Book Review: "This Other Eden" by Paul Harding

“Eha had been bewildered by the woods. He was used to the openness of the island and the ocean and the sky. The huge quiet still trees seemed alive and as if they were conferring, about lofty old secrets a hundred feet above, secrets they’d been discussing for ages before he intruded and would continue to ponder for ages after he’d long been gone. Like the sea, the woods felt older than he could possibly imagine. Whereas he knew the sea, though, he knew nothing about the woods and felt his presence register with them as that of a stranger, trespassing.” - This Other Eden by Paul Harding

This book was nominated for the Booker Prize and honestly, I wavered for a long time about it. I meant to read it and then, I would look at the summary and decide I did not actually like it all that much and wasn't interested. I would then mean to read it again and then see that the average rating for it was three our of five, which meant it was not good enough to spend money on. Then I would mean to read it and actually start reading it - I got confused about what I was meant to be reading.

How did something so full of pretentious adjectives and so inconsistently written get nominated for the Booker Prize? It is not really a bad book by any means, but it really is not all that great either - I'm still wavering as you can tell.

But if I am going to be honest and open with you, the real reason I was even interested in the first place was because of the title's reference to the speech by John of Gaunt in Shakespeare's Richard II - I thought that was pretty cool and fit perfectly with the overall idea of the text.

Benjamin and Patience Honey settle on an island in the post-Civil War era of the 1790s. Unfortunately, by the storm of 1815, everything they build has been destroyed and six generations later, in 1911 - the descendants of that family tell a story of destitution, grief and terror. In this new community which includes the wise and powerful Esther Honey, the great-grandaughter of Benjamin and Patience, we meet a whole host of strange and bewildering characters who, as a result of their personal pains come across as strange, only to be forced from their homes to live in a land they know not of.

We have the neighbours who are Theophilius and Candace Larks - a family born from incest and sins who are raising three orphans. We have Zachary, a Civil War veteran who lived in an oak tree and Annie Parker, an old woman living alone. Matthew Diamond is a racist school master who ultimately tries to impart knowledge on people on the island. The chain of events that this causes finally leads to their eviction from their paradise, and they must move to a new strange land. Based on the true story of the eviction of the people of Malaga in 1911, this book serves as testament and warning to those who do not learn from mistakes of the past, misunderstandings of culture and people who try to impose their thoughts and ways on to you even if you do not live in the same cultural worlds.

One thing I did like about this book was the heavy atmospheres and descriptions. The storm of 1815 is so well-described and brilliantly written that I actually had to go back and read the scene again. It was poetic, terrifying and went with the whole feeling that the Romantics would create from the sublime.

However, the one thing I did not like about this book is that it seemed to pass from character to character very quickly and, unless we are talking about Zachary, I didn't feel like I really knew any of them all that well. It was like glossing over many stories and nothing about the characters was very in-depth past the Honey family.

All in all, I thought the book was a good example of great atmospheric fiction in the 21st century, but there seems to be still a bit of editing and cleaning up to do.