Book description
Like the tentacles of an octopus, the tracks of the railroad reached out across California, as if to grasp everything of value in the state Based on an actual, bloody dispute between wheat farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1880, The Octopus is a stunning novel of the waning…
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Why read it?
1 author picked The Octopus as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Accurately described as melodramatic, the book is sensational and dramatic; it has exciting events and physical action (which Norris handles masterfully); it appeals to the emotions; and its plot is compelling. However, it also has vivid, well-developed characters.
Some may quibble with passages seen as “purple prose”. Maybe it is just the style of the era in which it was written (1901). But I was so taken with the many characters, the situations, and the overall story and plot that I had to forgive Norris’s use of such florid text. He did title the unfinished trilogy (of which this is…
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