I’d never considered the idea that Adam and Eve weren’t the only humans to live in Eden - or how such a place might continue after they left.
This is that story - the community of humans, and the management of angels, within a walled Eden - and with the rest of the world (and all mortal humans) outside.

I was very happy to see Jim Crace release a new book. I have been reading his novels and stories since the mid 1980's.I partculary like A Gift of Stones and Signals of Distress. His writing is always interesting, provocative and lush.. This novel is set in the Garden of Eden sometime after the Fall. This Eden is no Shangri-La. It is basically a labour camp, you cannot go beyond the walls and the gardeners work hard looking after the plants, animals and the Angels and in return have immortality, shelter and food. It's all bit dull which causes a gardener called Tabi to start to wonder if life outside the wall is really as bad as she has been led to believe. One day the gardeners awake to find Tabi missing and a dead bird on the ground.

I thought the story would progress by following Tabi outside the wall whcih I would have loved but the action remains inside the garden exploring how the others who had relationships and contact with Tabi feel about her disappearance and their own lives. The prose as you would expect from Jim Crace is beautifully written. Aspects of the value of free will, liberty, power and the trade off between safety and pushing boundaries are explored but although there is much to admire I ultimately felt unsatified by the story which seemed to be too ruminative and didn't lead anywhere.

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.

The concept of the novel appealed to me from the start. A whimsical fanstastical garden of eden post Adam and Eve infamous exodus. The magical concept is complemented by equally whimsical writing style, poetic and descriptive. The ending also felt satisfactory, complimenting the story well. However, unfortunately, the great concept and writing is where the strong suits of the novel end.

The execution of this concept for me felt extremely slow. While this is understably not an action-packed novel, a very few things actually happened over its short course. Half of the novel was concentrated on analogies, descriptions or gushing over the 'escaped' character Tabi. While she was barely in the book, her presence was constantly brought up by the two other main characters, clearly infatuated by her. However, from their description, instead of a strong, independent, and interesting female character we could have seen, we get a maniac pixie dream girl, clearly written by a man.

The writing style, while beautiful, was tiring at times, where the character starts doing someting, and then it is paused for a string of methaphors so long, you alrready forgoten which character we are even talking about, let alone what he was planning to do in the first place.

Overall, while I can see how the novel can appeal to some audience, especially the authors' fans, it didn't hit the spot for me.

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.)

I absolutely loved this book. I am a long-time fan of Jim Crace's writing, and I was not disappointed with his new offering, a meditation on the myth of The Fall. Set in a strange - and yet confusingly familiar - world, where immortals toil daily to keep eden an orderly paradise, Crace asks us to ponder the nature of liberty, individuality and self-determination versus security, certainty... and boredom. The book can be read on many levels, and one of the great joys of Crace's books is his ability to fashion a place that is recognisable but definitely not of this world, using a lexicon of archaic and invented words to describe the flora and fauna, so that the atmosphere is slightly magical but not jarringly so. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys literary novels that are out of the ordinary, and would urge potential readers to explore Crace's back catalogue as well.

‘eden’ is another imaginative book from Jim Crace. The novel opens with the gardeners of eden being summoned to see the corpse of a bird (death is a rare occurrence) but it serves to remind them of what will happen if they set foot outside the boundary walls. This adds to the sense of unease there has been since Tabi, one of the gardeners, disappeared and if she isn’t found the angels, (portrayed as blue feathered birds), will be in trouble.
The gardeners who live in eden are immortal with an abundant supply of fresh food, (unless it’s a fasting day), but they do have a laborious and repetitive existence where any attempt to question the status quo is frowned upon and they have the same squabbles, private grudges and hierarchies that any community does.
Tabi had begun to question whether it was really as bad in the outside world as they’d been told.
Her friend Ebon and Jamin, the angel with the broken wing, miss her and want to find her but Alum the vindictive gardener, who is known as the go-between because he reports back
misdemeanours to the angels, wants to get to her first.
This sets off a chain of events that threatens eden’s peaceful existence.
Written in Jim Crace’s characteristic style, ‘eden’ is a book that makes you think. Deceptively simple it asks deeper questions including who has the power or right to make decisions and how do we know they’re in our best interests? Is it better to resist change rather than risk boundless uncertainties in the quest for truth? Also what happens when you begin to question everything you’ve every been told?

I think it’s a really good book and will happily recommend it.


Many thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for an ARC

Outside of paradise, what is an angel but a bird?

eden is an incredibly difficult book for me to review, because although I enjoyed it tremendously, I'm not sure I understood all the layers it had to offer.

The story centers around a woman named Tabi who has left eden - followed on the footsteps of Adam and Eve, and is in danger of being condemnded and shut out from eden forever.
But for most of the book Tabi is off the stage; instead we follow the people she has left behind. Ebon, the man she perhaps loves. Alum, the man who desires her and to whom her wishes are inconsequential. And the angel Jamin, who also loves her, although he is a bird and she a woman. Using the vaguely biblical setting and ideas as a springboard, Crace dives deeply into philosophical questions about loyalty and free will without ever having to pose them directly. Is obedience good, if it is blind? And is seeing better, if you walk into danger and perdition with seeing eyes?

Crace's eden is not a happy place, and the people living and toiling there are just as human as those living without its borders, except for the fact that they don't die. But what's the worth of immortality in the absence of goodness? And what does being good mean?

Beginning in the secluded, cloistered, narrow garden of eden, Crace carries the reader along in almost hypnotic, beautiful prose as the story inexorably unfolds towards its necessary end; each scene evolving organically from the one before.

I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys deep stories about what it means to be human (or not) packaged in a fast-moving narrative and spun into beautiful prose. I'm sure this is a book we will see on all the prize lists this year, even though or perhaps because it defies definition.

I want to thank NetGalley and Pan MacMillan for a free copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here expressed are my own.

"eden" is the third Jim Crace novel I have read - and I am a huge fan of his Booker shortlisted "Harvest" which I think should have won the prize that year. I also read but did not finish "Quarantine" - a part rewrite of a Bible story (which as a Christian I struggled to appreciate) and "eden" to me felt partly in the same category and partly a more allegorical read but without I found any real message I could uncover from the allegory.

Probably not a book for me - but one I intend to revisit at a later date

I am a bit of a newbie when it comes to the fantasy and mythology genre, but, I am widening my perspectives and so dar loving it. The author has done this brilliantly. The story is beautifully written, the characters come alive on the page, the settings pop and all characters have a believable voice. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

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.

eden, by Jim Crace, is set in that titular place - sometime after the fall, when a society has developed here. A society facings its own fall following the departure of Tabi. Like much of Crace's finest novels, this is a novel of deep thought and philosophy, almost reverant in its tone at times. For me Crace is a writer you have to submit to, and allow yourself to become submerged in his world, his tone and his style. He is an incredibly distinctive writer.

The story here is relatively simple, but the emotional and intellectual heft makes it something deeper and far richer. This is a highly recommend read from me.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

Another fantastic novel by Jim Crace.
Somehow Jim selects a simple idea and writes something about that idea in a way no-one has ever considered.
This time it is the Garden of Eden, but not as you would know it.
The characters are not only believable, but the reader is bound to feel that they know most of them.

The story is complex but told simply.

If you only read one novel this year chose this one.

Gripping, Believable, 'Historical' 'Modern'

Thank you for a great read.

My thanks to the publisher for an advanced copy for honest review.

‘eden’ – the lack of a capital letter perhaps signifying an everyday state of being rather than the Biblical place of perfection – is where the gardeners tend the produce in return for physical comfort, peaceful existence and everlasting life, overseen by angels depicted as luminescent, enormous blue birds. They, in return, report to ‘the lord’, never seen or heard.
When Tabi, a gardener with just a little more sense of self than her peers, decides to break free, order is threatened and the world outside the garden walls becomes a little more tangible. Tabi learns that whilst she misses the security of her former way of life, ‘… there are richer feasts outside. There is the feast of knowing she is free, the feast of sleeping on her own … the feast of laziness.’ Meanwhile, her friend, Ebon, is desperate to rescue her from ‘beyond the walls’ before she is banished for ever, like the possibly apocryphal Adam and Eve. Through his new-found courage, he begins to understand the complexities of free will.
As in ‘Quarantine’, one of Crace’s earliest novels, the author takes a Biblical story and subverts it to explore elements of the human condition. One could argue that from his atheistic viewpoint, the Eden story is reductive yet Crace’s exploration of the importance of individualism, the human desire for challenge and the inevitability of managing conflict are important themes. He also celebrates our capacity for optimism. At the end of the novel, Tabi acknowledges that ‘…she will decide how to live and die in hope. As everyone must.’
A writer who effortlessly takes the reader to different worlds and introduces us to all manner of plausible characters, Crace’s novels are always satisfyingly provocative. Not just for its lower-case title, ‘eden’ is no different.
My thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan, Picador for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

"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.