Of Mice and Men

This book by John Steinbeck* I honestly don't know how I ever let slip past my readership during school, as it's an undisputed classic of American humanism; the lead pair painted as raw, believable and deft such that the overall emotional power in these characters is astounding, despite their relatively simple sketches. The turbulent desperation faced by the little man during the Great Depression is palpable on every page, and for enormous-yet-childlike Lennie & his streetsmart guardian George this is, harrowingly, no different: their quest for some semblance of security is everything. It's fairly short for a novel - and I found it unputdownable, finishing it in a single horrified heartrending sitting. A singularly powerful work meditating on men, our mortal smallnesses, bignesses, hungers and thirsts and fears.

* Its title I always assumed was a Shakespeare borrowing, but it's actually from Rabbie.