Unsuspected depth …

… Cannery Row may be sentimental but it is far from shallow | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The whole book is a complicated metaphor about the richness of life, the way different parts of an ecosystem interact. Just as Doc peers into his tidal pools, Steinbeck’s readers are given a view over a society that is largely cut off from a wider ocean. But we know we are still looking at a place subject to currents and tides, still filled with the same salt water as the rest of the sea.