Eve Green: A Novel - Softcover

Fletcher, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393327981 ISBN 13: 9780393327984

Publisher: W. W. Norton, 2005

Synopsis

Winner of the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award.

"Susan Fletcher's first novel . . . is one of those lyrical books about childhood in which the physical details―the sights, the smells―take on a vividness that's entrancing."―Polly Shulman, New York Times Book Review "Readers who like to plumb the depths of loss and its counterpart―the joy of living―would do well to pick up [Eve Green]."―Jessica Treadway, Chicago Tribune

After her young mother's sudden death eight-year-old Eve is sent to live with her grandparents in rural Wales. In this unfamiliar world, she is told stories about her relatives but is forbidden to ask about her father, an Irish thief who abandoned her mother. When an older girl in town disappears, Eve is drawn into the longstanding secrets and suspicions of her town. A rare page turner, Eve Green is a dramatic story about a grievous error of judgment.

About this title

About the Author

Susan Fletcher is the author of Eve Green, which won the Whitbread Award for First Novel, Oystercatchers, and The Highland Witch. She lives in the United Kingdom.

From Publishers Weekly

A pregnant young woman reflects on her childhood in a tight-knit Wales community in Fletcher's debut, a novel rich—sometimes too rich—in melancholic, misty atmosphere and poetic poignancy. When Eve's mother dies unexpectedly, the seven-year-old is sent to live with her loving, hard-working grandparents. She devours stories about distant relatives, but is forbidden to ask about her father, an Irish thief who deserted her mother; her only knowledge of him comes from her mother's heartfelt diaries ("In the rain K's hair looks like feathers"). Fletcher is a gifted writer—her turn on loss ("[it] billowed out before me, snapping at itself and pulling me with it, streaming out over the sheep hills like a funeral flag...") is especially lovely—but the novel often feels overwrought. When a local girl, Rosie, disappears, Eve is dragged into the town's snarled relations in familiar ways, with familiar characters. (Fletcher's debt to Harper Lee includes Billy Macklin, a deformed man ostracized after a head injury that supposedly made him insane, and who is revealed to be gentle and kind.) The dreamy emotionality of the prose takes away from the book's more subtle and singular scenes, such as the awkward, bewitching meeting of Eve and Rosie, child rivals for an older man's love. Such moments—stark, troubling and unresolved—are too rare in a novel about devotion and guilt.
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0393327981
• ISBN 13: 9780393327984
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300