Review: Adam & Eve by Sana Jeter Naslund

[Charlotte Vale]

Hello new friends!

 

Here is a review from the premiere "issue" of my movie and book review website. Hope you find it useful! For more, go to http://estellasbooksmarts.weebly.com/

 

SEPTEMBER 2011

At the promising outset of Adam & Eve: What Happened to Eden? by Sana Jeter Naslund, a baby grand is plummeting at the speed of light out of a window and ready to smash our protagonists into tiny bits. And no, one of them is not Wile Coyote.

 QUICK LOOK: Lucy Bergmann is entrusted with an alternative version of the Book of Genesis and is chased around the globe by a fundamentalist group called Perpetuity. On the run, she eventually crash lands in the desert and meets a squirrely American GI called Adam (naturally). There’s also an accident that will probably turn out to be a murder and a flash drive that contains scientific evidence of extraterrestrial life.  Seems like the Da Vinci Code by way of The English Patient with a dash of Doctor Who.

 I normally don't like pastiche (unless it’s fresh baked and slathered with butter and jam); but because I devoured the author's  Ahab’s Wife, I was willing to give Naslund the benefit of the doubt on this one. She's got a nice, lyrical style of writing, even though I think she over-explains things a bit in this book. At first read I wasn't quite sure I loved the allegorical chapters in the book. I know that's what the whole thing is centered around, but they're a little drippy in my view. The story seem to roll along at first, and the characterizations solid.

THE FINAL WORD: I had high hopes for this novel because I loved Ahab’s Wife so much. But I think that Naslund tried to write a high-brow Da Vinci Code thriller that doesn't really come off. I loved the basic idea of an alternate opener to Genesis and the actual pay-off was acceptable, but just not strong enough. I think Naslund becomes a little too intoxicated with the idea of a Earth-bound Eden with all its symbolism and spends a bit too much time there. I could have done with a bit less fruit collecting, and I didn't see the importance of the murderous aboriginal boy. (By the time he comes into the picture, I was rooting for him.) The chase scenes are a little silly too and, frankly, unbelievable. And then there is the flash drive that Lucy wears for the entire story because it contains her scientist-husband’s proof of other life in the universe. But instead of giving us some Contact-like revelation, we get another silly story about her husband's infidelity, his obsession with chippies named Lucy, and a pair of video-recording glasses straight out of Mission Impossible. Lastly, the character of Adam is creepy (and waxen), and Lucy's eventual relationship with him is stictly from the Stockholm Syndrome playbook.

GRADE: C-

DOUBLE FEATURE: 
Moby Dick (1956 movie) & Ahab’s Wife