This Other Eden: A Novel
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3.9 • 90 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize
Finalist for the Chautauqua Prize
Finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction
Shortlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award
One of Barack Obama's 15 favorite books of 2023 • A New Yorker Best Books of 2023 • An NPR 2023 "Book We Love" Pick and Top 10 Book of 2023 • One of Time's 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 • One of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2023 and Best Historical Fiction of 2023 • A Chicago Public Library Favorite Book of 2023 • A Fresh Air Top 10 Best Book of 2023 • A Publishers Weekly Best Fiction of 2023
"A testament of love." —Danez Smith, New York Times Book Review
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Tinkers, a novel inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast.
In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.
During the tumultuous summer of 1912, Matthew Diamond, a retired, idealistic but prejudiced schoolteacher-turned-missionary, disrupts the community’s fragile balance through his efforts to educate its children. His presence attracts the attention of authorities on the mainland who, under the influence of the eugenics-thinking popular among progressives of the day, decide to forcibly evacuate the island, institutionalize its residents, and develop the island as a vacation destination. Beginning with a hurricane flood reminiscent of the story of Noah’s Ark, the novel ends with yet another Ark.
In prose of breathtaking beauty and power, Paul Harding brings to life an unforgettable cast of characters: Iris and Violet McDermott, sisters raising three orphaned Penobscot children; Theophilus and Candace Larks and their brood of vagabond children; the prophetic Zachary Hand to God Proverbs, a Civil War veteran who lives in a hollow tree; and more. A spellbinding story of resistance and survival, This Other Eden is an enduring testament to the struggle to preserve human dignity in the face of intolerance and injustice.
Customer Reviews
Beautiful Writing
I thought the story was hard to follow.
A Family Apart
Harding’s Novella is a perplexing, honest, and layered journey through a mixed race New England family. It explores through this family various themes including race and identity, family history, trauma, along with personal growth. The “Honey” family are an interesting choice of agents to play out these themes. Mostly because they lack agency in most cases. The themes of the book are represented by how events are acted upon the family rather than what they do.
Getting to these resolutions and plot developments is surprisingly challenging for a book this length. Harding uses a slow build up in pace and time jumping complexity to bring the reader along. You have to stay with it for the surprises and turns to arrive. Even then, it was lacking in many ways. The characters were two dimensional and served more as mile markers for the overall journey of a family.
The theme of family is perhaps the single most important one in this book. Broken families and generational trauma are the foundational elements on which all other events span from. Religion, race, and self discovery are the framing that contain the moral aspects of the book. They all come together to craft a story that depicts how nothing can remain pure and innocent forever. The world itself is corrupting just by existing in it.
Ultimately, I am neutral on this book. It’s not a must read nor would I avoid it. There is something redemptive in it if you don’t mind the pacing, inconsistent time & perspective switches, and flat characters. I would not call it hope but instead an acknowledgment of sorts. An acceptance in the fallibility and fragility of everything. Maybe there is peace in knowing that it’s a story as old as time.
Tragic story
Best thing about the book is it highlights a terrible and forgotten period in US history. But the book seems to veer from the historical issues to dwell on tangential episodes in an effort to develop a character plot.