I picked up this book expecting it to be a handful of short stories loosely centered around Cannery Row and in a way that's exactly what this book is, but it's more coordinated and interwoven than I expected. The scope of the work is tight (especially compared to an epic like East of Eden) but Steinbeck is capable of putting so much life into the characters and places with just a few lines of text that before I knew it I was wrapped up in the world.