Havah: The Story of Eve/A Novel by Tosca Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a beautifully-written story of the first woman, for believers, and a fictional exploration of the fall of man. The point of view is Havah’s (Eve), and it’s a fascinating tale of love, innocence, ease and worship of The One in the garden that turns sour as soon as the lovely serpent starts questioning things.
The guilt lies heavily on both Havah and the adam (Adam) after the first couple is evicted and the garden and its inhabitants are destroyed, but she always has hope that they will be able to return someday. That hope keeps her afloat through her hundreds of years of life, learning to live in a hostile world, having many children and watching them grow and multiply, and the devastating consequences of her oldest son’s fratricide.
Although I did question the way she and her children suddenly seemed to know how to weave, throw pots, farm, and do various other skills, literal Christians will undoubtedly attribute this to God’s help. These were not ordinary people, after all, but the first people. This story made me wonder how God felt about the fall, and how disappointed he was.
In any case, the writing was very elegant, and the characters arresting and diverse. The ending was very satisfying, too.
My main problem was the ebook format — it was poorly done. I read this book in the Kindle format. For instance, many of the paragraphs did not include an indent to indicate a new paragraph. Chapter headings were a mix of capital and lower case letters. Since I do this for a living, I can’t help but be dismayed by how a wonderful book like this can be so badly converted. Please, Ms. Lee, ask the publisher or editor to do it correctly!
This ebook was provided free of charge for review by NetGalley
© Jan McClintock of We Need More Shelves