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.
