The Winter of Our Discontent
by John Steinbeck
Penguin Books

Our Price: $14.00

Often overshadowed by Steinbeck’s earlier novels, it is time we gave The Winter of Our Discontent its due. This is a readable morality tale that is eerie in its condemnation of a society of overconsumption.

Ethan Allen Hawley is an upright citizen of scrupulous honesty who has descended from the position of Patriarch-to-be of a wealthy New England family to grocery clerk. The former nobility of his family remains well known in his small town, much to his chagrin. In his current incarnation as a grocer in a store his family used to own, he finds himself bombarded by temptation. The past taunts him and the future shows no signs of respite as his two children clamor for the goods and wealth they sense they deserve. His loyalties thus split, the story unfolds.

In the same way Steinbeck was able to boil a large-scale social trend down to one family with the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath he presents the Hawleys. The dust may have settled but other problems have taken its place.