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THE GARDEN by Elsie V. Aidinoff

THE GARDEN

by Elsie V. Aidinoff

Pub Date: May 1st, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-055605-6
Publisher: HarperCollins

This fleshy retelling of the Garden of Eden story, told from Eve’s perspective, includes an abusively arrogant God and a color-changing Serpent representing wisdom. Eve awakens into consciousness one day with the Serpent coiled around her body. It raises her and lives with her. The deathless, non-carnivorous Garden is lush with fruit and flowers; Eve’s happy until God forces Adam to rape her. Towards her recovery, the Serpent helps her travel secretly outside the Garden, seeing parts of nature that have grown beyond God’s control. Her mind, too, grows beyond God’s insistence that “it’s not good for you to think!” It may trouble readers (though it doesn’t trouble Eve) when the teacher/mentor Serpent becomes her lover. Caught between novel and allegory, this will challenge those who’ve never questioned biblical values, but it lacks the sparkle of Julius Lester’s When the Beginning Began (1999) (author’s note) (Fiction. YA)