Eve's Apple [Hardcover]

Jonathan Rosen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1997

This poignant story of a vulnerable young woman, her lover, and the devastating disease that both unites and threatens to destroy them offers a raw and sentimental journey into the dark world of hunger and denial. Eve's Apple is an unforgettable first novel, an intricate meditation on the nature of hunger--for food, for knowledge, and for love.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This novel is a psychological journey into the heart of Ruth Simon, a young woman struggling to overcome the eating disorder that nearly killed her in her teenage years and still haunts her in adulthood. Although Ruth has stopped starving herself, she is still hungry all the time. Told through the eyes and voice of her lover, Joseph, Eve's Apple is about the search for the elusive cause of Ruth's unrequited appetite, and about the essential nature of desire and longing that everyone experiences in one form or another.

From School Library Journal

YA. Joseph, a young man adrift in New York City, is anchored only by his love for the beautiful, enigmatic Ruth Simon. As a teenager, she almost starved herself to death and the simple act of eating still torments her. Joseph decides to save his bulimic girlfriend as he attempts to unravel the mystery of hunger and denial during hours of research in the reading room of the public library. In the process, he finds himself more and more obsessed with her illness. This poignant, sometimes funny first novel offers a meditation on hunger and longing: for food, for knowledge, and for love. By choosing Joseph as the protagonist of the novel, Rosen softens a dark subject by showing the couple's tender and unforgettable struggle. Readers also meet the brilliant Dr. Flek, a former psychoanalyst, who believes that the rise of civilization is based on its ability to tame food; Ruth's eccentric mother; and an array of delightful Russian immigrants and coworkers in the English language school where Joseph teaches. Thoughtful, mature young adults will enjoy this tale of the foibles of an enabler who learns the dangers of helping too much and finally triumphs by realizing the errors of his ways.?Pat Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 309 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (April 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679448160
• ISBN-13: 978-0679448167
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,600,758 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A striking debut, July 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Eve's Apple (Hardcover)

I have re-read this book many times, as it fascinates me for both personal and aesthetic reasons. Having endured 14 years as a bulimic/anorexic (recently recovered), I have found most fictional depictions of eating disorders to be shallow efforts that feed into the fallacious cultural stereotypes (the afflicted women are trying to revert to childhood; they are getting revenge on an inadequate/inattentive parent; etc.). Rosen's novel doesn't necessarily depart from some of these stereotypes-- its eating disordered heroine, Ruth, is an upper middle class product of an overbearing, narcissistic mother-- but its sensitivity and thoroughness is remarkably admirable. Rosen has clearly done his homework regarding the etiology of the disease, and there are stretches of writing which become a bravura performance; Joseph's interaction with the charismatic Dr. Flek, for example, and the way this leads to the revelation of Joseph's own obssession, are accomplished with an almost 19th-century precision. My one disappointment was Ruth, whose childlike neediness (alternated with thinly veiled hostility) bothered me; I would have preferred a depiction of a woman emotionally emancipated from her family and attempting to be stronger for her own sake, yet still, tragically, failing. Nevertheless, I recommend this book for all readers-- and especially those with a vested interest in the psychopathology of eating disorders and those whom eating disorders affect, both directly or peripherally.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars who IS Ruth?, January 10, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Eve's Apple (Paperback)

Although not bad, the book has a rather unfinished feel, in my opinion. I cannot get a clear sense of the characters, the author tried to create a complex personality in Ruth (as well as in the narrator), but the descripions end up scattered and lacking depth and bizarre. The narrator gives the impression of being really meek and insipid, he lacks any sort of career ambitions and spends time hanging around at home and being fascinated with the minutiae of his girlfriend's eating disorder. I do not think the author dealt enough, or particularly well, with the question of the boyfriend's fascination for Ruth's struggle with food. And Ruth ends up being portrayed as absolutely insufferable, it would be hard to find a more unsympathetic character. Also, what's up with the crippled psychologist guy, Rosen could have done so much more with that. The book is intriguing at times, but you have to pay for that with many slooooow pages as well as the ambiguous, unfinished characters.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a wonderful book..., October 1, 2004

By 

Felicia Sullivan (New York, ny United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eve's Apple: A Novel (Paperback)

Reviewed by Jennifer Leblanc for Small Spiral Notebook

The cover of the novel Eve's Apple shows the silhouette of a slim woman's body with a fingerprint pattern. Inside, Jonathan Rosen shows us that just as every fingerprint is different, so is ever anorexic's struggle with the disorder.

Ruth and Joseph are Columbia grads living together in New York. Ruth's mother, a self-involved film scholar, and her remarried, benefactor father have been absent from Ruth's life since sending her off to boarding school as a teenager, where her anorexia developed. Joseph, through whose eyes of love and rescue we see Ruth, is still fighting his own demon- the guilt of his sister's suicide that he believes he could've prevented. At first Joseph limits his involvement to watching Ruth's eating habits and reading her diary. When she begins binging and purging he delves deeper into the mystery of anorexia to be her personal savior. Instead of going to the source, Ruth, he goes to the library to read every book on eating disorders, however clinically or culturally dense they may be. But his research doesn't provide any answers for him- it only sparks more questions:

But why were women the shock troops in this war against human

nature? Were they more bound to reproductive nature and

therefore in more conspicuous revolt against it? And why, if

repressive Victorian society had forced submerged appetites into

unhealthy irruptions, did the sexual revolution of the 1960's in

America unleash even more cases of anorexia?

Dr. Flek, a friend of Ruth's mother and former psychoanalyst tries to lead Joseph to the truth, and back to Ruth. After Joseph gets lost in the emotionless theories, Flek tells him,

The language of food. The Primitive language that truly shapes us

and that we can never escape. That is the language you will have to

learn if you are going to understand her... learn the language of the

body. The language of blood and bone and appetite. The body is

our one great book.

After Ruth follows Joseph to the library and watches him research, she begins to trust him the way she never could with anyone else but always wanted. First she has to make Joseph see her again, not the disease, as he is still a frustrated, clueless outsider. Only Ruth can set him straight and tell him that when you are anorexic "You're not thinking. Your body's going Food Food Food, and your brain's going No No No."

At the heart of this book is a man who loves the inside and out of a woman who doesn't know how to love herself. Eating disorders remain a haunting mystery, even to those who are so close, but Rosen shows us that love never hurts.