I've read Jim Crace before so thought I'd give this one a chance. Unfortunately, it didn't do anything for me and while the prose/writing itself was good I just found the story quite unexciting.

DNFd at around 30% which I think is a fair place to discover it wasn't for me.

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.

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

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.

Eden by Jim Crace. This is set in the garden of Eden shockingly and things are not going too well in there. It starts with a dead body and things don’t get anymore rosy. It wasn’t the most gripping book I’ve ever read and it’s very predictable. It all gets a bit North Korea with the people inside the garden hearing about the outside world and wanting a look. It’s short, a good thing, but it’s not well written, a bad thing. My take away from this is don’t live in North Korea or something?

Trouble has come to the garden. Its inhabitants live an eternal and unblemished life, tending to the bountiful fields, orchards and lakes, and serving their angelic masters. But now one of the gardeners has escaped, breaching the walls and making her way into the world beyond; a land of poverty, sickness and death - as well as liberty. The angels know there are those who would go to the ends of the earth to find her. Perhaps another fall is coming . . .
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I enjoyed the writing style in Eden, very descriptive with beautiful passages setting the scene - a must for The Garden... but overall the story just lacked something for me. Perhaps I was lost in the beauty of it all, but I found the storyline that ran through comfortably predictable. Maybe this says more about me as a huge Paradise Lost fan, but just needed a bit more bite to give it that elusive 5 stars. My first read from this author.

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.

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.

Jim Crace is Britain’s foremost fable-maker, and Eden represents another stellar addition to a canon that encompasses the Stone Age, the Palastine of 2000 years ago and a dystopian future. The titular Eden is the Garden, tended by a group of humans granted eternal life long after the expulsion of Adam and Eve, and watched over by bird-like angels. Crace’s three principal human characters represent moral, if not spiritual positions: the questioning Tabi, the accepting Ebon, and the equivocal and self-serving Alum. The power of the novel comes from the juxtraposition, and ultimately collision, between the eternal aspect of Eden and heaven, and the all-too human desires and behaviours of its inhabitants. Beyond the walls of Eden lie the forbidden world of mortal human beings, and Tabi’s disappearance provokes a crisis between the protagonists, between humans and angels, and ultimately between Eden and the world outside. If the Garden of Eden is the original Utopia, Crace’s measured prose subjects it to a rigorous rational examination that concludes that walls, even those built by God, can only be provisional when set against human desire for freedom. It’s not perhaps the Crace to start with (I’d recommend Being Dead or Quarantine), the pace is measured, the ending could be seen as rushed, but it’s a powerful and sparse work that sits alongside his best.

A fable of an eden, so that our narrative starts in a timeless present, although the seasons turn.
A labourer, Tabi, has disappeared, presumed to have escaped from eternal life to the surrounding mortal world. Ebon, her closest friend in this chaste world, wonders at her bravery in escaping, wonders why she had not confided in him, and considers whether he might have the courage to leave eden, whilst burying a mortal bird that has died in the garden.
The labourers are called to a holier pavilion after their evening meal to be lectured by one of the angels. Movement in the unseen heights of the building prompt the labourers to think that the lord might be present to observe their lecture, whilst the angel fears critical review by a more senior angel.
In the garden, Ebon is watched by Alum, the informer to the angels who supervise the labourers. Alum is separate from the labourers, shunned, alone.
I found the characters unsympathetic and the story unengaging, remote. It was difficult to motivate myself to keep reading, never a good sign, and so about one third of the way into the book (chapter 7) I gave up, which is unusual for me.

I received a Netgalley copy of this book, but this review is my honest opinion.

It’s been several days since I finished “eden”, and I’ve spent quite some time wondering whether the author was writing a fantasy or a mythology, or what! In the end, I’ve decided that it doesn’t really matter to me what Jim Crace was aiming to write, what matters to me is what I understood, and what I got out of the book.

To start with, this beautifully written novel reminded me a little of the first two books of Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, in that the action is mainly restricted to a well-guarded, enclosed location. Here, 50 or so mostly passive, ageless people are strictly ruled by a clique of bird-like angels appointed by a celestial supreme being. However, as I read further, I noticed so many parallels with totalitarian regimes (for example, unquestioning citizens, misinformation, spying on neighbours, a small group of “haves” controlling resources) that I found I was reading this work as an allegory.

Whatever it is, I shall return to this very satisfying, thought-provoking novel, preferably in the company of fellow-readers in a book group.

🍃 Eden by Jim Crace 🍃

I’m really sorry but I did not enjoy this one. The language and imagery were beautiful but I felt like the pacing was quite slow and I did not feel attached to the characters.

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.

An interesting read that played on the garden of eden but also gave an orignal spin on the story. Well written with an engaging storyline and well developed characters.

Eden or the story of yet another woman bringing down the paradise that The Garden of Eden is suppose to be!

Very poetic writing that doesn't make up for a rather boring story. I keep wondering what's the point of going over the very old debate if Eden is indeed a paradise or rather just another little place where you can be comfortable without much excitement and a tone of rules to follow, without bringing anything new to the discussion?! Maybe this will work for someone who only just now is starting to wonder about biblical issues or questioning his/her religious belief but for someone like myself this is only ever going to be a boring read. Sorry!

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

This is a story of Eden where all should live the dream life: no strife, and surrounded by loveliness. Yet one day the inhabitants find a dead bird and, since there is no sickness or poverty in Eden there is much puzzlement. Is this a sign? Is this a warning?

Tabi, a woman living in Eden has decided to leave despite all the benefits. The angels fear that others will follow. So they need to find her. Could this be another Adam and Eve story? And all that
portends.

The writing in this novel is luscious, just like the setting. But you can have too much of a good thing and I found I was feeling a bit drowned by words at some points. I think there will be readers out there who love this style though. And there is a live story of sorts to enjoy.

I read a copy provided by NetGalley and the publishers Picador/Pan McMillan but the opinions are my own.

A quirky, imaginative and memorable meditation on mortality, beautifully written, delightfully paced and totally thought-provoking. What is it to be human and what drives our lives? The community of eden is on the face of it a haven from the real world with plenty to eat and no disease or death. But that isn't enough to keep one resident within it's walls, and when one leaves, consequences or all follow. A strange and mystical story with depths to consider long after reading.

Ive read a number of Jim Crace's books and admire him as a writer as they are always genre defying and thought provoking. This particular one considers what happened to the other inhabitants of the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were expelled. An interesting concept in itself as I'd never thought about there being any other inhabitants, or angels being big blue birds. The huge universal themes of free will, liberty, love, starvation, life and death are among those dissected in Crace's beautiful prose, and kept me turning the pages. Sadly, however, by the end I found it quite unsatisfying and the story hadn't really led anywhere.
Thank you to netgalley and Pan Macmillan for an advance copy of this book

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.