Probably not a bad read for its time but it hasn't aged well. Simplistic and very sad depiction of a couple's self-induced deterioration and collapse. ( )

This is a book about what greed does to people. McTeague was raised by a miner in poverty conditions; he takes off with an itinerant dentist where he learns dentistry and settles in the late 1800's in San Francisco and builds up a practice. He meets Trina who right before they are married wins a $5000 lottery prize. He met Trina through her cousin, Marcus, who lived in McTeague's apartment building. Marcus was somewhat in love with Trina but "gives her over" to McTeague. The marriage is happy at first, but Trina refuses to use any of the $5000 and becomes ever more miserly. The greedier she becomes, things begin to fall apart. The marriage is eventually over, McTeague loses his position, and the ending is about as grim as it gets. A book about the stupidity, greed, and selfishness of humans.

A pretty good story, but the narrative is dated with long sentences, too much detail, etc. ( )

A reread for me, but I got so much more out of it this time around. The characterization was entertaining: McTeague the brute and his wife Trina, Maria and Zerkow... these characters seemed to live their lives"like a candle in the wind," as Elton John would say. Motivated by greed, they fairly drive themselves towards self-destruction. The ending gave me a visual that I'll recall when remembering this book. ( )

I read this on Stephen King's suggestion in On Writing. It was wonderfully unusual. Brutal and sort of funny and unexpected. It felt like Steinbeck meets Hardy, before tumbling into Cormac McCarthy territory. ( )

I went into this blind but right from the start i had a prescience of evil, i could practically smell "The Dram Shop by Emile Zola", which is not the sort of thing one wants reminders of as that was GRIM! (but excellent) And i was not wrong, the two stories do share some common ground, what i was mistaken about however was thinking that its similarities would be a problem, were as it turned out it was quite the reverse.
The writing isn't bad, its nicely descriptive if a little overly detailed at times, and all the characters are well... Characters.
It took me some time to figure out why it was such work to get through and i finally pinned down the problem. While you occasionally hear the protagonists thoughts you still never feel like your in their head. The author constantly keeps them at arms length which makes it very hard to empathize or care about their struggles.
This actually seems to get progressively worse throughout the novel. The longer it goes on the further i felt removed from the characters.
I actually had to resort to LibriVox to help me through some of it as it became such a chore to read.
Things pick up somewhat towards the end when the author completely gives up on the story he was writing and decides to change it into a western, 'Seraphrim Falls' to be precise, with some of 'Treasure of the Sierra Madre' thrown in, and just a dash of Spider-Man (one of the characters unaccountably develops spidey-sense :P ). ( )