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I need to begin seeking out longer novels again, but more recently, my attention span more often than not has led me to put longer books on hiatus for prolonged periods of time until I'm in the right mood again, and choosing books with shorter page counts has prevented me from abandoning them altogether. Which has helped me discover some books I might not have read otherwise�Claire Keegan's Foster, Ira Levin's Stepford Wives or James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk (to be reviewed soon) as examples—but I do want to immerse myself back into a long story again. (But maybe needing two months to listen to Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth while not even liking that book has played its part in reducing my motivation to a shrivel by itself, too.)

What I wanted to get at: John Steinbeck's The Pearl is another short novel that takes only a few hours to swiftly read through, in part because it's so short, in part because Steinbeck's prose is very readable and easy to get on the same wavelength with. Previously, my only exposure to Steinbeck was Of Mice and Men, another very short novel, while his big juggernauts (East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath) are still staring at me from my bookshelves, begging me to read them finally, but always getting shortchanged for something else.

But The Pearl is a brisk and resonating little morality tale that gets at some very interesting themes, especially the social structure of marginalized communities and the racial heritage of Kino and Juana driving their despair and struggle to break out of their poor, marginalized existence. "The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side." Steinbeck writes about desperation and helplessness awakening the evil in one's soul; the lengths one is prepared to go to in order to reach what seems out of reach.

"For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have."

The argument made by many detractors with respect to The Pearl's issues often refers to it being heavy-handed in its compassion, maybe even a 'preachy morality tale'—no reader likes to be told what to think, but The Pearl's strength, to me, lies in its simplicity: how its premise can be seen as a metaphor for so much else, and how easily it captures the most primal instincts of human nature. Maybe this will finally give me the push to approach Steinbeck's longer books.