15 reviews

challenging reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

Content Warnings

challenging emotional reflective tense slow-paced

3.0

Content Warnings

emotional sad slow-paced

3.5

Content Warnings

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

This Other Eden tells the story of a community on Apple Island and its eventual destruction. It is inspired by actual events. In 1792 a formerly enslaved man and his Irish born wife set up home on a small island just off the coast of Maine, and begin to establish an apple orchard. Over a hundred years later their descendants remain, along with some newer arrivals, ekeing out a subsistence living. They are poor but seemingly happy. Eventually their community attracts attention from the mainland, initially a well-meaning missionary with a white saviour complex. Racism combines with the eugenics movement and self-interest, and the state evicts the residents from the island committing some of them to insane asylums.

I expected to like this book a lot more than I did. The author focuses on the community as a whole so we meet a lot of characters, but don’t necessarily spend much time with any of them. This and the fact that the story is told from a third-person perspective meant I didn’t form an emotional connection with any of the characters, and I missed that. The book is structured in three parts. The first part is the story of the island and its inhabitants. Next we follow Ethan, a young boy who can pass for white and has a talent for art, who has been selected for an opportunity on the mainland. Then we return to the island to witness the destruction of the community. I felt Ethan’s section wasn’t well integrated. I would have loved to have seen more of Ethan and to have heard from him directly. And then there is the lack of resolution. Since Harding is focussed on the community once it is disestablished the novel essentially ends. But I was craving more and would have loved to know what happened to at least some of the residents, to have followed them on their post-island life.

I did like the fact that this novel shines a light on a little known event in American history. I appreciated the empathetic way the characters and their lives were sketched. I also liked the balance. Harding highlighted the wrongness of eugenics and of the state’s actions but didn’t neglect problematic aspects of life on Apple Island, such as incest and its impacts.

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challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

A tragic story told with resonant echoing prose.

Content Warnings

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