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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too, October 10, 2007
This review is from: The Garden of Eve (Hardcover)
Evie's mother used to make up stories for her. They were magical, beautiful, and so terribly missed when her mother died. Evie is miserable without her mother, and her father decides to sell the home their family had once shared and move onto an apple orchard. That only makes life more miserable for Evie.
The apple orchard is grey, the trees are all dead, and they haven't produced fruit in years. Evie's father is busy beyond belief working in the orchard. That leaves Evie with endless hours of time alone. In the cemetery she meets a boy who tells her his name is Alex. Except Alex is the little boy from their new town who died. His gravestone is right there.
Evie begins to spend more and more time with Alex. She also receives a mysterious seed that grows into a tree overnight. And that tree produces apples. Apples that, when bitten, take Evie and Alex to a magical place--lush plants and life are everywhere. It's exactly like the town they live in now, except everything is beautiful. Plants are growing everywhere. Father's orchard is growing well; beautiful curtains are on her house. It is the way it would be if her mother lived there.
Is this the place where her mother told her she'd meet her? She said that after she died, she'd wait for Evie in a beautiful garden. Evie had given up on all of that magic and nonsense. But, maybe, just maybe, she'll find her mother. But why does Alex keep running around? What is it that he's looking for so desperately? And won't her father be worried about her?
Should she stay in this beautiful place? Should she go back? Is this where Alex is supposed to stay? Should she leave without him?
It's difficult to explain the complexity of THE GARDEN OF EVE. It is beautiful, painful, and I wasn't even able to convey the suspense and surprises that fill the pages without giving away too much of the story. This book is sad. It is hopeful. It is magical. This will be another award-winner for the author, K. L. Going.
Reviewed by: Dianna Geers
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Garden of eve, December 11, 2007
A Kid's Review
This review is from: The Garden of Eve (Hardcover)
The author of my book is K.L Going, the title is The Garden Of
Eve. I think the book should fall under the category of being a
fantasy fiction.
The story starts out in Michigan with a father and a daughter who
have just lost his wife, and mother. They move to Beaumont new
York, and move into a knew house. The house is beside a
cemetery and an apple orchard. That is one reason why they
moved, so the father could be a apple farmer. Evie, the daughter,
keeps seeing a boy in the cemetery and she is the only one that can
see him. The boy had just died so she thinks. The townspeople
believe the orchard is cursed. They think this because a guy named
Rodney is buried in it. Rodney gives Evie a seed, but he said to not
plant the seed. Maggie ( Rodney's sister) gives Evie the seed
because Rodney is dead. The story continues into a place that she
and her friend named Alex go when they plant the seed that she
received from Maggie.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Allegorical Apples, January 30, 2008
This review is from: The Garden of Eve (Hardcover)
Dead mothers are always a good plot device. There is nothing like the absence of a mother to create a suitable amount of angst, heartache, uncertainty, and self-doubt. Think of the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, where the first couple of books in the series are driven by the fact that pre-teen Alice is growing up without a mother, surrounded by men in her family, and suffers the nagging fear that she is not approaching the formative years of her life with due female influence. And more recently we have had the mother-less Bee from Being Bee, and Jack from The Night Tourist. Now there is Evie Adler in K.L. Going's The Garden of Eve. Her mother is ten months dead from cancer, and Evie is left with her botanist father who has never appreciated--or even understood--magic the way her mother did. He is too much of a scientist to put much stock in fairy tales, or stories in general. When he takes on the job of trying to revive a dead apple orchard in Beaumont, New York, far from their Michigan home, Evie is resentful. They move into a house right next door to a cemetery--but the only cemetery Evie cares about is the one back in Michigan, where her mother is buried. Her father devotes his time to the orchard--but all Evie can think of is the magic garden she used to plan with her mother, a perfect garden with magnificent trees and noble beasts where the three of them would always be together. When Evie is given a seed supposedly from the Garden of Eden, Evie thinks she has her chance to find that perfect garden, and consequently find her mother, too.
There is a lot going on in this book, some of it allegorical and some of it just old fashioned mystery. There is the boy Alex, whom Evie meets hanging around in the cemetery. Is he really dead, as he claims to be? Is the orchard where Evie's father toils really cursed, or has it simply been abandoned? When Evie plants her seed and enters the magical garden--by way of eating an apple, of course!--is she in Eden or is it a trap? There is another Eve who grew up in Beaumont and disappeared many, many years ago. What happened to her? And will Evie find peace after the death of her mother?
Some of the pieces in the book are tied together a little bit too neatly, but for the most part this is an engaging and thoughtful book. Evie is disillusioned without being broken. The father is pragmatically devoted to his work but all open-hearted and open-minded business when Evie needs him most. The supporting characters range from saintly (the dead mother)to utterly convincing (Alex). Readers who like their books with magic and symbolism will enjoy this.
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