East of Eden

[Girliefriendlikespuppies]

Anyone else binged this today?

Really enjoyed it, all of the acting is brilliant.

I need to read the book now.

Brilliant series ! I haven’t read the book so can’t compare.

I read the books years and years ago and remembered quite a lot but some I hadn't forgotten all about. Absolutely brilliant acting ,both Dh and I watched it over 3 nights and we were both hooked.

It's my favourite book

Finished in 2 sessions. I enjoyed it. Husband had read the book and did not watch the series as he said the book bored him rigid. I kept on saying ....look bottoms darling....but at 74 he was happier to just doze 😏

You will not be disappointed.

Surely Lilith. In some folklore Adam’s first wife, and a demon.

I LOVED this. And I need a Mr Lee in my life 🥰

I am really looking forward to seeing this - East of Eden was my favourite book as a teen. This seems to be a common theme amongst bookish teenage girls! I also love Florence Pugh and think this is inspired casting.

Never heard of Lilith, I’m not that into religion and didn’t realise Adam had been married before. I thought god made Adam and Eve……but I guess if Lilith was a demon maybe she just existed?

thanks for the recommendation
have to watch this next

That’s the point Steinbeck was intending. She was written to represent whole evil - the devil itself with no redeeming features or chance of redemption. I’m not sure he’d like this adaptation but I loved it. It’s brilliant.

We are used to screen characters being given a psychologically explained 'reason' for their behaviour. As in, was Cathy abused or ill treated as a child, insinuated in the film? The voiceover at the beginning talks about 'monsters', people evil, for no reason, who walk among us, such as Cathy.

I don’t know what was written in the book but if John Steinbeck wrote the teacher-student dynamic he would have inadvertently written that back story, it was just at the time girls of 14 were blamed for adult men pursuing them so it would have read differently when he wrote it.

I’m working my way through this series just now. Never read the book. Finding it very dark and bleak but also such interesting complex characters. Really enjoying it and can’t wait to watch the next one. I love how it shows how people can be everything, good and bad, love and hate, hope and despair. Best thing I’ve seen for a while.

Florence Pugh is brilliant as an incredibly dislikeable person. Mr Lee is a beautifully sketched character.
It's one of the best things I've seen in a long time.
I'm another that's going to read the book now.
Usually you read the book first and then find the story portrayed very badly on screen. But this is a major exception.

Have to say although beautifully filmed it was really tedious.

Immature men blaming everyone other rather than themselves. FUing everyone's and their own lives.

Haven't read the book but understand it is sort of tub thumbing biblical type morality. And so of course the woman, even as a young girl, is evil. The tv series is supposed to reverse this to show that the well recorded abuse of underage girls of course has long term effects. A "feminist" remake.

Not sure how prominent the character of Lee in the book is, but if as shown in the tv series, is saying someone outside of this rigid concept of right/wrong, male/female has a better understanding of the world and how to live in it. Apparently the 50s film didn't even include him.

I have one episode to go but have loved this so far. But I do think Cathy is a bit misunderstood and ahead of her time. Maybe this is looking back on the situation with a modern lens, Steinbeck wrote her as evil but tbh all she had experienced in her lifetime was to look pretty, be nice & pleasant, get married etc. She is a very clever character whose entire existence was based on her looks but did not want to be possessed by men, most of whom were intellectually inferior to her but went around as if they were superior.

I did feel for Faye though, like many others she was taken in by Cathy and paid the price.

In comparison Mr Lee is the opposite, also completely underestimated by most people, judged by his ethnicity, but totally good and honourable.

It was excellent.

In the book, Cathy is basically a walking nightmare who leaves a trail of destruction everywhere she goes. As a child, she frames 2 innocent boys claiming they sexually abused her and drives her teacher to suicide, before moving on to locking her parents in their house and burning them alive just to steal their cash and fake her own death. Later, she seduces and marries Adam, tries to abort their twins, and then shoots Adam and abandons the babies right after giving birth. She ends up running a high-end brothel, where she slowly poisons the owner, Faye, to steal the business, and uses it to blackmail powerful local men with their deepest secrets before finally taking her own life when her past catches up to her.

Misunderstood? Not so sure 🤔

First read the book at 16 and have read it about 3 times over the last 40 years. Am tempted by this adaptation but worried it won't live up to the novel and my imagination.

Completely agree. She is and was meant to personify absolute evil. I thought Florence Pugh played her very well - but the adaption sort of missed the whole point of the book.

I felt I was starting to understang Netflix version of Cathy, until what she did to Faye. It was just nasty. Don’t know how we are supposed to sympathise with her here.

ive not read the book but think I’ll start now

The tv series did not "miss" the point. They concluded that had it been written today the representation of Cathy would be that her early "trauma influenced her behaviour.

Personally I think it is pretty stupid to adapt a well known book which has its die hard fans to try and make a contemporary version of a supposed "evil" woman.

Not just the limitation of the book as being very male, but also as the grand daughter of the maker of the 1950s film who omitted Cathy, Zoe Kazan wanted to re-instate her.

If interested in why she did this you can read https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/east-of-eden-zoe-kazan-interview-october-2026

Just finished binging this. Also feel like I need to read the book now but at the same time I don’t think I can cope with revisiting all that bleakness. Florence Pugh is just incredible.

Oh the book has even more bleakness @Odditea, the series just scratches the surface 😆