Eve
The fate of the first woman after her banishment from Eden is the focus of B. K. O’Connor’s transcendent novel Eve.
In the verdant, fertile glades of Eden, God creates Adam. When Adam aches for a companion to share in his paradise, God creates Eve from Adam’s rib while he slumbers. Adam introduces Eve to the world they could share for eternity, his happiness complete. Eve, however, has questions. When she learns there is one tree in the garden that they cannot eat from, her hunger for knowledge seals both of their fates. What follows is a struggle to survive in a new world of hunger, thirst, pain, and sin. Despite the consequences of her choice, Eve never stops seeking knowledge, and God and Lucifer observe her in wonder.
The fall is the beginning of an odyssey that takes Adam and Eve into a world of betrayal and disillusionment. The distance between them grows. There are unorthodox surprises in this telling, though, which include a poignant yet unlikely attraction between Eve and Lucifer, God’s fallen angel. Eve reveals that her hunger for knowledge did not end in Eden, and her work to chart the known world will be the completion of the act she began there.
Interspersed with Eve’s experiences are ongoing conversations between gods, goddesses, archangels, and pining Lucifer. All engage in long-form philosophical questioning with themselves and each other. Their disquisitions are delicious at first, though some extend too long, and repetitiveness occurs. As Eve increases her knowledge, she comes near to glowing godhood herself—a narrative reinterpretation that elevates women’s agency, going beyond Eve’s “curse” to explain how she blesses the world to follow.
Eve is a lush, resonant novel that reimagines Eve’s wandering quest for the answers of existence.
Reviewed by
Peggy Kurkowski
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
