Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck

This is a truly joyful book and a worthy sequel to Cannary Row. All Steinbeck's wit, compassion and wisdom are on display and a kaleidoscope of characters, familiar and new, populate the story with doubtful schemes, homespun wisdom and unfailing benevolence. It's a gentle, philosophical treatise on loneliness, failure and friendship and it's a love story to warm your heart.

From the opening sentence Steinbeck sets the mood with his laid back, conversational style. This is a book to read on a garden chair, with your feet up, the sun shining, the bees humming and a glass of something close at hand. A book to savour at a leisurely pace, and a journey to enjoy that leads to a most satisfactory ending.

​Doc, a marine biologist has returned from the war to his old life but is plagued by a restlessness he can't pin down. Suzy arrives in town to join the other girls in the Bear Flag, the local bordello, but she doesn't fit in. Fauna, the no-nonsense and kindly Madame sees Suzy as the perfect cure for Doc's ills. How this matchmaking plays out is the main thread of the novel.

"It was Fauna’s conviction, born out of long experience, that most people, one, did not know what they wanted; two, did not know how to go about getting it; and three, didn't know when they had it."

Steinbeck fills the book with a rich cast of supporting characters and meanders away from the main story into their lives. So we have brief encounters with a flipflopping Chinaman, a Seer living on the beach, Frankie, a boy with severe learning difficulties, Jingleballicks, an eccentric scientist and the bowlers and the butterflies of Pacific Grove. Individual threads woven into the story all helping to create an atmosphere of time and place.

But the main counterpoint to Doc and Suzy's journey is Mack, and the boys of the Palace Flophouse. Their ramshackle, vagrant lives have no great purpose and consist mainly of drinking, and dreaming of ways to make money.

The character of Hazel is a delight. He's simple, innocent, gullible and loyal, who believes because the stars are aligned and he has nine toes, he must become President of the United States. His love of Mack and Doc lead him to one drastic act that breaks the deadlock between Doc and Suzy. 

"Thinking is always painful, but in Hazel it was heroic. A picture of the process would make you seasick. A grey whirling furore of images, memories, words, patterns. It was like a traffic jam at a big intersection with Hazel in the middle trying to get something to move somewhere. "

And here's what Doc says to Hazel who has come to help him in his laboratory:

"I like to have you sit with me Hazel. You are the well the - original well. A man can give you his deepest secrets. You don't hear or remember. And if you did, it wouldn't make any difference because you don't pay attention. Why you're better than a well because you listen - but you don't hear. You are a priest without penalties, an analyst without diagnosis."

I love Steinbeck's ability to build a picture and mood in just a few words, his mix of philosophy, and celebration of the human spirit - people will not accept the advice of a friend but will accept the advice of a horoscope chart.

“Men seem to be born with a debt they can never pay no matter how hard they try. It piles up ahead of them. Man owes something to man. If he ignores the debt it poisons him, and if he tries to make payments the debt only increases, and the quality of his gift is the measure of the man.”

​Steinbeck takes a series of stories and characters, set in poverty, hardship, and degradation and sprinkles them with holy water. He strips the sin off the sinners and gives absolution.

 If  you're a romantic, read it; if you're a world-weary cynic there is plenty here to lift the mood, give pause for thought and raise a smile.