person, from the perspective of a man in New Baytown in the New England region. He is a proud man, an honest man, and one who’s current situation More...

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Nov 24, 2008

Powells.com rated it:

Published the year before Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in 1962, The Winter of Our Discontent has often been undeservedly scorned by critics as his most lackluster effort. Set in the summer in a fictional New England town, this timeless story tells the tale of Ethan Allen Hawley, descendant of a well-to-do family, who now finds himself working as a shop clerk in the very store he once owned. Father, husband, and man of impeccable integrity, Hawley struggles to maintain his pride while providing More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 08, 2008

Tori rated it:

Steinbeck wrote a very perceptive book on a very boring topic. There were parts of this book that I enjoyed, but for the most part I really had to force myself to keep reading. The slow pace, the cynical attitude towards American life, and the confusing dialogue among many other things made this a difficult novel to finish.

Steinbeck is definitely not my style and the most valuable lesson learned from this experience is that I can use his works as a very effective and all-natural sl More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 18, 2011

Richard rated it:

Rating: 6* of five

This is a wonderful short novel by a master of his craft at the peak of his form. It is also his last novel.

Some people at the time it was published felt it was a wrong turning for Steinbeck ("The Grapes of Wrath", "Tortilla Flat") to abandon both the west coast that had made him famous and brought his considerable social conscience to the world's attention for an east coast grifter's POV. "The Winter of Our Discontent" is a sto More...

16 comments like (6 people liked it)

Apr 12, 2011

Daniel-eigenberg rated it:

While not a typical Steinbeck novel, I enjoyed this book. I'm used to Steinbeck capturing the depression era diaspora. The Winter of Our Discontent is a much more contemporary novel (set in the early 1960's). It had much more familiar themes (familiar to modern readers) - capitalism, consumerism, the tension between religion and modern secularism. The books narrator is complicated. He comes from old money, but, because of some errors on his father's part, has lost it and works as a grocery More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 03, 2010

Richard rated it:

Hidden amongst the canon of great American novels that Steinbeck bequeathed, this really is the most down to earth of a down to earth author's books. Ethan is a tangible hero, one not defined by great measures or actions he takes, but by his eventual ability to live up to his past and his cultural and emotional inheritance, the one common burden facing us all in life.

As a social commentary it sums up the ennui and bemusement of post boom pre boom America, with the sheer abundance of More...

2 comments like

Jul 17, 2010

Annii rated it:

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0 comments like

Jan 07, 2010

Bob rated it:

Ethan Allen Hawley was from a long line of Hawleys living in a small seaside town where they had once owned a whole block, now his father having lost the grocery store, the last property besides the family house, he is the sole clerk in the store. Ethan is a proud man and an honest man but he is beset by temptations and his family is looking for an improvement in income. He realizes that his boss and the important townspeople have grown used to looking the other way and scratching each other More...

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Aug 17, 2009

Sullyfitz rated it:

I haven't read a Steinbeck book since hs/college days and I now regret that. This book was stunningly written. Steinbec's turn of phrase was concise, descriptive, humourous, and engaging. The plot of this book is not as important as the writing and the moral dilemma that Ethan (the main characther) faces and that all of us face at one time or another. Here is an example of STeinbeck;s writing:

"June is painting and clipping, plans and projects. ... In June the happy seed of su More...

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Jul 02, 2009

Thomas rated it:

Ethan Hawley descends from a wealthy family but the wealth is gone. He makes a fateful choice to turn his fortunes around. Of all of Steinbeck's wonderful books The Winter of Our Discontent is the one that sticks with me, that I think about most often. I probably read it thirty years ago and yet the image of a man's light going out--that level of despair--based on choices he made, remains.

"I don't know for sure how other people are inside--all different and all alike at the same More...

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Dec 14, 2011

Robert rated it:

This book was classic Steinbeck: working class characters, minutia of daily life, thorough understanding of background topics, and a theme driven narrative. The morality aspect of the book was a bit heavy handed at times (especially since it seemed to keep surfacing on nearly every page) but the treatment of this theme was complex and thought-provoking.

The first part of the book was slow and heavy on background, but as the story progressed I found myself pulled into the plot and confl More...

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Nov 16, 2011

Jim rated it:

The title of the book comes from the opening of The Tragedy of King Richard III and discontent is explicitly referenced many times in this disquieting novel. However, the end of that opening speech lies some clues to the unreliable narrator's frame of mind:

As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.

More...

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May 06, 2009

Mike rated it:

To sum: A case of personal pride and familial entitlement overcoming one man's natural habit of moral behavior.
After serving on the battlefields of WWII, Ethan A Hawley has come home, mismanaged his family grocery into bankrupcy, and finds himself working several years for his "wop" Italian boss Marullo, as a lowly clerk. Mr Baker, banker across the alley, badgers Ethan to invest money inherited by wife Mary, insinuating that the Hawley family name is at stake. As Mr Baker invok More...

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Jan 07, 2011

Patrick rated it:

This is a very good story. The reader follows a witty World War II veteran, Ethan Hawley, through his internal struggle to reconcile the baseness required to be a successful business man with the morality that he has followed throughout his private life. The text is largely an examination into the dept of corruption within American business. John Steinbeck the prophet is apparent in the story. Ethan is taxed by the moral dilemma's that exist in his life. The uneasiness with the way things a More...

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Jul 20, 2009

David rated it:

Steinbeck's last work of fiction is a truly great American novel. There is a great deal of terrific introspective thought here via the main character of Ethan. (Chapter 3 alone had me very close to tears in recognition.) Ethan is a man who, on the surface, tends to keep everything light and sociable - whether he's with his family or the general public. Yet, scratch the surface and the 'well' opens up.

He is grappling with morality issues which, as he looks around (and at) himself - at More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 05, 2009

Ryan rated it:

Steinbeck is one of my favorites and I enjoy everything of his that I read, but there was something about this one that just made me think something was missing -- either by '61 his themes had been a bit exhausted, or after reading 7 or 8 of his books in the past 2-3 years I've become exhausted, or more probably, I think, there just wasn't as stellar characterization and sharp dialogue as I'm accustomed to with the rest of his oeuvre.

That being said, it was still a decent book. I st More...

0 comments like

Apr 26, 2009

Kevin rated it:

“Man is our greatest hazard and our only hope”

“In business and politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind – but he must get there first.”

The title of this book is a link to Shakespeare’s Richard III – which opens with “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York; and all the clouds that lowered upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.” This i More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 15, 2010

Gary rated it:

I just finished reading this book after my first read about 20 years ago. I really like Steinbeck and I hope to re-read the rest of his books especially East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath. This is a book about the decline of morals and one man's struggle (Ethan Hawley) to remain true to himself. No man is perfect and Ethan finds himself constantly being hounded by his family and his friends for being content with his lowly life as a grocer clerk.[return]What does a man do if given a chance to bett More...

0 comments like

Jul 01, 2010

Nathan rated it:

This was an interesting book. There's a lot of good stuff that's mixed with confusing stuff that leaves you wondering whether your in the presence of greatness or just an attempt. I enjoyed reading this but I think much of it is an attempt. I wonder if it would even stand out of John Steinbeck's writing if it didn't have the distinguished status of his "final novel".

Most of the "good stuff" is our main character and narrator, Ethan Allen Hawley. He's pretty More...

3 comments like

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