Book of the Week: Eve

This week I read “Eve: A Novel of the First Woman” by Elissa Elliott.

I had actually read this once a few years ago, but didn’t really remember much about it besides the basic plot, which I could never forget because I’ve known it since I was a tiny tot in Sunday School.

“Eve” essentially chronicles the story told in Genesis, from the point Adam and Eve were created through the day that Cain murdered Abel, through the eyes of Eve. This as a general concept for a novel was very intriguing to me, so I gave it a try.

Elliott certainly did take a lot of artistic liberties with this story, especially by creating a massive brood of children for Adam and Eve beyond Cain and Abel, including three daughters. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that they had daughters, but Elliott is not really suggesting that she believes that to be true – it’s simply part of the fictional story she is creating. She’s not going for accuracy so much as she is going for provoking thought about faith. And that’s why I like this book.

Keeping faith is a struggle for the entire family in this book – Eve continues to be bitter after God banished her and Adam from the Garden, and all of the children struggle to believe in a God that they have never seen or heard, despite what their parents tell them. Elliott also creates a nearby city full of other people (where they came from, I have no idea) who are idolatrous and have a negative influence on some of the family, causing them to pull away from God.

Obviously, with the death of Abel and the disgraced Cain leaving home forever, the book doesn’t exactly end on a happy note, but the book overall is interesting, well-written, and is  beautiful, poetic food for thought. I’ll leave you with two quotes:

At one point, Eve asks:

“Let me inquire of you: Have you ever felt an urgent pressing feeling underneath your breastbone, right there in the middle of your chest, whispering to you that something in your life is missing? That there is something out there that will fill it and make it whole again? And then, in an unexpected moment, you behold the plains opening up after a rain, in every imaginable color under the sun, and you are simply astonished that it could be so. You have to close your eyes; the splendor of it is too much to take in. Or am I alone in this?”

The final, beautiful paragraph of the book reads:

“Belief is not always easy.

It is equal parts doubt and astonishment and gratitude and confusion.

And then you see how deeply colored the sky is, how the grass is so sharply fragrant, how the fields are a dazzling gold, and you have to step back and breathe in this wild fabulous world. We live in the space of abundant questions and inadequate answers. How else can we live?

Open your heart, and all the uncertainty fills it – the dimpled earth, the generous sky, the shaking flowers – all of it crowding into your grateful heart. Don’t you see?

Everything ordinary is extraordinary and points to one luminous thing, to a love that has already given its response. You have only to receive it.”