6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eden and Honor, November 5, 2001
I have all of the Eden books and have read them several times. These books are the reason I have read the rest of her novels. Eden and Honor is the last generation of Edens that Ms. Harris said she was going to write about and I hate that because they are such good stories. I would suggest them to anyone that likes historical fiction.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I have read all seven of the Eden books, April 17, 2002
This review is from: Eden and Honor (Paperback)
Eden and Honor least favorite. The Prince of Eden got me started
I love you Mrs Harris,for such great reading.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eden and Honor, January 20, 2011
This review is from: Eden and Honor (Paperback)
I read each of Harris' novels in order. I think her very best one was Eden and Honor -- her last one.
Eden and Honor more than any of the rest of the Eden series exposes a side of Harris that we do not really suspect except in John's adventure in the Crimea in an earlier novel. Harris hates war. In her mind there is nothing more destructive than war and her point in "killing everyone off" a criticism I once read on this book is that everyone is devastated by war. Everyone. No one survives it.
The women are most affected, because they must send husbands and sons to fight something they barely understand. They must do it because the men themselves are so determined to engage in it. Harris is enraged by the stupidity of males and her anger is clear throughout this novel. No one survives. That's her point. If men do come back, they're like Geoffrey, damaged beyond rehabilitation. If they are "peace-niks," like Alex, they are destroyed for nothing more than their opinion. Ms. Harris likely opposed the Viet Nam war and because she lives where she does, she likely saw the results of men coming back. These men were not appreciated. They were not treated as heroes. They let America down. Geoffrey was not talking about the Boer war, in my opinion; he was talking pointedly about Viet Nam: any veteran of any war but particularly Viet Nam could speak his bitterness and sense of betrayal.
Much has been made of John and his misuse of power and his slimy determination to control things that he had no real power over. That too is typical of Harris who believes that women have to stand up to John, no matter what it costs. She does not think John can be rehabilitated and she says so through Susan. When Susan finally does stand up to the diseased presence of Geoffrey and the overbearing complex stupidity of John, it is far too late. Her destruction of the symbol of the glorification of war and male dominance comes when Harris feels there is nothing left to say, and little that she can offer us.
Ms. Harris leaves us an unspeakable irony; she closes Eden with a disaster that has to have rivaled the original Eden. No wonder she wrote nothing more about it. What else could she say?
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