Customer Reviews

Eden

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Olympia Vernon has certainly marked her space on the map with Eden. The entire book sings like music. Every line, every chapter is indelible--like an ongoing paean that praises and celebrates life, love, loss, forgiveness, death, God, pain, nature, disease and the awe of body--the physical journeys it takes. I found the language as bare-boned as Hemingway. Quick, clean, sharp and vivid. Even cancer resonates as a "character" in the novel. I was enamored with the simplest "sharing" in the book and that was Maddy. Though a rift eases in between two sisters, Faye and Aunt Pip, the child is still allowed to go to her aunt. Could that in some manner be a gesture of forgiveness? The one and only frail part about the novel is plot. However, the characters, structure, language, magical-realism and overall theme of the work deems it all the more rich. I hope this young author continues to contribute good, qualified, "seriously imaginative" literature to the African-American canon. I think she will keep the map strong. Highly recommended!!

I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up the debut novel by new author Olympia Vernon. The title suggested to me that I was beginning a story about the concept of Eden, a place where old age ceases, evil is nonexistent, and a place of abundance. Quite the opposite was true.

Maddy Dangerfield, a fourteen-year old with the weight of the world on her shoulders, lives in a place that defies Eden and all of its niceties. Maddy's mother, Faye, sends her to care for her Aunt Pip, Mama Faye's outcast sister. Pip suffers from breast cancer and the loss of her breast. Maddy learns much from Pip, and this stop in her journey to adulthood takes on an important role.

There was a strong theme of missing pieces in the novel, beginning with Maddy's father Chevrolet, who was missing his arm, and ending with Maddy herself, and all of the losses she incurred. The writing spoke to me in hushed voices, Vernon allowing her words and lyricism to come to the forefront. You won't find a largely plot-driven novel in Eden, as the author allows focus to remain on her characters and their losses. A symbolic tale of coming of age and coming to grips, this was a fantastic debut...

Eden truly touched me from beginning to end. Each time I picked it up to read, I didn't want to put it down. I wanted to know the characters personally, sit down and talk to them or just watch them live their lives. I felt close to them like they were taken from my past and I was now witnessing the continuing saga of their lives. The words are beautifully written. Fresh, smooth, easily digested words, phrases, references, connected me with the author. I loved that every time I read a page I could see it as if I were standing their watching. Reading Eden gives you a taste of Southern black culture that is not often seen and will have you wanting more.

Being a native of Pike.... Pyke County I'd have to say this book really hit "home". Eden is a wonderful piece of literature. Eden has power between its pages. Powerful would be an understatement when describing this book. While submerged in Eden I experienced a WIDE range of emotions. Humor- when Aunt Pip and Fat sat around "shootin' the breeze" enjoying their feel-goods. Fear- when Chevorlet contemplated shooting the mutt, before Jesus drove up. Sadness- When Willie died/ or was he killed?
Eden is an artwork that should get it's due respect, it's proper accolades, and the author Olmpia Vernon (whom I consider the Zora Neal Hurston of this new millenium) should be given national attention for creating Eden at a time when all of us need it the most!

Eden is one of those few literary works that consistently holds your attention from the first page to the last page. The imagery conveyed in this novel makes you feel like you are actually experiencing Maddy's evolution, from the stereotypical societal notions of "being a woman" to accepting womanhood and femininity on her own terms. Already wise beyond her years, she evolves from the intelligent child to the enlightened "young woman," who's changed view of the world results in a new found "realism" that causes her to reevaluate the accepted roles of sex, race, and religion in the world of Pyke County. This is an excellent read and I highly recommend it.

While reading Eden, I could hear Olympia Vernon's voice through her style, tuning every word like an instrument. I see strength in these characters. It is what they find their strength in that is different; this is a place that haunts them, hurts them or may heal them. Each character needs to find strength just to get by in their life walk. We can spy on them through Maddy; she is in the midst of adolescence, finding her own areas of strength to get by. She is growing up by visualizing and feeling the gut revelations that we all learn from family. Through watching the lives of those around her, Maddy sees that love, strength and truth do not always exist together in the same places. It is such a real to life revelation how family teaches us disappointment. There is also a strong sense of longing throughout Eden. Pip displays this longing. I love her name; it is like a flashback to how she used to be lively and exciting. She was once a free spirited beauty who found her strength in men. This caused her to betray her own sister Faye, and so she must live and die as an outcast from her family. What was once strength in her life cheated her by giving her loneliness. Mama Faye finds her strength in Jesus. This helps her function as a savior to her family. She needs His strength to overcome her husband's ways and heal the past hurt of betrayal. Chevrolet seems to find his strength in avoiding mama's Jesus. He gets messed up in the Jesus of the world, who seems to always be after him. He gambles with Jesus so much that his life is always on the line. Eden is a peek into rural southern living, filled with mystery and anticipation.

Eden was awesome. Ms. Vernon's use of words was amazing. The characters were alive and colorful. I didn't want to put it down! While reading Eden, I often wondered what could have been going through the author's mind. Ms. Vernon wrote with so much power and feeling. Eden definitely has energy. It left me speechless and wanting more.

'Eden' is the best novel anyone's written in a long time. Like many good first novels, it sits bravely on top of the thing that is out of whack in the universe, the flaw that must have been there at the Big Bang and expanded outward at the speed of light. But 'Eden' stands the whole mess on its head when it whispers in a young girl's voice, 'I am not afraid.' This novel transmutes the pain of a kid's hard luck family into a prose poetry we haven't heard since the the novels of the 1930s. I kept thinking of Henry Miller. Why? Maybe because young Olympia Vernon is fearless, as was Miller; and maybe because she perfects something almost unheard of in America: an authentic rather than fake Harvard or Yale working class voice. The novel is so perfectly the thing that it is, and so different, that it sent me scurrying to reread 'Tropic of Cancer;' both hum a great symphony right out of the bloodstream and the womb; and both novels shock with blood and sex and yet somehow ineffably distill a wondering light from what a lesser writer would report only as a scary darkness. And both are unforgetable.

Poetry and prose. This is one the best writers. She makes words proud to be a part of her art. The story feels real, it is as if you're there seeing and experiencing everything that unfolds. I can't wait to read more form Ms. Vernon.

The energy from Eden emerged from the pages and through my spirit. Being a native from Jackson, Mississippi, I have once seen the life of Maddy Dangerfield. Vernon's prolific writing style has touched me like no other author. The birth of Eden has giving the life of reading a new meaning.