Eve Green

by Susan Fletcher

Eve Green [Paperback] Fletcher, Susan

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Mystery, Coming Of Age, Drama, Chick Lit

281 pages, Paperback

First published June 21, 2004

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Susan Fletcher is a British novelist. She was born in Birmingham and studied creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Her first novel, Eve Green, won the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award, the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, and the Society of Authors Betty Trask Prize; it was also picked for Channel 4's (UK) Richard and Judy Summer reading list. Subsequent novels have been shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Writers’ Guild fiction award, and longlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year award. Her novel Witch Light won France’s 2013 Saint-Maur en Poche award. Fletcher is a former Fellow at the University of Worcester, as part of the Royal Literary Fund's fellowship program, and is the author of The Night in Question.

source: Amazon

Reviews

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A couple of years ago, I finally read Corrag, by this author, after being nagged endlessly by Sara and Candi to do so. They said I would love it and I did. I bought this one at a used book sale after seeing a few positive reviews, and there it sat on my shelf for a while, because, although I did love Corrag, I was somehow under the impression that Susan Fletcher wrote romances. I pulled this one out the other day when I needed something different, thinking, if nothing else, I would be able to get rid of this one way or the other. This was her debut novel, so I wasn't expecting much.

You know what? I was wrong! Fletcher is not a romance author, she's a storyteller. And a darn good one. Debut novel notwithstanding, it is excellently written, with an involved plot, great characters, and a beautiful setting. (Wales!). Part mystery, part character study, part small town life, and a lot of descriptive scenes of the natural world, I was both captivated by and catapulted into the story from the first page.

This was truly a wonderful surprise and has landed me squarely in the Susan Fletcher fan club, along with a lot of other readers who discovered her before I did. I'm here, Candi and Sara! Open the door and let me in!

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In the shoebox there are more than just scraps of paper. There are objects--things I can only assume had a hidden, private meaning to them. Love tokens, as Mrs Maddox might say. . . .They make me both happy and wistful. Like a mouse, she hoarded these objects. She tucked herself around them, kept them warm. Kept them in the musty dark under her Birmingham bed."

Eve Green, awaiting the birth of her first child, thinks back to her childhood years. After her single mother dies, she is taken in by her grandparents who live on a farm high above a rural Welsh village. The atmospheric novel is an exploration of loss and discovering her roots.

Eve is a precocious seven year old, full of spirit, who has inherited the red curls of her Irish father whom she has never met. She becomes friends with disabled Billy who slowly shares what he knows about Eve's parents' love affair. Another loss is the disappearance of a beautiful young girl, a probable victim of a pedophile. Innocent people come under suspicion in the investigation.

The novel also shows love in many forms--the kindness of her grandparents, Eve's growing feelings for Daniel, the gentleness of Billy, and the many people who loved Eve's mother.

Susan Fletcher's writing is lyrical with beautiful descriptions of Cardiganshire as the farm passes through the four seasons. Farm life goes on at the mercy of the elements, especially the frequent rain. I enjoyed Fletcher's debut novel and look forward to reading more of her work.

[Megan Gibbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quiet, beautifully written story; my favourite genre of book is a coming of age story and from the very first pages I fell in love with eight year old Eve. I identified with her tomboy like nature and need for adventure, as she roamed the rugged Welsh hillside, and uncovers the mysteries of her birth. My first Susan Fletcher novel and I’m excited to be able to work my way through her other books, as this read was for me perfect literary escapism.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a gentle story, about love in all it's guises, a child's love for her mother, a grandparents love for a daughters child, the love that comes with friendship, young love ...
Evangeline Green is a wonderful girl who suffers unimaginable grief at a young age.
She has to endure some tough lessons about life, trust, feelings of guilt all in a small Welsh village where everyone knows who you are , where you come from even if you don't.
Susan Fletcher is one of my favourite authors, her novel Witch light/Corrag is one of the best books I've ever read. Her characters are so real, so intense that you can't help but love them.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last year I read two books by Susan Fletcher and promptly ordered two more for this year. Her debut book was Eve Green, so I was a little apprehensive that it might not live up to my prior experience, but I need not have worried. It is not my favorite of the three, but it is a very solid novel and of such a different nature than the other two that it stands on its own merits beautifully.

Eve is six years old when her mother dies and she is taken to Wales to live with her Grandmother and Grandfather. She knows nothing of her father and nothing of her mother’s past, and part of this story is her unearthing of that relationship and how she came to be. There is quite a bit of mystery concerning her father and a friend from her mother’s past, Billy Macklin, and there is the mystery of what has happened to Rosie, a twelve year old who is missing.

The book swings between several time periods, primarily the present of of twenty-nine year old Eve and the past of eight-year old Eve, the year of Rosie’s disappearance and the part Eve has played in those events. Fletcher builds the tension and characters wonderfully and the voice of Eve, the child, is genuine and believable. She is insightful about the human heart and states truths so simply that it takes a moment before you realize how astute her observations are.

My grandfather told me, having been widowed, that nothing is joyful again. Happiness returns, he said--laughing comes back to you, and the world is still good, and you smile again at things. But joy, real joy, leaves. Everything lacks from then on, he said. Mrs. Hughes learnt that well enough.

Is that why we give flowers? To express admiration? Sometimes.But there are other reasons. A symbol of love, or of commiseration. A way of saying thank you. A mark of respect. Proof we like someone, and want them to smile. And we put flowers on graves to say, “Look, we still think of you. You’ve left a space behind.”

I’m looking forward to my next Susan Fletcher. I have my lovely friend, Candi, to thank for introducing me to an author who is quickly becoming a go-to for me.

[Έρση Λάβαρη · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, gentle yet intense novel that I read about a decade ago, that keeps returning now and then, insisting. I can't wait to re-discover it as soon as I retrieve my copy.

[Kinga · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book as a part of Harper Perennial Collection set. I didn’t even know I had it. When I came across the title on my spreadsheet which lists all the books that I own (out of which almost 400 are still unread) I couldn’t recall it all but it looked like the sort of lighter lyrical book one might take on holiday (if one is the sort of person who doesn’t take Fifty Shades of Grey on her holiday).

On the surface it is full of the really basic ingredients: coming of age, mystery, secrets, small village, drama, etc. But of course it all depends on how you cook those ingredients and Susan Fletcher cooked them well. She seems very aware of the clichés she might be falling into and swerves around them skillfully. She resists the temptation to which succumb many airport books – the annoying ‘one secret explains all’ solution. In the real life no secret is powerful enough to explain a whole life or even a few lives.

Of course, it never stops the characters. They will always try to make sense of whatever happened. Just as Eve Green does, now grown up and pregnant, revisiting that summer of over twenty years ago, asking herself a couple of what-if’s and mulling over a few regrets.

Behind the mystery, the secrets and the drama, there is also lurking a very beautiful understated love story, possibly the prettiest love story I have read in a while. Again, kudos to Ms Fletcher for pulling it off without resorting to mushiness and sentimentality.

Yet what really won me over in ‘Eve Green’ was the landscape. The eight year old Evie moved to a small village in Wales following the death of her mother and that village will grew to be a part of her the way a big city could never be. This attachment to the scenery shows on pages. Maybe this book caught me at the right moment, when I am sick of London and miss the Polish landscape, the fields, the meadows, the forests, the lakes, even the sea and the dunes. I might’ve grown up in Warsaw but I was exiled to the countryside every summer (and that’s two-three months at a time which for a child is near eternity). Spare the dead girl, ‘Eve Green’ really reminded me of my own summers spent between cows, fields and dirt roads.

I would be very curious to know how she developed as a writer since this debut book was published when she was only twenty-five. Her newest, fifth novel (The Silver Dark Sea) has just been released and it is now on my hottest to-read list.

[CanadianReader · Rating 1 out of 5]

Evangeline is barely eight when her single mother dies, forcing a move from Birmingham to her grandparents’ farm in southwest Wales. She quickly forms an alliance with Daniel, her grandfather’s farmhand, sixteen years her senior, who will eventually become her romantic partner. The locals scorn the 16-year age difference between these two, but the greater creep factor resides in 24-year-old Daniel’s having hung out with the 8-year-old Eve and watched her grow over the years—very Woody-Allenish, and not in a good way. (Daniel’s relationship to Eve is revealed early on in the book, which generally reads as a kind of jumbled retrospective: on the brink of her thirtieth birthday and heavily pregnant, Eve recalls the key events to this point in her life.)

As she grows up on the farm, Eve pieces together the story of her dark-haired mother’s life and love. Eve learns about her Irish scoundrel father who passed on to her the flaming red hair that Mr. Phipps, the surly shopkeeper, sneers at. She also recounts the story of golden-haired Rosie Hughes, with her perfect skin and smile, a well-to-do girl just a little older than Eve, who disappeared one spring or summer. (An aside: Fletcher generally handles details of time poorly throughout this novel. The reader is often uncertain if Eve is eight, eleven, fifteen, or some other age. The protagonist’s observations provide no reliable clues upon which to make inferences either. Eve shows signs of sexual possessiveness shortly after her arrival in Wales, for example, when she is supposed to be only eight.) Eve’s story proper will conclude with a false accusation, an encounter with the likely perpetrator/abductor, and a raging fire.

Eve Green is a first novel, and it shows: it's narrated in the first person; it's a coming-of-age tale; it contains a cast of pretty flat, stereotypical characters (Red hair is shorthand for impetuousness and hot-temper, and crotchety old people can be counted on to address a naughty girl as “young lady” before banishing her to her bedroom for a fortnight); there's a dull-and-done-before storyline; the novel includes banal musings, apparently meant to be profound, about the nature of love and the importance of names; and, there are lots of overwritten descriptive sections—i.e., frequent passages of four or five sentences when a single pared-down one would do. Worst of all: the author shows minimal insight into and little ability to convincingly portray the mind and perceptions of a bereaved eight-year-old child.

This novel was in serious need of an overseer who could ruthlessly curb its author’s default tendency towards the twee. A good editor would,for example, have promptly put Eve’ s commentary on “influenza”--among others--on the chopping block: “it [influenza] should have been a girl’s name—a sultry, hot-eyed girl from some where tropical, with flowers in her hair and swaying hips.” Likewise her overblown musings on her mother’s written signature: “Bronwen. Dark and pure. The o is as flawless as a star, as open as a window. I look at it and [ . . . ] I want to crawl into that letter, right into the warm wanting heart of my mother before it stopped beating . . . " (Oh dear. I wanted to crawl somewhere else. It made me wince.)

I am very surprised that this rural soap opera, with all the clichéd features that give “women’s fiction”a bad name, should have been honoured with a Whitbread first-book award. What exactly were the judges thinking? The author occasionally shows promise by presenting a compelling scene: for example, the one in which the cows contract trench foot after heavy rains and are moved to an abandoned field. However, these are few and far between. The writing is mostly glib and wrongly toned: in short, amateur. It doesn’t serve the story or help you believe it; it distracts and detracts.

Some may enjoy this book as easy, escapist fiction. However, if you need reasonably good writing to be transported, you will only find yourself stuck in a really bad book. I will never open another novel by Ms. Fletcher.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ive read a few of the previous reviews of this book and have to say that i disagree with their comments. I think that it is a beautifully written book that must be lauded for being a first time novel. The way the story moves so effortlessly from past to present, slowly unravelling its secrets kept me enthralled. It is a beguiling sad tale which i would recommend to anyone. Ive spent the last two days devouring it, while doing so neglecting to start a course essay that badly needs starting-ooops!!!

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I don't like this rating system, but I guess you have to have something. Eve Green doesn't have the depth of character of Angle of Repose, for instance, nor the precise and beautiful language of Elegance of the Hedgehog. This book won the 2004 Whitbread Award for First Novel and deservedly so.

Not a love story, it is a story of love. Not just a story of human love, but a story of the love of the land as well. I will never actually visit Wales. This book gives that country light and beauty that I might never have known, and I am lucky for that.

[Sonia Gomes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will sound fanciful and a trifle foolish maybe, but Eve Green dug out all the lonely spots in my heart and turned them upside down for me.

[moved to storygraph robina_khalid · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book slowgoing early on. The prose felt overdone and the foreshadowing, if you can even call it that, felt clunky. The author seemed to struggle with adopting a non-linear mode of storytelling and though I thought the writing was ambitious, it never really swept me away.

But about halfway through the book -- where the plot really kicked in, I suppose -- I began to appreciate her efforts more. I genuinely liked most of the characters, and there are some beautiful reflections on mothering here. A solid first novel.

[Debra Diggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Eve Green is like slowly walking through a meadow, on a warm sunny day, pondering life.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

As twenty-nine-year-old Eve Green prepares for the birth of her child, she thinks back on her own mother and, more specifically, on the confusing and emotional year after her mother's sudden death. At seven years old, Eve is sent to Wales to live with grandparents she barely knows, and even as she grieves for her mother, she yearns to find out more about her mysterious father. As she begins to uncover the family secrets, Eve becomes entangled in the mystery surrounding the disappearance of a local girl.

The narrative moves effortlessly back and forth through time as Eve reflects on her past, fragments of her memory resurface, seemingly randomly - the way memories do - and though they are colored by childhood, they are strung together with the understanding of an adult's perspective. Eve's voice is so honest, so authentic in its grasp of the contemplative mood of impending motherhood, I'm surprised (and impressed!) that this novel is not autobiographical.

Much like Susan Fletcher's later novel Corrag, the language is poetic in its description and the story is thoroughly grounded in place. A fantastic debut, just a lovely, lovely book, and like Corrag, one I will purchase for re-reads. Highly recommended for lovers of lyrical writing.

[Lucy-Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Initially I expected this to be a simple coming of age type story set in a small village in Wales, but it's so much more!
The story is told by Eve, the 29 yr old who is at the centre of the story and whilst the story is primarily her childhood tale, there are regular glimpses into her current life & situation.
The touches of Welsh language added a level of authenticity and you really felt that the author knew every inch of the landscape that was so well described - you could almost smell the cows and feel the grass ...

Overall, the book had everything you could want: family relationships, mystery, and even a love story yet without being twee and overly sentimental. There is a mystery running through the book, yet there is no simple twist that explains it all in that usual cliched way.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was beautifully written and you can almost feel the countryside and the farm.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book - lyrical, gentle writing that conjured up beautiful images of mid-Wales scenery. Sad at times, but also uplifting.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Following the loss of her mother, eight year old Evie is sent to a new life in rural Wales - a strange place, where flowers appear mysteriously on doorsteps and people look at her twice. With a sense of being lied to, she sets out to discover her family's dark secret - unaware that when a local girl vanishes, there is yet more darkness to come. Now, years on, as Eve Green awaits the birth of her own child, she remembers that first Welsh summer - her lies, her anger, her own reckless role in the hunt for Rosies abductor; and how, through her suppressed grief and strange friendships, she learnt some hard lessons - about trust, identity, guilt, love and how to survive when love is gone.

The debut novel from the author who brought us one of my most favourite and most beautifully written books I have ever read, Witch Light, this novel, although different from the story of Corrag, is no less stunning and no less brilliant.

A gentle story about love in all its different forms; a child's love for her mother, a grandparents love for a child, a love built on friendship and a first true love. A story of a girl who experiences grief, love, and extreme change at a very young age; a story of family secrets and unresolved liaisons.

Susan Fletcher is quickly becoming one of my favourite authors. Her prose is beautifully poetic, her story telling is hypnotising and her descriptions of the Welsh countryside are sublime. This brilliant little gem of a book is gentle, tender, heartbreaking, loving and uplifting. If you enjoyed Witch Light I think you will enjoy this little beauty 🌸🌸🌸🌸

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first read this book, I was struggling with graduate school an ocean away from home, in a country I was trying desperately to make feel like home to stave off homesickness. Living on the Scottish coastline, this book and books like it (ie: I Capture The Castle) that paint dreary but cozy rural Britain were a perfect fit for me. This one was full of intensely descriptive prose, and so many passages just jumped out at me as feeling "perfect" and not many books seem to do that to me anymore.

It moves back and forth in time - from the narrator in the last stages of pregnancy, reflecting on how her own upbringing has both screwed her up and taught her things she values; and how she both fears and looks forward to how she will affect her own child. The story is predominantly of a particular summer, after the narrator's mother commits suicide, when she is sent to live with her grandparents on a farm in Wales - far from the city life of Birmingham that she was used to. It's one simple event that snowballs, and, as a child, affected her deeply - like Stephen King's "The Body", it seems that it was a pivotal time in her life, even though she was barely acknowledged as a player in the events and their aftermath.

Beautifully written, it transports the reader to the time and place of the narrated story, all the while helping the narrator herself to come to terms with her scandalous marriage and pregnancy that follows in her mother's tradition.

[Her Royal Orangeness · Rating 4 out of 5]

After 8-year-old Eve Green’s mother dies, she is sent to Wales to live with her grandparents whom she has never met. She experiences a calamitous year during which she uncovers secrets about her parents while also being tragically affected by the disappearance of a young girl. This year in her life is told in retrospective when Eve is 29 years old and trying to make sense of all that happened at that time.

This is a beautiful novel filled with lyrical prose, vivid descriptions, and a compelling story. The plot unfolds in a disconnected haze that is utterly appropriate for a story told from the viewpoint of a child and the perspective of memory. It is a profound meditation on family roots and prejudice, and how essential one is and how damaging is the other.

Eve Green is quite remarkable for a debut novel, and the author is most deserving of the Costa First Novel Award that she received for this work.

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eight-year-old Eve Green is sent from her city life in Birmingham to grandparents in an isolated village in rural Wales after her mother dies. There she tries to rebuild roots and discover the truth about a father that nobody wants to talk about. But a village is not necessarily such a safe place...

I loved this book. It brings out the confusion and sense of loss of an orphaned child in a very restrained and yet affecting way. Many things are overstated, like her sense of guilt for her part in the events of her childhood when a girl a few years older disappeared. It's a little like Atonement in that respect - but really, Eve has a lot less to feel bad about. You perhaps don't get all the answers that some readers might expect at the end, but I think there's enough closure, and for me the prose was beautiful enough to be an end in itself.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like my friend Elizabeth, I would have like the option to give this 3.5 stars but I've rounded it up. It is a beautifully told coming of age tale through the eyes of an 7 year old girl who moves from Birmingham following the death of her mother, to live in rural Wales with her grandparents. Here she tries to find out more about her father, whom she never knew, and hangs on to any snippet of information about her mother.

Evie's desperation to know who she is and why everyone seems to hate her father coupled with Susan Fletcher's poetic writing, makes for a moving read. Add a few mysterious men to the mix and a missing child and this is a perfect book to while away a few hours.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not put this one down! Spotted it on the library new books. This is a first novel and I look forward to many more. This one set in Wales is a story of a young girl who finds herself sent to live with her grandparents in Wales after the sudden death of her mother.
She is thrust into a whole new life experience with people she has never met before.
There is a mystery threaded through the book, the disappearance of another young girl.
Interesting to see how she interacts with many different characters and finds her way.

[Silke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Following the death of her mother, seven-year-old Eve moves from Birmingham to her grandparents in Wales. Now, years later while awaiting the birth of her first child, she is reflecting on memories, painful, beautiful and mysterious.

This book gave me the feeling of emptiness when finishing a book that has gripped me from start to finish and made it to those books I'll hold dear to my heart. For me, it conjures just the right atmosphere with detailed descriptions and a writing which reminded me of nature poems.

[Elizabeth Emily Browne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a beautiful coming of age story. Which has a sweet understated love story running through. I found this book slightly slow going but I think that was down to me not having the time rather than the actual book.

All the characters were wonderful. I truly do not have one bad thing to say about this book. Love the genre, the author and the characters. Definitely a good read.

[Heather Boundy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved the descriptions of life in rural Wales and the story of Evie as a girl. I was less sure about the portrayal of Evie as an adult. Would perhaps have liked more information about her grown-up relationship with Daniel. Certainly worthy of a first novel award though.

[Hannah Vickery · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the kind of story that holds the gentle melancholy of hiking between lonely wildlands and lovely meadows in bloom. I thought a lot about love and grief in their various unpolished forms and how much I adore windy days

[Andrea Howarth-Salazar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is destined to become a literary classic. The portrayal of childhood and its fears is hauntingly accurate and the description is poetic.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and effortless read! Just loved it. It was pure joy!

[Olga Seppänen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5