Sweet Thursday

After the Second World War, Doc returns to Cannery Row and finds that the familiar community has changed through death, absence and economic decline. Mack and the surviving residents conclude that Doc’s melancholy can be cured only by love, and their efforts bring him together with Suzy, an intelligent and defensive newcomer working at the Bear Flag restaurant and brothel.

The sequel to Cannery Row turns courtship into a collective neighbourhood project in which good intentions repeatedly create new complications. Beneath its comedy, the novel considers postwar dislocation, loneliness, scientific purpose and the need to rebuild a community when neither individuals nor places can simply return to what they were before the war.