Review of Eve a Novel of the First Woman by Elissa Elliott

Eve, the debut novel from Elissa Elliott, is a finely crafted tale of not only humankind’s first woman, but also her family and especially her daughters. Elliott creates her novel out of the bones of the biblical account of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1-4, but using her imagination and some thorough research on this era of human history, she fleshes out this story into a fascinating storyline, including a few twists that might take some readers by surprise. Take Eve’s daughters, for instance; although not mentioned in the scriptural account, Elliott imagines Eve to have had three daughters: Naava, Aya, and Dara, all of whom were younger than Cain and Abel, the most prominent of Adam and Eve’s children in the Genesis story. Elliott tells this story completely through the eyes of the women only. Giving us glimpses into each daughter’s perspective of the events of their lives, including their belief, or not, in Elohim (God).

Much of Eve’s chapters revolve around her relationship with Adam both before their fall from the Garden and after. This depiction of Adam and Eve’s marriage is indicative of the darkness that lurks just beneath the surface of this story, a darkness that bears the ring of truth for many readers. However, the story is not consumed by its darkness, as is most vividly seen in the trajectory of its main character. From the heights of life in Eden’s garden – where she sees and converses with Elohim her creator, and where she is one with her husband, Eve plunges into the turmoil of life after the fall: tense relations with her husband and her children, and doubt stemming from the evasiveness of Elohim. As the story draws to its close, however, she begins to find a sort of peace even in the fallen world.  In the book’s epilogue, Eve says:

I am at peace now. My hands and feet and eyes and heart see Elohim every day, maybe not in the way I expect, but He is there, waiting to be discovered. [Adam] and I had our differences, true, but after that heart breaking summer when Abel died we came together again, like many strands of rope plaited together, rendering it stronger, tougher. (407)

Elliott creates a world of deep and twisted brokenness, and yet one that is saturated with an even deeper hope.

Much of the dramatic tension in Eve is rooted in the relationships that Eve and Adam’s family have with the pagan tribe whose city is the family’s closest neighbor. The existence of this people might prove theologically troublesome to some readers, but Elliott takes the existence of other peoples as axiomatic, a helpful way to explain some of the difficult parts of the Genesis account that imply the possibility of other peoples – e.g. Cain’s taking of a wife, or the questions of who God was protecting Cain from when God cursed him for killing Abel. The idols of this pagan people, chief of whom was Inanna, prove tempting for Adam and Eve’s family, especially early on in the novel when they are acutely feeling the distance of Elohim. These gods are particularly tempting for Cain, who worships both Elohim and these pagan gods, in order to cover all his bases. The riches of the city, many of which have come in trade with other peoples, also prove tempting to the first family.

Through Eve’s occasional flashbacks to life in the Garden of Eden, Elliott covers the full story of Eve and Adam creating a rich context in which the doubt and struggles of their life in exile are made credible. At the end of one such flashback, Eve uses the analogy of a grafted tree to describe how she and Adam had been joined together and joined to Elohim. Of life outside the garden she concludes “I felt cut off from Adam, shorn from the main stem of our love [Elohim], and pruned so far back that any growth was impossible.” (67).

The fallen world in which Eve and her family live is one of both deep sorrow and great joy. In an eloquent flourish at the end of the book Elliott pens the following words spoken by Eve:
 

Belief is not always easy.

It is equal parts doubt and astonishment and gratitude and confusion.

And then you see how deeply colored the sky is, how the grass is so sharply fragrant, how the fields are a dazzling gold, and you have to step back and breathe in this wild fabulous world. We live in the space of abundant questions and inadequate answers. How else can we live?

Open your heart, and all the uncertainty fills it—the dimpled earth, the generous sky, the shaking flowers—all of it crowding into your grateful heart. Don’t you see?

Everything ordinary is extraordinary and points to one luminous thing, to a love that has already given its response. You have only to receive it (408).

Indeed, this world is the same one in which we live today, the world that has been passed down to us from Eve and Adam through many generations. I read a lot of historical fiction and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed this fleshing out of the original Genesis stories. I highly recommend you picking up a copy and entering the world of Eve and her family.