I don’t even know how I’m supposed to review this book. How are you supposed to describe the experience of reading Of Mice and Men for the first time?

The writing is incredible, the dialogue amazing. It feels real. The symbolism, the descriptions, the foreshadowing, nothing is without meaning. You know exactly how it’s going to end and you can’t do anything about it, you just have to sit and stare while capitalism takes its course.

This book never stops having something the say. Capitalism and the mistreatment and dehumanisation of the marginalised (disabled people, POC, women, the working-class, etc.). how it robs you of all hope, though having hope is the only way you can live a life other than fucking, drinking, and working. How it isolates everyone from each other (few men travel in pairs), how emotional bonds are disregarded in favour of utility and practicality. How they are robbed of their agency. How within the marginalised groups there is a hierarchy and how they can be complicit in perpetuating the power of the rich, able, white men. How this complicity in turn gives them a feeling of power in an attempt to raise themselves out of their powerlessness, to establish control. How solidarity gives hope and power to free yourself from the machine. How a lack of understanding and empathy for one another will eventually just lead to everyone’s downfall. The futility of the “American Dream” and the impossibility of a free life under capitalism.

It’s so much, so so much, but it’s so important. It’s so horrible and heartbreaking and cruel, but it’s so real. God.