Pretty good book elaborates on the Good Book In Elissa Elliott’s debut novel, three fictional daughters help Eve recount the days leading up to their brother Abel’s murder. The story glides through the idyllic Garden of Eden and along the Euphrates, after God banishes Adam and Eve for eating fruit from a cursed tree. Historians might question an entire village co-existing with the world’s first family, and theologians won’t know where to begin—perhaps with evidence of sadness before man’s fall or a too-tangible God. But Eve is a re-imagination, not Genesis Vol. 2. It’s a soap opera of a novel (incest and all), the tragic story of a woman who loses control and her family’s subsequent unraveling.
Adam blames Eve for their hellish life. Eve feels distant from Adam, she can’t do right by her kids, and she regrets eating that God-damned fruit. Years after leaving, Eve replants seeds from Eden and says, “It could never be the Garden, but by then, we weren’t attempting to make it so.” And maybe that’s the point.