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Eden
Set in a walled garden, whose inhabitants live an eternal and unblemished life, eden opens with a summons. The gardeners of eden are called by their masters, the angels, to see a dead body. It is that of a bird, a creature who has strayed beyond the garden walls. Outside, where there is poverty and sickness and death, this bird has met a fate that couldn’t have befallen it within the safe haven of the garden. And why would anyone want to leave? eden is a place of immortality and plenty – bountiful fields and orchards and lakes, a place where the lord’s bidding is done.
But really this summons is a warning. Because something is wrong in eden. Years after Adam and Eve left the garden, someone has escaped – Tabi – one of the sisters of the congregation, and the angels fear further rebellion. They know there are two in eden, gardener Ebon and Jamin, the angel with the broken wing, who would follow Tabi anywhere, who would risk the world outside if only they can find her. Perhaps a fall is coming . . .
Jim Crace’s eden is deliciously intriguing and totally propulsive. A beautiful, fabular novel that toys with creation myth, and asks where authority lies, who commands fear and what – outside of hallowed ground – is an angel but a bird?
But really this summons is a warning. Because something is wrong in eden. Years after Adam and Eve left the garden, someone has escaped – Tabi – one of the sisters of the congregation, and the angels fear further rebellion. They know there are two in eden, gardener Ebon and Jamin, the angel with the broken wing, who would follow Tabi anywhere, who would risk the world outside if only they can find her. Perhaps a fall is coming . . .
Jim Crace’s eden is deliciously intriguing and totally propulsive. A beautiful, fabular novel that toys with creation myth, and asks where authority lies, who commands fear and what – outside of hallowed ground – is an angel but a bird?
272 pages, Hardcover
First published August 18, 2022
21 people are currently reading
932 people want to read
About the author
Jim Crace
22 books417 followersJames "Jim" Crace is an award-winning English writer. His novel Quarantine, won the Whitbread Novel award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Harvest won the International Impac Dublin Literary Award, James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
Crace grew up in Forty Hill, an area at the far northern point of Greater London, close to Enfield where Crace attended Enfield Grammar School. He studied for a degree at the Birmingham College of Commerce (now part of Birmingham City University), where he was enrolled as an external student of the University of London. After securing a BA (Hons) in English Literature in 1968, he travelled overseas with the UK organization Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), working in Sudan. Two years later he returned to the UK, and worked with the BBC, writing educational programmes. From 1976 to 1987 he worked as a freelance journalist for The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers.
In 1986 Crace published Continent. Continent won the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award, the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Guardian Fiction Prize. This work was followed by The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Signals of Distress, Quarantine, Being Dead and Six. His most recent novel, The Pesthouse, was published in the UK in March 2007.
Despite living in Britain, Crace is more successful in the United States, as evidenced by the award of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999.
Crace grew up in Forty Hill, an area at the far northern point of Greater London, close to Enfield where Crace attended Enfield Grammar School. He studied for a degree at the Birmingham College of Commerce (now part of Birmingham City University), where he was enrolled as an external student of the University of London. After securing a BA (Hons) in English Literature in 1968, he travelled overseas with the UK organization Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), working in Sudan. Two years later he returned to the UK, and worked with the BBC, writing educational programmes. From 1976 to 1987 he worked as a freelance journalist for The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers.
In 1986 Crace published Continent. Continent won the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award, the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Guardian Fiction Prize. This work was followed by The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Signals of Distress, Quarantine, Being Dead and Six. His most recent novel, The Pesthouse, was published in the UK in March 2007.
Despite living in Britain, Crace is more successful in the United States, as evidenced by the award of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999.
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July 3, 2022
If no one fears the world beyond the wall, everyone will leave. And then what will the angels do for sustenance and care?
eden is the second novel Jim Crace has published since Harvest, which he said at the time was to be his last.
He wrote The Melody is part due to the success of Harvest, winning the prestigious and well-remunerated Dublin Literary Award: "I was surprised by its success. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won two international awards. Prize money is not for spending on a cruise or golf club membership. It’s supposed to pay for more books, so the puritan in me said I owed the prizes a novel."
I will be interested to see nearer publication his comments on eden, although it feels it may be attempting to close out the "religious" (although Crace is an confirmed atheist) strand to his literature (most notably Quarantine). And this may explain, as a confirmed believer, my lack of apprecation of the novel.
eden opens with a Crace signature, the invented epigraph:
Regard the Angels and their glisten’d Wings; Behold their flightless underlings At labour in the fields.
VISITATIONS 7: 12.
The novel imagines a Garden of Eden post Adam and Eve's departure, but still populated with people ('habitants', numbering around 50), supervised by angels (here a species of bird), and with The Lord as an exalted, but largely rumoured, presence, the world outside, so the angels tell the habitants, untamed, dangerous and rife with something unknown in eden: death.
It would perhaps be too incongruous for Crace to incorporate many of his signature references - the angels don't swig Boulevard Liqueur while driving their Panache saloon cars and quoting Mondazy's Truisms or the philosopher Pycletius. Pleasingly however, the trees in the garden include tarbonies.
As the novel opens, one of those working in the garden, Tabi has disappeared and is presumed to have done the unthinkable, and followed Adam and Eve out of the closely guarded gate or over the wall.
She does her duty and totals the five blessings. Her thumb is witness to the love the lord bestows on her. Her pointing finger is the safety and the care provided by the angels. The middle finger stands for plenty, the riches of the table and the garden. The fourth is warmth and shelter. And the last, the little sapling of the five, is to know the joys of life eternal. What more can a person want than love and care, and those abundances of living which will never end with dying?
They might want to know what other loves there are, besides the lord’s, Tabi cannot help but think. And they might care to wonder what the perils are of stepping out from underneath the angels’ wings. And they might choose to experience, for a day or two at least, a life without abundance, for scarcity gives value. As for everlasting life? Such a blessing – if it means anything at all – is beyond reach and meaning, always distant, always immaterial.
...
We’re pinned down in our orchards and our fields, she says, for fear of someone who’s not real.
The angels rush to warn the others of the dangers outside, and the priviliges of those within eden:
They understand their workers, now fewer than fifty, are bereaved and must be reassured at once, before the imp of disobedience takes hold like some fastgrowing tare; and first one, then another, then a crowd grow bold enough to think that, possibly, the world is more enticing than eternity. Then what of eden? Those tares will multiply. Those fields and gardens will grow wild. The masters cannot tend them on their own. Those walls and barns and sacred roosts will age and crack like trees, weighed down by ivy, moss and vines, brought down by wind and time. And what of angels? Where will they take wing?
But Tabi's closest companion, Ebon, is unsettled himself by her departure and questions whether eternity is a prize worth staying for: Perhaps those few who’ve broken out into the world – from Eve to Tabi, if that indeed is where she is – are happier than he is now, despite their awful transience and ageing.. As is the angel closest to the habitants, Jamin, who has a broken wing from when he flew to close to the ground on a foray out of the garden. Meanwhile another habitant Alum acts as the angels’ nose, their eyes, their ears, snitching on all three of them to the senior angels. And all three have their own reasons for considering going out of eden into the world in search of Tabi, with the attendent risks of their own mortality, and bringing the world back into Eden.
If Crace has a point it seems to be that eternal life (either in Eden pre the Fall, or presumably by inference Heaven) is rather dull. Indeed eden here resembles in one sense the pre-1989 Soviet Union, or even more so North Korea now, a place where those inside are trapped not just by a wall, but as much by rumours of the more hazardous, chaotic world outside.
But I found the result a rather simple, and disappointing story. 2.5 stars.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.
eden is the second novel Jim Crace has published since Harvest, which he said at the time was to be his last.
He wrote The Melody is part due to the success of Harvest, winning the prestigious and well-remunerated Dublin Literary Award: "I was surprised by its success. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won two international awards. Prize money is not for spending on a cruise or golf club membership. It’s supposed to pay for more books, so the puritan in me said I owed the prizes a novel."
I will be interested to see nearer publication his comments on eden, although it feels it may be attempting to close out the "religious" (although Crace is an confirmed atheist) strand to his literature (most notably Quarantine). And this may explain, as a confirmed believer, my lack of apprecation of the novel.
eden opens with a Crace signature, the invented epigraph:
Regard the Angels and their glisten’d Wings; Behold their flightless underlings At labour in the fields.
VISITATIONS 7: 12.
The novel imagines a Garden of Eden post Adam and Eve's departure, but still populated with people ('habitants', numbering around 50), supervised by angels (here a species of bird), and with The Lord as an exalted, but largely rumoured, presence, the world outside, so the angels tell the habitants, untamed, dangerous and rife with something unknown in eden: death.
It would perhaps be too incongruous for Crace to incorporate many of his signature references - the angels don't swig Boulevard Liqueur while driving their Panache saloon cars and quoting Mondazy's Truisms or the philosopher Pycletius. Pleasingly however, the trees in the garden include tarbonies.
As the novel opens, one of those working in the garden, Tabi has disappeared and is presumed to have done the unthinkable, and followed Adam and Eve out of the closely guarded gate or over the wall.
She does her duty and totals the five blessings. Her thumb is witness to the love the lord bestows on her. Her pointing finger is the safety and the care provided by the angels. The middle finger stands for plenty, the riches of the table and the garden. The fourth is warmth and shelter. And the last, the little sapling of the five, is to know the joys of life eternal. What more can a person want than love and care, and those abundances of living which will never end with dying?
They might want to know what other loves there are, besides the lord’s, Tabi cannot help but think. And they might care to wonder what the perils are of stepping out from underneath the angels’ wings. And they might choose to experience, for a day or two at least, a life without abundance, for scarcity gives value. As for everlasting life? Such a blessing – if it means anything at all – is beyond reach and meaning, always distant, always immaterial.
...
We’re pinned down in our orchards and our fields, she says, for fear of someone who’s not real.
The angels rush to warn the others of the dangers outside, and the priviliges of those within eden:
They understand their workers, now fewer than fifty, are bereaved and must be reassured at once, before the imp of disobedience takes hold like some fastgrowing tare; and first one, then another, then a crowd grow bold enough to think that, possibly, the world is more enticing than eternity. Then what of eden? Those tares will multiply. Those fields and gardens will grow wild. The masters cannot tend them on their own. Those walls and barns and sacred roosts will age and crack like trees, weighed down by ivy, moss and vines, brought down by wind and time. And what of angels? Where will they take wing?
But Tabi's closest companion, Ebon, is unsettled himself by her departure and questions whether eternity is a prize worth staying for: Perhaps those few who’ve broken out into the world – from Eve to Tabi, if that indeed is where she is – are happier than he is now, despite their awful transience and ageing.. As is the angel closest to the habitants, Jamin, who has a broken wing from when he flew to close to the ground on a foray out of the garden. Meanwhile another habitant Alum acts as the angels’ nose, their eyes, their ears, snitching on all three of them to the senior angels. And all three have their own reasons for considering going out of eden into the world in search of Tabi, with the attendent risks of their own mortality, and bringing the world back into Eden.
If Crace has a point it seems to be that eternal life (either in Eden pre the Fall, or presumably by inference Heaven) is rather dull. Indeed eden here resembles in one sense the pre-1989 Soviet Union, or even more so North Korea now, a place where those inside are trapped not just by a wall, but as much by rumours of the more hazardous, chaotic world outside.
But I found the result a rather simple, and disappointing story. 2.5 stars.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.
July 30, 2023
Their workers, now fewer than fifty, are bereaved and must be reassured at once, before the imp of disobedience takes hold like some fast-growing tare; and first one, then another, then a crowd grow bold enough to think that, possibly, the world is more enticing than eternity. Then what of eden? Those tares will multiply. Those fields and gardens will grow wild. The masters cannot tend them on their own. Those walls and barns and sacred roosts will age and crack like trees, weighed down by ivy, moss and vines, brought down by wind and time. And what of angels? Where will they take wing?
I have enjoyed reading Jim Crace before and went into eden with high hopes, but despite Crace’s consistently interesting and poetic writing style, the storyline here felt ultimately pointless, failing to deliver on early promise. Set in “eden” long after the expulsion of Adam and Eve, the garden’s immortal labourers and the angels they support through their efforts — luminously blue-feathered, human-sized, sermonising, hook-beaked “birds in all but name” — are all upset by the disappearance of one of the “sisters” (a sassy orchard-keeper who has apparently gone over the wall to see what all the fuss is about the outside world, with its rumoured sorrows and death). This Tabi is every bit the bad influence that Eve was: her disappearance stirs thoughts of disobedience in the males that miss her — Ebon, her closest friend and workmate in the orchards; Alum, the brutal snitch who acts as the angels’ “nose” among the labourers; and Jamin, a nearly fallen angel who has enjoyed Tabi’s preening of his feathers — and initially, this served as an interesting enough set-up. But as the story goes on, the only question we seem to be exploring is if remaining within the cloistered garden — with routine, hard work, sacrifice, safety, obedience, forever — is an authentic way of being compared to taking one’s chances with the great unknown, and that’s not very interesting: this was done better in Brave New World and reminded me very much of films like M Night Shyamalan’s The Village or even The Barbie Movie. Even as a theological critique — with the heavy-handed angels serving as intermediary and mouthpiece for the never-seen “lord” — there’s really nothing new here. But there are some pretty phrases. (Note: I read an ARC and passages may not be in their final forms.)
This is a story that will be told for years to come. A love story, a history, a tale of wisdom gained, of growing old, of treasuring what’s drawn in air as much as what is solid earth and stone, of clinging close to flesh and bark, of birds and bells, of work and play, and forging out of hardship hope. This is a story that unends.
This didn’t quite unend me, and I don’t want to discuss more of the plot than I already have, but I do want to note some of the surprising phrasing. I was entranced by passages like, “The early, luke-white moon is sliced and narrow” and amused by “He probes the undergrowth and overyawns”. And although I had to look these up to make sure they were real words, I liked rolling the phrases “scrumping apples” and “mammocking butterflies” on my tongue; appreciated that other words I didn’t know like “venturing down the slypes” and “the chevet sky” are terms from cathedral architecture. I liked the writing at the sentence level, but they didn’t add up to a satisfying novel to me.
The garden was never as loose and carefree as the world on this side of the wall or as embroidered. Its cloth was always cut as plain as possible. Whatever brute or blackguard made this place, it certainly was not the same lord who fashioned eden. That lord would never be so whimsical and fickle. Compared to this, his paradise has been begotten endless, sullen, constant, dull, sedate.
Again: no surprises in eden’s philosophy, and a bit of a disappointment.
July 8, 2022
This is my fourth experience of reading a Jim Crace novel. I’ve previously read Harvest, Quarantine and The Melody. For me, his books have been consistently interesting but not so consistent in my actual enjoyment of reading them. Like many, I loved Harvest and wish it had won the Booker in the year it was shortlisted. I also really enjoyed The Melody. But Quarantine was for me an interesting topic that didn’t quite work, which probably has a lot more to do with my Christian faith than it does with Crace’s writing or storytelling abilities.
And that final comment about Quarantine also applies to eden, although I have to add that I found the story in this new book less engaging than that in other books I have read by Crace.
eden introduces us to a garden (yes, that garden) where, in the wake of Adam and Eve leaving, a small community continues to live their eternal lives tending for the garden under the watchful eyes of the angels (here, a type of bird with startling blue feathers). When Tabi, one of the habitants of the garden, disappears one day, it is assumed by everyone else that she has left the garden either by sneaking through the gate or, more likely, by scaling the wall that surrounds it. Ebon, Tabi’s closest companion in the garden, is unsettled by her disappearance and sets out to bring her back, aided by Jamin, an injured angel who is not so aloof as all the other angels. There’s a disrupting influence through the book from Alum, a kind of snitch, a go-between who reports to the angels about anything he thinks the habitants need to be punished or reprimanded for.
For the most part, the story unfolds exactly as you think it will. Some of the action towards the end might not be what you think is going to happen, but even then, it isn’t actually a great surprise when it does.
For me, this was one of those books where I reached the end wondering what the point of it all was. I never felt like I wanted to stop reading, and I liked the writing in several parts, but the story felt a bit predictable and I’m not sure what the point was unless it was that life in a “perfect” place/community doesn’t stay perfect for long and can become more of a prison than a paradise (with associated ideas about individualism).
So, for me, not one to get all that excited about. But an interesting book to read, nonetheless.
My thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley.
And that final comment about Quarantine also applies to eden, although I have to add that I found the story in this new book less engaging than that in other books I have read by Crace.
eden introduces us to a garden (yes, that garden) where, in the wake of Adam and Eve leaving, a small community continues to live their eternal lives tending for the garden under the watchful eyes of the angels (here, a type of bird with startling blue feathers). When Tabi, one of the habitants of the garden, disappears one day, it is assumed by everyone else that she has left the garden either by sneaking through the gate or, more likely, by scaling the wall that surrounds it. Ebon, Tabi’s closest companion in the garden, is unsettled by her disappearance and sets out to bring her back, aided by Jamin, an injured angel who is not so aloof as all the other angels. There’s a disrupting influence through the book from Alum, a kind of snitch, a go-between who reports to the angels about anything he thinks the habitants need to be punished or reprimanded for.
For the most part, the story unfolds exactly as you think it will. Some of the action towards the end might not be what you think is going to happen, but even then, it isn’t actually a great surprise when it does.
For me, this was one of those books where I reached the end wondering what the point of it all was. I never felt like I wanted to stop reading, and I liked the writing in several parts, but the story felt a bit predictable and I’m not sure what the point was unless it was that life in a “perfect” place/community doesn’t stay perfect for long and can become more of a prison than a paradise (with associated ideas about individualism).
So, for me, not one to get all that excited about. But an interesting book to read, nonetheless.
My thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley.
December 4, 2022
3.5, rounded up.
My fourth Crace novel, after his Booker nominee Harvest, and Being Dead and The Melody, all of which I thought exceptional. So it pains me I didn't enjoy this quite as much. It's still beautifully written and masterfully plotted - it's just the back cover claimed it was 'propulsive' and I did find parts of it a bit of a slog (a 260-page novel should only take me 2-3 days; this took six!).
Regardless of that, religious-themed books usually don't sit too well with me, being of a more secular orientation - but I did find Crace's reimagining of eden (sic) fascinating for the most part - especially his characterization of the angels as something of a churlish birdlike creature. I now somewhat would like to tackle his OTHER Booker nominee, Quarantine, which is his retelling of Jesus' temptation in the desert - but maybe will hold off awhile till this recedes from memory.
Kudos to Stuart Wilson for one of the most striking and gorgeous covers in recent memory, however.
My fourth Crace novel, after his Booker nominee Harvest, and Being Dead and The Melody, all of which I thought exceptional. So it pains me I didn't enjoy this quite as much. It's still beautifully written and masterfully plotted - it's just the back cover claimed it was 'propulsive' and I did find parts of it a bit of a slog (a 260-page novel should only take me 2-3 days; this took six!).
Regardless of that, religious-themed books usually don't sit too well with me, being of a more secular orientation - but I did find Crace's reimagining of eden (sic) fascinating for the most part - especially his characterization of the angels as something of a churlish birdlike creature. I now somewhat would like to tackle his OTHER Booker nominee, Quarantine, which is his retelling of Jesus' temptation in the desert - but maybe will hold off awhile till this recedes from memory.
Kudos to Stuart Wilson for one of the most striking and gorgeous covers in recent memory, however.
August 1, 2022
I find it quite difficult to review eden. I enjoyed the writing and became quite engaged with the characters, but I wasn’t sure that it added up to all that much in the end.
Set in the Garden Of Eden long, long after Adam and Eve have left, we see a picture closely resembling an oppressive, totalitarian regime. Those remaining in the Garden have eternal life; they do not age nor bear children. The price for being fed and sheltered for eternity is hard daily work tending the Garden and subservience to a hierarchy of angels. These are physically splendid but morally flawed, bird-like creatures without arms and with beaks, who enforce rigid routines and dispense propaganda about the dreadful life lived in the outside world. We see into the minds of a go-between (or snitch) who informs on his fellow “habitants”, of a hard-working, decent orchardman and a rebellious woman who has somehow escaped Eden just before the narrative begins.
Setting such a story in Eden is subversive and clever, and could be read as a satire of organised religion, offering (in this case, literal) eternal life but requiring subservience, labour, adherence to strict ritual and acceptance of hierarchy in the life currently being lived. Habitants also have an unrealistically hubristic view of their own superiority and benevolence, angels are enforcers flawed by pomopsity and arrogance, but as one habitant asks, “What can an angel do without a little help, except expect to be obeyed?”
The thing is, I’m not sure it says anything very fresh or new. There are echoes here of Brave New World, for example, and especially of the conversation between Mustapha Mond and the Savage. There are some rather well-worn ideas about freedom, for example “being free to die is also surely being free to live as well.” The poisonous effect of envy and spite on an ordered community was well done but not terribly original. I enjoyed the prose, the book was atmospheric and quite involving, but in the end I wasn’t sure I’d really got much out of it.
I thought Harvest was an outstanding, original book showing the fragility of an ordered community subjected to disruptive influences. This covers some of the same ground but for me doesn’t have the same depth of insight. I have rounded 3.5 stars up to 4 because it was quite an involving read, but it’s a qualified recommendation.
(My thanks to Picador for an ARC via NetGalley.)
Set in the Garden Of Eden long, long after Adam and Eve have left, we see a picture closely resembling an oppressive, totalitarian regime. Those remaining in the Garden have eternal life; they do not age nor bear children. The price for being fed and sheltered for eternity is hard daily work tending the Garden and subservience to a hierarchy of angels. These are physically splendid but morally flawed, bird-like creatures without arms and with beaks, who enforce rigid routines and dispense propaganda about the dreadful life lived in the outside world. We see into the minds of a go-between (or snitch) who informs on his fellow “habitants”, of a hard-working, decent orchardman and a rebellious woman who has somehow escaped Eden just before the narrative begins.
Setting such a story in Eden is subversive and clever, and could be read as a satire of organised religion, offering (in this case, literal) eternal life but requiring subservience, labour, adherence to strict ritual and acceptance of hierarchy in the life currently being lived. Habitants also have an unrealistically hubristic view of their own superiority and benevolence, angels are enforcers flawed by pomopsity and arrogance, but as one habitant asks, “What can an angel do without a little help, except expect to be obeyed?”
The thing is, I’m not sure it says anything very fresh or new. There are echoes here of Brave New World, for example, and especially of the conversation between Mustapha Mond and the Savage. There are some rather well-worn ideas about freedom, for example “being free to die is also surely being free to live as well.” The poisonous effect of envy and spite on an ordered community was well done but not terribly original. I enjoyed the prose, the book was atmospheric and quite involving, but in the end I wasn’t sure I’d really got much out of it.
I thought Harvest was an outstanding, original book showing the fragility of an ordered community subjected to disruptive influences. This covers some of the same ground but for me doesn’t have the same depth of insight. I have rounded 3.5 stars up to 4 because it was quite an involving read, but it’s a qualified recommendation.
(My thanks to Picador for an ARC via NetGalley.)
August 12, 2022
I love what this story is trying to do but I really didn't enjoy the reading experience.
We are in the garden of eden many years after Adam and Eve have left. We have a group of inhabitants who are immortal but whose lives are dictated by the "angels" and by the needs of the garden. We are exploring the idea of eden as a paradise. Our inhabitants seem to be pretty much slaves with eternal life, they are made to fear the outside world by the angels but they have absolutely no freedom - no autonomy over what they eat, where they sleep, what they work on, etc... It's made to feel very cult-like.
These gardeners are meant to be above humans on the outside but we see that despite living in Eden they are not immune to human nature. The whole story follows the disappearance of Tabi, one of the gardeners and we see her longing for something more, even if that means losing eternal life. We also see the effects on some other gardeners and angels. This is essentially the story, the mystery of how and why Tabi left, the consequences of her leaving on a select group of inhabitants of Eden and later on in the story some of the people from outside.
I loved that we saw explorations of the seven deadly sins within the garden and ways in which the 10 commandments were being broken. And on paper this should have been a perfect book for me. Unfortunately I just couldn't get on with the writing style and struggled to maintain focus on the story or to really care about what was happening. As it was only 270ish pages I persevered through but really ended the book feeling like I didn't really care.
I would like to try some other works by Jim Crace because I loved the underlying themes and wonder whether I would get on with his writing in other works.
We are in the garden of eden many years after Adam and Eve have left. We have a group of inhabitants who are immortal but whose lives are dictated by the "angels" and by the needs of the garden. We are exploring the idea of eden as a paradise. Our inhabitants seem to be pretty much slaves with eternal life, they are made to fear the outside world by the angels but they have absolutely no freedom - no autonomy over what they eat, where they sleep, what they work on, etc... It's made to feel very cult-like.
These gardeners are meant to be above humans on the outside but we see that despite living in Eden they are not immune to human nature. The whole story follows the disappearance of Tabi, one of the gardeners and we see her longing for something more, even if that means losing eternal life. We also see the effects on some other gardeners and angels. This is essentially the story, the mystery of how and why Tabi left, the consequences of her leaving on a select group of inhabitants of Eden and later on in the story some of the people from outside.
I loved that we saw explorations of the seven deadly sins within the garden and ways in which the 10 commandments were being broken. And on paper this should have been a perfect book for me. Unfortunately I just couldn't get on with the writing style and struggled to maintain focus on the story or to really care about what was happening. As it was only 270ish pages I persevered through but really ended the book feeling like I didn't really care.
I would like to try some other works by Jim Crace because I loved the underlying themes and wonder whether I would get on with his writing in other works.
September 5, 2022
This review is not to be trusted.
Jim Crace could write his name and address on a luggage tag and I would consider it worthy of a Booker long-listing and a Pulitzer. I am the kind of fan who may not be capable of reviewing him objectively.
eden is the story of what happened in the garden of eden after Adam and Eve. Delivered in Crace’s unusual, original, poetic, literary style. His writing is the journey and the destination.
eden, by Jim Crace is about so much:
Whether immortality without agency, but with structure, control and all your needs taken care of, is better than mortality, with freedom of choice and movement, but also hunger, hardship and loss?
It’s about how humans are capable of remarkable invention, resilience and great kindness, but also how we ultimately ruin just about everything we get our hands on.
It’s about religion; designed to provoke, question and consider.
Whether walls protect or imprison? How power corrupts.
I loved it. Obviously.
As far as I know, eden is currently out on Kindle and Audible and will be out in paperback more widely come October. My only sadness is that I read/listened to this book too fast, and should he write another I will probably have to wait three or four years for it. At least there is a vast backlist to revisit.
My plan is to delve into the reviews that have come out internationally so far, to see what (many) insights and meanings I have missed, then wait for my paperback copy to arrive and read it again.
If it were possible for one to have a favourite author, in as much as it’s possible to have only one favourite food, person or place, mine would more than likely be Crace.
Jim Crace could write his name and address on a luggage tag and I would consider it worthy of a Booker long-listing and a Pulitzer. I am the kind of fan who may not be capable of reviewing him objectively.
eden is the story of what happened in the garden of eden after Adam and Eve. Delivered in Crace’s unusual, original, poetic, literary style. His writing is the journey and the destination.
eden, by Jim Crace is about so much:
Whether immortality without agency, but with structure, control and all your needs taken care of, is better than mortality, with freedom of choice and movement, but also hunger, hardship and loss?
It’s about how humans are capable of remarkable invention, resilience and great kindness, but also how we ultimately ruin just about everything we get our hands on.
It’s about religion; designed to provoke, question and consider.
Whether walls protect or imprison? How power corrupts.
I loved it. Obviously.
As far as I know, eden is currently out on Kindle and Audible and will be out in paperback more widely come October. My only sadness is that I read/listened to this book too fast, and should he write another I will probably have to wait three or four years for it. At least there is a vast backlist to revisit.
My plan is to delve into the reviews that have come out internationally so far, to see what (many) insights and meanings I have missed, then wait for my paperback copy to arrive and read it again.
If it were possible for one to have a favourite author, in as much as it’s possible to have only one favourite food, person or place, mine would more than likely be Crace.
December 21, 2023
An allegorical novel based on the Garden of Eden. Initially, I found it hard to get into the story but ended up really liking it. It is after Adam and Eve leave the Garden and it tells of the remaining humans and angels that care for the garden. Even in this place of perfection there remains disobedience, deceit and chaos. Those within desire to know the outside world and those on the outside are mystified by what is inside.
September 20, 2022
eden - Small E, very important - isn't the first time Crace has played with the Bible, or bits of it. It is, as the title suggests, set in Eden, some time after Adam and Eve got booted out. Quite some time infact, that the current denizens know them only as a cautionary tale. Because Eden is still a garden of Earthly delights, a paradise and needs tending by a small number of humans who are given what seems to be immortality for their ceasely toil of keeping the gardens. Overseeing them are the angels, who here are described as resembling giant birds, with beaks and no arms. It is made clean that the best they can do is bully the humans, peck them, but since they lack arms are unable to do any actual work except management. There is potentially a crude metaphor here but I don't think its really what Crace is after.
Instead this is a re-run of the fall of man, this time a group of people living in what seems to be paradise but being worked to the bone start to think about the outside world. And there is an outside world, there are walls, and they drop food outside for alms occasionally. The book starts with one of the humans missing, the most impetuous (and yet again its a woman). As the book unfolds her partner, their overseer and a lowly angel all consider the outside world, and what it might offer them, leading to an eventual slipping of the bonds and yet again - disaster.
As I said Crace has played in these waters before and tonally gets things about right. But narratively I think he spends a little too much time on his setup, we don't get outside until the last third of the book and the ending ends up feeling a being a bit rushed. Not least because the outside world and its proximity to a massive walled garden and gates are really interesting. The brief moments we get inside an outsider's head left me wanting more, unlike the quite significant time we spend inside Alum - the toady middle-management type - who I got the measure of the first time we met him and repeat visits didn't help. It wears its setting lightly, and at the end you do wonder what the point of it bein in Eden was, particularly as The Lord never makes an appearance.. Perhaps the obvious management satire was the point.
Instead this is a re-run of the fall of man, this time a group of people living in what seems to be paradise but being worked to the bone start to think about the outside world. And there is an outside world, there are walls, and they drop food outside for alms occasionally. The book starts with one of the humans missing, the most impetuous (and yet again its a woman). As the book unfolds her partner, their overseer and a lowly angel all consider the outside world, and what it might offer them, leading to an eventual slipping of the bonds and yet again - disaster.
As I said Crace has played in these waters before and tonally gets things about right. But narratively I think he spends a little too much time on his setup, we don't get outside until the last third of the book and the ending ends up feeling a being a bit rushed. Not least because the outside world and its proximity to a massive walled garden and gates are really interesting. The brief moments we get inside an outsider's head left me wanting more, unlike the quite significant time we spend inside Alum - the toady middle-management type - who I got the measure of the first time we met him and repeat visits didn't help. It wears its setting lightly, and at the end you do wonder what the point of it bein in Eden was, particularly as The Lord never makes an appearance.. Perhaps the obvious management satire was the point.
February 3, 2023
3.5 stars
A strange and beguiling book that doesn't quite satisfy. Crace's garden (small-e eden) is introduced long after the Fall of Adam and Eve. Here angels take an unusual form and humans work the land, labouring but peaceful. Passive but safe. Until a dead bird is discovered in a place where there is no death and a woman goes missing, possibly escaped over the Wall against all the preaching of the Angels. Her absence causes the community to consider the world they live in, from her partner to the cruel overseer who delights in secrets and punishment.
It's an interesting take and the world is wonderful, where angels are wild and speechless birds. Crace's is a delierately disconcerting vision of paradise that is all work and little reward and asks at what price peace? Is immortality, health and safety worth a dull, featureless existence with no freedom of thought or action?
The set-up of the garden and the disappearance of Tabi takes two-thirds of the book and is covered only after long meanderings through the largely featureless days of the garden with her erstwhile partner? Friend? Ebon. When we do finally follow Tabi over the Wall we find a world of hardship when humans beg at the gates of eden for rotten scraps. They are suspicious of these lacklustre offerings and fearful of the garden's inhabitants. But the narrative stays predominantly inside, ruminating on the effect of Tabi's absence and her transgression. Left as a short story or a novella it could have been a perfect, lyrical fable with enough wit and bite to make it satisfying, but the length is its undoing, it drifts and loses power as it goes on.
A strange and beguiling book that doesn't quite satisfy. Crace's garden (small-e eden) is introduced long after the Fall of Adam and Eve. Here angels take an unusual form and humans work the land, labouring but peaceful. Passive but safe. Until a dead bird is discovered in a place where there is no death and a woman goes missing, possibly escaped over the Wall against all the preaching of the Angels. Her absence causes the community to consider the world they live in, from her partner to the cruel overseer who delights in secrets and punishment.
It's an interesting take and the world is wonderful, where angels are wild and speechless birds. Crace's is a delierately disconcerting vision of paradise that is all work and little reward and asks at what price peace? Is immortality, health and safety worth a dull, featureless existence with no freedom of thought or action?
The set-up of the garden and the disappearance of Tabi takes two-thirds of the book and is covered only after long meanderings through the largely featureless days of the garden with her erstwhile partner? Friend? Ebon. When we do finally follow Tabi over the Wall we find a world of hardship when humans beg at the gates of eden for rotten scraps. They are suspicious of these lacklustre offerings and fearful of the garden's inhabitants. But the narrative stays predominantly inside, ruminating on the effect of Tabi's absence and her transgression. Left as a short story or a novella it could have been a perfect, lyrical fable with enough wit and bite to make it satisfying, but the length is its undoing, it drifts and loses power as it goes on.
October 11, 2022
As a fan of Crace's 2013 book Harvest, I was very excited to get to this book, and I found it a wonderfully bizarre daydream.
We spend most of the novel in the Garden of Eden, listening in to the petty squabbles of the people who live there and seeing how angels interact with one another. There are some great moments of humour, such as suspicions being cast on those scoffing tomatoes from the garden, or the strange social politics of everyone maintaining the order.
Although I occasionally found my mind drifting within the book, there was a lot of joy and wonder to be found in its pages.
I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
We spend most of the novel in the Garden of Eden, listening in to the petty squabbles of the people who live there and seeing how angels interact with one another. There are some great moments of humour, such as suspicions being cast on those scoffing tomatoes from the garden, or the strange social politics of everyone maintaining the order.
Although I occasionally found my mind drifting within the book, there was a lot of joy and wonder to be found in its pages.
I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
January 21, 2023
A strange book! It is about the garden of Eden long after Adam and Eve have defected to the outside world, although their beds are still unoccupied in the dormitory. Life has been happily going along for many years, the angels, bird-like creatures, preach to the workers not to go over the wall as they will become mortal and die. Unrest is in the air and this is the story. Good characters, the go-between is the epitome of a Gestapo like figure and Ebon the faithful friend.
An entertaining story but not one to be remembered overlong. 3 stars.
An entertaining story but not one to be remembered overlong. 3 stars.
August 29, 2023
Another great imaginative tale by Jim Crace. This is the story of Eden years after Adam and Eve have been expelled. Eden is a vast garden surrounded by a high wall inhabited by humans where death is unknown and is ruled by angels who are covered with luminous blue feathers and have sharp curved beaks. Outside of the walls of Eden is the world of normal humans living in the world of misery and death. However, all is not good in Eden and some are discontented and want to see the outside world. This is where the story begins as a young woman named Tabi has dreamed of escape from Eden and finally does. She leaves behind her brother Ebon and the only angel she has befriended called Jamin who has a broken wing, as well as the mean overseer named Alum who is cruel and deceptive. With these four characters Crace weaves an alternate tale of Eden and its ultimate fate.
December 21, 2023
A dystopian fable oddly undoing the first utopia - the enclosed walled garden is populated in this story, the inhabitants work hard farming, wear clothes, suffer, sweat, have seasons. Jealousies and acts of malevolence occur. Distorted angel overseers hover. But the residents have so-called eternal life. Outside is the presumed real world, and it's by counterfactual that perhaps the real world is seen to be realistically preferable- even when hungry - for some in a fill in the blanks exercise of the reader. Wallace Stevens would approve. The story line and prose though wear a reader down in some way. It's eden, small e, not capital letter, by the way, as the title. The first few set up chapters remind me of erewhon a little. If you wanted to pursue a contemporary political allegory, the walled enclosure might resonate with current geopolitical events. Also in allegorical tradition, the Roman de la Rose.
August 28, 2023
Enjoyed this book, it was fascinating. It was really descriptive, unlike a lot of authors there was a point to what he wrote he didn't only meander. I realised that every chapter had something happening.
March 9, 2024
This book was odd but I enjoyed the style of narration and had an enjoyable time reading this book for the most part. I didn’t feel a sense of connection with most of the main characters, except perhaps for Tabi, but I did eventually feel invested enough to want to know what happened to them all. 3.75 stars
Read
June 16, 2024I really like Jim Crace, but a world in which human activities are minutely overseen by enormous benevolent tyrant birds is literally so revolting to me that I speed-read the book as fast as possible. Probably going to have nightmares now.
October 20, 2023
Beautiful and thought provoking. Maybe it is not so bad, after all, to be mortal.
July 22, 2023
Can’t really think of anything to encourage reading this book. There was a plot, characters, and setting, but none really stood out as a reason to recommend. I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher and voluntarily provided an honest review.
October 11, 2025
had to sit with this one. made me think of one of my fave poems:
"There was a snake here, it told me we should.
Told me we'd know everything." Eve said.
When Adam ate the fruit, he was looking at his wife, like always.
Oh, he thought. "Love." Eve turned her head towards him, like he was calling out to her.
He tried to empty his mind to make way for all the knowledge, to clear his throat to think of something to say, but he couldn't. Nothing else came forth.
Great read.
"There was a snake here, it told me we should.
Told me we'd know everything." Eve said.
When Adam ate the fruit, he was looking at his wife, like always.
Oh, he thought. "Love." Eve turned her head towards him, like he was calling out to her.
He tried to empty his mind to make way for all the knowledge, to clear his throat to think of something to say, but he couldn't. Nothing else came forth.
Great read.
August 31, 2023
This is a retelling of the Biblical Garden of Eden story.
After the departure of Adam and Eve, there are approximately 50 habitants in eden (always spelled lowercase). They care for their orchards, fields, and vegetable gardens with the promise of a life free of want and death. They are overseen by angels, described as large birds whose bodies are covered in blue feathers; they have no arms so must use their beaks and talons.
A woman named Tabi, one of the orchard workers, escapes eden for the outside world, leaving behind three individuals who miss her: there’s Ebon, who worked beside Tabi in the orchard; Alum, an informer who reports every wrongdoing to the angels; and Jamin, an angel who flew too close to the tainted earth beyond eden’s walls and hurt one of his wings so has been given the lowliest of duties. Ebon wonders whether he should risk leaving eden to find Tabi and bring her back.
As portrayed in this novel, eden is not a paradise. The habitants must work; the food they eat is produced because of their hard toil. Their lives are totally regimented: the ringing of bells dictates their daily routines. Once a week they must observe a strict fast. They live lives of “sublime uniformity” because “Order is the order of the day.” There is no privacy; “no concealment or withdrawal remains a private matter.” They work, eat, and pray together and sleep in a dormitory. In return for moderate comfort and security, they are expected to strictly obey all the rules.
The place made me think of a plantation or a work camp with slave labour. Though their basic needs are met, the habitants have no autonomy; they are assigned work and have virtually no choice in how they live. It is also made me think of North Korea, a police state where everyone is under surveillance at all times, conformity and cult-like obedience are demanded, and propaganda is used to portray the outside world, which they are not allowed to visit, as a chaotic, dangerous place.
This version of eden is not sinless either. Habitants are sometimes lazy and fake illness or injury to get out of work. Sneaking food is also not unknown. Alum uses physical violence to enforce and punish. The angels too are not unblemished because power corrupts: just as the “bodies of the gardeners have thickened and grown tough . . . and their hands . . . have grown calluses and cankers, so the angels can’t be blamed for hardening . . . [in face] of the never-ending weight of their impeccability. Pomposity and pride are the commonest of their failings, along with spite.”
For Tabi, it is the eternal sameness and boredom of her protected life that are the problem; eden is “endless, sullen, constant, dull, sedate.” She wants something more “tantalizing and extravagant than the everlasting days of this, the boredom and the certainty . . . everything repeated and familiar, the domesticity, the blameless life she is ordained to lead.” She wonders how anyone can be untroubled and satisfied “when all the future offers him is repetitions of the past?” She is “Bored by the drudgery of being richly blessed” and wants to go “where she is startled and surprised, a world that is both limitless and meaningful.” In eden all is known: “The future was the past. Nothing was a mystery. There were no stories to be told except the ones that preached obedience.”
Though Tabi is absent for much of the narrative, her personality is fully developed. She is a restless free spirit, described as the “garden’s loudest mouth” and “an agitated bird.” Ebon depicts her as moody, as someone who “laughs too readily” and as someone who “seems to think it is her duty to oppose the masters and their ministry but not her duty to be dutiful.” She is “not restrained or underfed in anything she does or says.” She questions the sermons delivered by the angels and even the existence of the lord. Even Ebon admits that she can become tiresome but also acknowledges that “she is easy to forgive and harder to forget.”
The book can be read as a critique of religion which promises eternal life if rules are followed. There is a hierarchy to angels, just as there is a hierarchy to the clergy of most organized religions. The angels do little work; pompous and arrogant, they enforce rigid routines and rules and dispense propaganda and punishment. They serve a lord who is never seen or heard. Tabi wonders whether the habitants are there to work for the angels who are dependent on humans: an angel’s role is “to be served and waited on, fed and groomed by humankind. That’s why the lord has made us everlasting, free from death, because the angels need us so. They can’t caress themselves. Or build, or cook, or use a hoe, or scratch their backs, or make a barrow out of wood. Or grow tomatoes, come to that. An angel’s good for nothing, except for ringing bells. And prayer.”
The novel certainly provides questions for the reader to ponder, especially about the value of freedom and free will. Is immortality without freedom of thought or action better than mortality with freedom of choice? Is total security enough to provide happiness? Can blind obedience ever be good?
I recently read The Book of Eve by Carmen Boullosa (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/...) , a feminist retelling of the Book of Genesis and it has similarities with eden. Eve thinks of the Garden of Eden as bland and speaks of what she gained outside: emotion, pleasure, knowledge. Likewise, Tabi experiences “guilt, regret and shame, feelings she has not experienced in eden,” but she also sees joyfulness and “richer feasts outside.”
I’ve read Harvest by Jim Crace and really liked it (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/...) and I certainly enjoyed eden. I’m definitely going to check out his other novels as well.
Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.
Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/DCYakabuski).
After the departure of Adam and Eve, there are approximately 50 habitants in eden (always spelled lowercase). They care for their orchards, fields, and vegetable gardens with the promise of a life free of want and death. They are overseen by angels, described as large birds whose bodies are covered in blue feathers; they have no arms so must use their beaks and talons.
A woman named Tabi, one of the orchard workers, escapes eden for the outside world, leaving behind three individuals who miss her: there’s Ebon, who worked beside Tabi in the orchard; Alum, an informer who reports every wrongdoing to the angels; and Jamin, an angel who flew too close to the tainted earth beyond eden’s walls and hurt one of his wings so has been given the lowliest of duties. Ebon wonders whether he should risk leaving eden to find Tabi and bring her back.
As portrayed in this novel, eden is not a paradise. The habitants must work; the food they eat is produced because of their hard toil. Their lives are totally regimented: the ringing of bells dictates their daily routines. Once a week they must observe a strict fast. They live lives of “sublime uniformity” because “Order is the order of the day.” There is no privacy; “no concealment or withdrawal remains a private matter.” They work, eat, and pray together and sleep in a dormitory. In return for moderate comfort and security, they are expected to strictly obey all the rules.
The place made me think of a plantation or a work camp with slave labour. Though their basic needs are met, the habitants have no autonomy; they are assigned work and have virtually no choice in how they live. It is also made me think of North Korea, a police state where everyone is under surveillance at all times, conformity and cult-like obedience are demanded, and propaganda is used to portray the outside world, which they are not allowed to visit, as a chaotic, dangerous place.
This version of eden is not sinless either. Habitants are sometimes lazy and fake illness or injury to get out of work. Sneaking food is also not unknown. Alum uses physical violence to enforce and punish. The angels too are not unblemished because power corrupts: just as the “bodies of the gardeners have thickened and grown tough . . . and their hands . . . have grown calluses and cankers, so the angels can’t be blamed for hardening . . . [in face] of the never-ending weight of their impeccability. Pomposity and pride are the commonest of their failings, along with spite.”
For Tabi, it is the eternal sameness and boredom of her protected life that are the problem; eden is “endless, sullen, constant, dull, sedate.” She wants something more “tantalizing and extravagant than the everlasting days of this, the boredom and the certainty . . . everything repeated and familiar, the domesticity, the blameless life she is ordained to lead.” She wonders how anyone can be untroubled and satisfied “when all the future offers him is repetitions of the past?” She is “Bored by the drudgery of being richly blessed” and wants to go “where she is startled and surprised, a world that is both limitless and meaningful.” In eden all is known: “The future was the past. Nothing was a mystery. There were no stories to be told except the ones that preached obedience.”
Though Tabi is absent for much of the narrative, her personality is fully developed. She is a restless free spirit, described as the “garden’s loudest mouth” and “an agitated bird.” Ebon depicts her as moody, as someone who “laughs too readily” and as someone who “seems to think it is her duty to oppose the masters and their ministry but not her duty to be dutiful.” She is “not restrained or underfed in anything she does or says.” She questions the sermons delivered by the angels and even the existence of the lord. Even Ebon admits that she can become tiresome but also acknowledges that “she is easy to forgive and harder to forget.”
The book can be read as a critique of religion which promises eternal life if rules are followed. There is a hierarchy to angels, just as there is a hierarchy to the clergy of most organized religions. The angels do little work; pompous and arrogant, they enforce rigid routines and rules and dispense propaganda and punishment. They serve a lord who is never seen or heard. Tabi wonders whether the habitants are there to work for the angels who are dependent on humans: an angel’s role is “to be served and waited on, fed and groomed by humankind. That’s why the lord has made us everlasting, free from death, because the angels need us so. They can’t caress themselves. Or build, or cook, or use a hoe, or scratch their backs, or make a barrow out of wood. Or grow tomatoes, come to that. An angel’s good for nothing, except for ringing bells. And prayer.”
The novel certainly provides questions for the reader to ponder, especially about the value of freedom and free will. Is immortality without freedom of thought or action better than mortality with freedom of choice? Is total security enough to provide happiness? Can blind obedience ever be good?
I recently read The Book of Eve by Carmen Boullosa (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/...) , a feminist retelling of the Book of Genesis and it has similarities with eden. Eve thinks of the Garden of Eden as bland and speaks of what she gained outside: emotion, pleasure, knowledge. Likewise, Tabi experiences “guilt, regret and shame, feelings she has not experienced in eden,” but she also sees joyfulness and “richer feasts outside.”
I’ve read Harvest by Jim Crace and really liked it (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/...) and I certainly enjoyed eden. I’m definitely going to check out his other novels as well.
Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.
Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/DCYakabuski).
May 21, 2023
I was drawn to read this by the thought of what the garden of Eden was like but although there are interesting ideas here I’m not much further forward. It doesn’t all tie in with the original creation story but that’s not surprising as I think the author is an atheist. In this story the 50 or so habitants lead a protected life as long as they obey the rules. As usual you do not know where it is set but apples grow well there. There’s no death or sex so perhaps plenty of time to question what it’s all about. Every now and again they generously donate rotting apples to the people living outside. Angels which are giant blue birds rule over them as they grow the food for everyone- someone escapes- what will happen next….
November 16, 2022
This was one of those books that started out so good, so thoughtful, so poetic. And in all fairness, it continued to be just that throughout. The only problem is the pacing. Jim does a fabulous job of setting us up with a slow-simmer suspense plot and then takes us...nowhere. Things barely get started before they're over, and all that teasing and build up lead into a pretty soft punch. I would actually still recommend reading this book, as I think that the voice is beautifully crafted, but I found myself skimming the last 1/3 of it.
August 8, 2022
Trouble in paradise. A dead body is found in Eden and one of the gardeners has escaped. Set long after the fall.
A curious work, with concepts which sound interesting in principle, but which lack any kind of appeal in practice.
A curious work, with concepts which sound interesting in principle, but which lack any kind of appeal in practice.
June 18, 2023
Half-submerged bird in a pond, wary and silent.
Wallowed to the wing-tips, a solemn beaked angel,
Feathers shimmering in the duskshine water.
One drop falls from a thick beak, silent moonlit tear.
Inconceivable biblical scenery.
Wallowed to the wing-tips, a solemn beaked angel,
Feathers shimmering in the duskshine water.
One drop falls from a thick beak, silent moonlit tear.
Inconceivable biblical scenery.
December 11, 2022
Very pretty writing but I felt absolutely nothing.
Liked the birbs and the Tabi chapter at the end, but pretty bland.
Liked the birbs and the Tabi chapter at the end, but pretty bland.
August 20, 2022
While the outside world is getting more and more populous, eden is still going, with fifty immortal, unblemished, sin-free humans, and their attending angels. Jamin is one of those, but he’s been caught taking a sneaky peak for himself at the outside world, and has injured himself in the process. Amongst the humans, we have Tabi – but do we, for she has vanished, presumably over the wall and into the world where you are forced to live but one mortal life then die. We have Alum, the grass of the lot, who snitches on anybody’s ill thought to the senior angels. And despite everything being a bit hippy cultish, and communal, the closest thing to a lover Tabi might have had, Ebon. Will his wish to be with Tabi mean he too tries to escape the immortal monotony, or could Alum prevent that? And what did happen with Tabi in her last days around and since?
There is a lot to talk about here. The nature of this eden – even the insistence it’s a lower-case one. The fact it has potatoes for the humans to eat is of some note. The feel from the off that we’re in an M Night Shyamalan story, and awaiting the “ooh, didn’t I tell you, this was set in 2022” twist. But of course, with all its restrictions, rules and endless nature, it’s the character of its inhabitants that we’re here for – the hard-to-think-of-disliking Tabi, with her inquisitiveness and devil-may-care attitude. Everyone has some transgression, even if it’s not a sin enough to be kicked out.
To some extent however, Tabi is an absence – the story quite often ending up being three people all revolving around the hole she left behind, in both this and in their lives. Jamin is the ‘lowest of the highest’ with his status as a transgressor amongst the angels, and loved the human contact Tabi gave him. Ebon had the closest connection with her, even if she seriously teased him about loving the trees more. Alum might be the most fascinating character, but still feels very one-sided. In being a human in a world controlled by angels, and wanting to be the most angelic do-gooder and law-enforcer, he comes across as being a Sonderkommando, one of the Jews co-opted briefly to keep other Jews toeing the line in Nazi death camps. The wall keeping you in, so sacred and holy you cannot touch it, is the electrified fence.
Ultimately I don’t think this has any such comparisons that fully work. It is a story about its own world, its unique rules not conforming with any parallels from ours. It certainly wants to talk about good and evil, but by its own rules – although in making the angels so avian and helpless, needing human help to do everything, some will deem it near to sacrilege. There was, as I say, a point when the story stopped being so clever in its weft of the three men reacting and interacting to what they thought they knew about life, post-Tabi, and it became a world of just three men in combat over a memory that had no female agency on the page. But that does balance out, making for much here that will be memorable. No “Quarantine”-level classic, it certainly makes me think back over my lack of Crace since then with regret.
There is a lot to talk about here. The nature of this eden – even the insistence it’s a lower-case one. The fact it has potatoes for the humans to eat is of some note. The feel from the off that we’re in an M Night Shyamalan story, and awaiting the “ooh, didn’t I tell you, this was set in 2022” twist. But of course, with all its restrictions, rules and endless nature, it’s the character of its inhabitants that we’re here for – the hard-to-think-of-disliking Tabi, with her inquisitiveness and devil-may-care attitude. Everyone has some transgression, even if it’s not a sin enough to be kicked out.
To some extent however, Tabi is an absence – the story quite often ending up being three people all revolving around the hole she left behind, in both this and in their lives. Jamin is the ‘lowest of the highest’ with his status as a transgressor amongst the angels, and loved the human contact Tabi gave him. Ebon had the closest connection with her, even if she seriously teased him about loving the trees more. Alum might be the most fascinating character, but still feels very one-sided. In being a human in a world controlled by angels, and wanting to be the most angelic do-gooder and law-enforcer, he comes across as being a Sonderkommando, one of the Jews co-opted briefly to keep other Jews toeing the line in Nazi death camps. The wall keeping you in, so sacred and holy you cannot touch it, is the electrified fence.
Ultimately I don’t think this has any such comparisons that fully work. It is a story about its own world, its unique rules not conforming with any parallels from ours. It certainly wants to talk about good and evil, but by its own rules – although in making the angels so avian and helpless, needing human help to do everything, some will deem it near to sacrilege. There was, as I say, a point when the story stopped being so clever in its weft of the three men reacting and interacting to what they thought they knew about life, post-Tabi, and it became a world of just three men in combat over a memory that had no female agency on the page. But that does balance out, making for much here that will be memorable. No “Quarantine”-level classic, it certainly makes me think back over my lack of Crace since then with regret.
September 14, 2022
Jim Crace is certainly a wonderfully perceptive and stunningly beautiful, lyrical writer. In a short number of pages Crace raises questions, thoughts and challenges that many a (similarly lauded) writer won’t come close to in a book twice the length. He is the author of two of my absolute favourite books: Quarantine and Being Dead, both of which are perfect. But although I keep buying them, I have almost been terrified to read another of his works in case it proves not to be as perfect.
As an atheist writer, it could be surprising to learn that when speaking about the writing of Crace’s masterpiece novel about the temptation of Christ, Quarantine a previous Archbishop of Canterbury proclaimed, “The grace of God was standing at your shoulder.” Crace mischievously responded by stating that it was more likely “the goblin of storytelling.” I have a feeling it may have been both. He is without doubt or discussion, a genius, no matter the source of his inspiration!
Not surprisingly for this author, eden is a profoundly humanist book, wrapped in myth and belief. Although those with a faith are shown limitations of this, the beauty of belief is also highlighted and the humans without the ‘knowledge’ of a god don’t get an easy ride either.
It is the challenges to faith and belief or lack thereof, raised by this vocal, life-long (but not strident) atheist that make his books wonderful. The author doesn’t just stamp on religion and declare you a fool if you have a faith, as many lesser writers may do, Crace highlights a tenet or creed and makes you reflect. As has always been the case with this author, he leaves enough space for the reader’s own thoughts and beliefs (atheist or theist) to be challenged but none will be denigrated, or for that matter, made to feel superior.
Eden is another beautiful, lyrical novel; full of wonder, shock and profound reflections all presented in a deceptively simple prose. I am loath to speak in any way against this novel as it possibly reflects my prejudice, rather than the author’s misrepresentation – he has not made any mistakes in what he has presented. And yet, I found the oversimplification of the idea of God and creation (and Eden) and the reliance on myth and tradition, rather than scripture, to reflect an image of God and creation that I just don’t recognise. However, I think this book can just as easily be read as a science fiction or future dystopian novel, rather than the more straightforward version that I have taken it for. Either way, it is another beautifully written fable that is also very nearly perfect.
As an atheist writer, it could be surprising to learn that when speaking about the writing of Crace’s masterpiece novel about the temptation of Christ, Quarantine a previous Archbishop of Canterbury proclaimed, “The grace of God was standing at your shoulder.” Crace mischievously responded by stating that it was more likely “the goblin of storytelling.” I have a feeling it may have been both. He is without doubt or discussion, a genius, no matter the source of his inspiration!
Not surprisingly for this author, eden is a profoundly humanist book, wrapped in myth and belief. Although those with a faith are shown limitations of this, the beauty of belief is also highlighted and the humans without the ‘knowledge’ of a god don’t get an easy ride either.
It is the challenges to faith and belief or lack thereof, raised by this vocal, life-long (but not strident) atheist that make his books wonderful. The author doesn’t just stamp on religion and declare you a fool if you have a faith, as many lesser writers may do, Crace highlights a tenet or creed and makes you reflect. As has always been the case with this author, he leaves enough space for the reader’s own thoughts and beliefs (atheist or theist) to be challenged but none will be denigrated, or for that matter, made to feel superior.
Eden is another beautiful, lyrical novel; full of wonder, shock and profound reflections all presented in a deceptively simple prose. I am loath to speak in any way against this novel as it possibly reflects my prejudice, rather than the author’s misrepresentation – he has not made any mistakes in what he has presented. And yet, I found the oversimplification of the idea of God and creation (and Eden) and the reliance on myth and tradition, rather than scripture, to reflect an image of God and creation that I just don’t recognise. However, I think this book can just as easily be read as a science fiction or future dystopian novel, rather than the more straightforward version that I have taken it for. Either way, it is another beautifully written fable that is also very nearly perfect.
July 7, 2023
The 'Eden' of the title is a place where immortal humans labour under the supervision of angels, who are beautiful and intimidating, but who have few powers other than the ability to fly and discipline the workers by pecking them with their powerful beaks. The society of Eden is one of moderate comfort and little danger, but that requires obedience to a series of strict rules, such as to avoid the area near its walls. The society is apparently ruled over by a lord that the head angel reports back to, but the lord never appears in the novel, raising the possibility that they do not exist.
Outside the garden are other human settlements, whose inhabitants lead difficult but freer lives, and who are mortal. The central plot of Eden occurs when one of its human inhabitants, Tabi, disappears, with the assumption that she has escaped into the outside world.
Eden is riven by political intrigue. One of its human inhabitants, Alum, works as a snitch to the angels, constantly informing on them and inferring wrong doing from scanty evidence. It is unclear how the hierarchy between the angels has come about, but it is very evident, with the lowest of them in low prestige positions, such as overseeing bodies of water. The significance of tiny actions in a closed society is very well depicted, with people turning up late or even glancing in the wrong direction having great significance when viewed by Alum.
Despite the Christian language used in the novel, the plot could be interpreted in a number of ways. Most straightforwardly, Eden could be considered a demonstration that eternal life would be undesirable even if it was possible. Alternatively, the book could be considered a satire of an institution such as the Catholic church, with the angels being the clergy, the leaders of which pretend to serve a god that does not exist. Many elements of the novel could be considered a critique of authoritarianism guised in religious terms, a celestial 1984.
In any case, although the characters are often somewhat generic, as necessitated by them living in a place where expression is severely limited, the novel is well observed and beautifully written, with several features, such as the angel's blue wings, being vivid and evocative. I read it quickly and thought that the pacing was good, despite most of the substantive events occurring near the end of novel. This is another fine, original work by the author.
Outside the garden are other human settlements, whose inhabitants lead difficult but freer lives, and who are mortal. The central plot of Eden occurs when one of its human inhabitants, Tabi, disappears, with the assumption that she has escaped into the outside world.
Eden is riven by political intrigue. One of its human inhabitants, Alum, works as a snitch to the angels, constantly informing on them and inferring wrong doing from scanty evidence. It is unclear how the hierarchy between the angels has come about, but it is very evident, with the lowest of them in low prestige positions, such as overseeing bodies of water. The significance of tiny actions in a closed society is very well depicted, with people turning up late or even glancing in the wrong direction having great significance when viewed by Alum.
Despite the Christian language used in the novel, the plot could be interpreted in a number of ways. Most straightforwardly, Eden could be considered a demonstration that eternal life would be undesirable even if it was possible. Alternatively, the book could be considered a satire of an institution such as the Catholic church, with the angels being the clergy, the leaders of which pretend to serve a god that does not exist. Many elements of the novel could be considered a critique of authoritarianism guised in religious terms, a celestial 1984.
In any case, although the characters are often somewhat generic, as necessitated by them living in a place where expression is severely limited, the novel is well observed and beautifully written, with several features, such as the angel's blue wings, being vivid and evocative. I read it quickly and thought that the pacing was good, despite most of the substantive events occurring near the end of novel. This is another fine, original work by the author.
December 21, 2022
An unsettling vision of Paradise
I have somehow, not discovered Crace till this book, so had no idea what to expect. As I understand it, he writes a kind of magic realism. The realism is very real, and there is the distinctly ‘odd’
Here, is a rather intriguing version of The Garden of Eden, more akin, as it begins to unspool, to some kind of police state, - or, perhaps a version of Iron Curtain, where myths and legends grow up on both sides of borders.
Adam and Eve are long gone, there transgressions done. Within the garden are 50 or so other humans, unchanging, here for eternity, never aging , never dying. They are ruled over by the angels. Who are distinctly odd.
Discover those angels for yourselves, I shall not name them here.
Society behind the high, impenetrable wall of Eden is bound by strict rules. There are hierarchies in the Edenic communal life. There are also, as well as political parallels with closed ideology states like North Korea, also clear and obvious parallels between religious fundamental societies, like Iran.
There are hierarchies too, of those strange angels. Not every one will directly speak to the lord who rules over all.
Some, both angelic and human, are more inclined to orthodoxy, and some to rebellion. And each society may contain those who play the system, betraying and victimizing whoever, whatever serves their own interests.
And so it is here.
Meanwhile ‘outside eden’ lies the fallen world, where death has entered in, where Adam and Eve were banished to, a long long time ago. And in THAT world, stories have grown up about the danger and awfulness, the monsters behind the high wall and battlements.
I found this a wonderfully unsettling read. My dropped star is because the ending felt like a slight let down. But then, maybe the losing of illusion always is, in some degree.
Crace writes stunningly, the narrative and characters wonderfully rich. At times I really didn’t want to read on, because a couple of the central characters, and a forming relationship, were so absorbing, and the obvious possibilities for betrayal and misunderstanding so clearly building
I have somehow, not discovered Crace till this book, so had no idea what to expect. As I understand it, he writes a kind of magic realism. The realism is very real, and there is the distinctly ‘odd’
Here, is a rather intriguing version of The Garden of Eden, more akin, as it begins to unspool, to some kind of police state, - or, perhaps a version of Iron Curtain, where myths and legends grow up on both sides of borders.
Adam and Eve are long gone, there transgressions done. Within the garden are 50 or so other humans, unchanging, here for eternity, never aging , never dying. They are ruled over by the angels. Who are distinctly odd.
Discover those angels for yourselves, I shall not name them here.
Society behind the high, impenetrable wall of Eden is bound by strict rules. There are hierarchies in the Edenic communal life. There are also, as well as political parallels with closed ideology states like North Korea, also clear and obvious parallels between religious fundamental societies, like Iran.
There are hierarchies too, of those strange angels. Not every one will directly speak to the lord who rules over all.
Some, both angelic and human, are more inclined to orthodoxy, and some to rebellion. And each society may contain those who play the system, betraying and victimizing whoever, whatever serves their own interests.
And so it is here.
Meanwhile ‘outside eden’ lies the fallen world, where death has entered in, where Adam and Eve were banished to, a long long time ago. And in THAT world, stories have grown up about the danger and awfulness, the monsters behind the high wall and battlements.
I found this a wonderfully unsettling read. My dropped star is because the ending felt like a slight let down. But then, maybe the losing of illusion always is, in some degree.
Crace writes stunningly, the narrative and characters wonderfully rich. At times I really didn’t want to read on, because a couple of the central characters, and a forming relationship, were so absorbing, and the obvious possibilities for betrayal and misunderstanding so clearly building
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