The First Lady. No, seriously!

As you already know from my post about Marek Halter’s excellent novel, Sarah, I enjoy fictional depictions of the lives of well-known biblical (or historical, for that matter) figures. So I have returned to that category for my next read and was, once again, not let down. Here are the stats:

Title: Eve
Author: Elissa Elliott
Publisher: Bantam Books
Date: 2009
My start date: 5/5/10
My finish date: 5/30/10

So, you might be looking at those dates, noticing that this is the longest I have ever taken on a book, and wondering what is going on here. Don’t read anything into it. As I mentioned in my opening post, sometimes things just get really busy and I can’t read when I would like. This was honestly an excellent debut novel for Elliott and I would gladly read more by her.

Now, that being said, there were some challenges with this novel. Elliott took on a huge task when deciding to fictionalize the life of someone whom many around the world believe to be the very first woman ever. How can we, as modern readers, even comprehend how that would work? Elliott handles these challenges beautifully for the most part. However, if you are one of those types who will get easily offended when an author has to take a little bit of authorial license that might not jive with your reading of the religious texts, then move along to something else. I, however, think she does a great job handling questions that we all have if we really think about it. For example, when Cain is banished in the religious texts, he mentions fear that other people might hunt him. Yet if these were the first and only people created yet, which people is he fearing? Elliott handles this by speculating that, while they may have been the first creations, perhaps they weren’t they only creations and moves a village of “others” in down the street. This is just one of many examples of skillfully filling out a story that has a lot of holes, but if this offends you, like I said, it might not be your cup of tea.

There were a couple of aspects that I found uncomfortable, some which are inevitable and my fault, others which might have been smoother. In her story, in addition to Cain and Able, Adam and Eve have several other children of varying ages. The older children are constantly vying for the attentions of their siblings of the opposite sex, trying to decide with whom they will settle as mates. I often blanched at this aspect of the novel because they were siblings! However, if you are the only people as far as you know…of course you are going to marry your sister. This is no reflection on something Elliott could or should have done differently, but I did feel weird every time the siblings flirted. Just my modern day mentality at play!

Also, the story is told from several perspectives. At times the story is told by Eve, at others it is told by each of her three daughters. Eve and her middle daughter, Aya, tell their stories in the first person, while the other two daughters’ stories are told in third person. Despite the fact that each chapter is labeled with the name of who is telling that chapter, at times it got confusing. Perhaps there were too many perspectives or perhaps I was just tired. This was complicated by big shifts in time. One chapter would be in the “present” time of the story and then suddenly the story jumped into various points in the past, ranging from the times in The Garden through to times well into the future. When combined with the shifting perspectives, sometimes I got confused about what is when and where they are. Having finished the novel, I am not sure I would change the approach, but do be aware that it can get confusing.

Overall, I found the novel fascinating. Who hasn’t wondered what life would have been like in Eden or what it might have been like being the first family? Religious texts don’t give us much to go on and history leaves a lot of blanks. Elliott uses rich, descriptive writing to move a treasured origins legend from the distant and mythological realm into a place where we can understand and even identify with these mysterious figures. For a debut novel, I am impressed and look forward to seeing what else Elliott can do.

That’s it for now!
Keep Reading!

Sarah