(The “cannery row” of the title refers to sardine canning, the town’s main industry today, after overfishing and a subsequent reinvention, Monterey is best known for a world-class aquarium.) The overall plot is virtually free of suspense, more or less an excuse for a series of vignettes about the town’s various characters: Doc, the universally beloved but deeply lonely marine biologist Mack, the charismatic leader of the town’s generally benign petty crooks and drifters Dora, the owner of the local brothel and pillar of the community (it’s that kind of town). It’s set during the Great Depression in the small, quiet, down-on-its-luck California fishing town of Monterey. In college one of my professors defined “the novel” as a fictional narrative that’s meant to be read in more than one sitting––evidently either Cannery Rowfailed that test or I did.Ĭanne ry Row is not a page-turner in the conventional sense. I was spellbound for hours, sitting at the kitchen table and briefly (don’t ask me why) lying on the kitchen table.

Instead, John Steinbeck’s 1945 novel Cannery Row is the basis of one of my most vivid reading memories: in middle school I picked it up one evening and simply didn’t stop.

My pick for a spring break book isn’t something that was recently written, or even a book that I’ve recently read.

Books like cannery row