Product Description
Winner of the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award; finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

"Ten days before Christmas I lost her. What do I remember? Every little thing….For twenty-one years I've picked away at my memory of it, lifting up moments, testing myself. Believing I might have finally healed to a neat white scar."

Pregnant with her first child, Eve Green recalls her mother's death when she was eight years old and her struggle to make sense of her parents' mysterious romantic past. Eve is sent to live with her grandparents in rural Wales, where she finds comfort in friendships with Daniel, a quiet farmhand, and Billy, a disabled, reclusive friend of her mother's. When a ravishing local girl disappears, one of Eve's friends comes under suspicion. Eve will do everything she can to protect him, but at the risk of complicity in a matter she barely understands. This is a timeless and beautifully told story about family secrets and unresolved liaisons.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 6 reviews)

Simply Stunning

I absolutely loved this book. Susan Fletcher has a way with words that actually made the hair on my arms stand up!

Filled to the brim with the most stunning imagery of Wales and life in rural Wales, Fletcher chooses her words so carefully and each sentence is simplistic and beautifully put together.

What I love about this book is that at no time do you feel like the author is trying to show off. Some books that I have read recently have left me reaching for a thesuarus and several Asprin before I got to the end.

This story flows and feels like poetry.

June 15, 2006

Beautifully written, lyrical prose & a riveting story!

Author Susan Fletcher's narrative caught me up from page one and kept me riveted until the conclusion of her Whitbread-winning debut novel "Eve Green." Although not billed as a suspense thriller or mystery, I found this excellent novel to be extremely disquieting, tension-filled and, even though the reader is made aware of what is to come early on in the story, it is a real page-turner.

Twenty-nine year-old Eve Green narrates. Pregnant with her first child by the man she has adored for almost twenty years, she reflects back on an earlier, more innocent time.

Evangeline lived in Birmingham with her mother, a single parent, until she was suddenly, tragically orphaned at age seven - about to turn eight. Evie, as she was then called, was sent to live with her maternal grandparents on their farm in the Welsh countryside, just outside the tiny village of Cae Tresaint. Her mother's parents, devastated by the loss of their only child, welcomed their granddaughter with open arms and much love.

Evie never knew much about her father. Her Mom, Bronwen, and later her grandparents made sure she was kept in the dark about the man who sired her. It was obvious to the child, however, that her mother loved him and thought he was in Birmingham, where she believed she would find him one day. She even kept a shoe box full of mementos of their time together, and a diary, which Evie was forbidden to touch. The shoe box made its way to Wales along with the little girl. Evie would sneak the box down from its hiding place at the top of a wardrobe and look through the contents time and time again, as she tried to piece together the history of her becoming. She was told in Cae Tresaint never to mention her father, but she knew he was called "the Irishman," and that she got her wild red hair and freckles from him.

There were other secrets, prejudices and mysteries concerning the town's people, including the disappearance and probable death of a local girl. Evie had some classified information of her own - her undisclosed friendship with an outsider believed to be mad, a lie she told which had terrible consequences, and a chilling incident with a green-eyed man that marked her forever.

"Eve Green" is compelling in the beauty of its lyrical prose. The magic of a little girl's poignant memories illuminates the novel. Here are revealing portraits of the grandparents Eve loves so much; her three deep and important childhood friendships - all with improbable people - a sensitive and caring farmhand, a crippled recluse, and an intellectual schoolmate with dreams of wandering the world. Eve's love of the Welsh countryside, language and lore is also evident. She has a sense of belonging in the natural world and Ms. Fletcher outdoes herself in her atmospheric descriptions:

"Tor-y-gwynt is surrounded by peat bogs and grass so sharp that it can nick your skin. Red kites are spotted there. Sheep and rabbit dung peppers its lower stones, and I've found many animal bones in the peat over the years - sheep, deer, others. And the wind is strong at the Tor. Hair flutters like a snared bird, and I used to like standing on the highest boulder, trying to keep my balance in the wind."

And: "Comes from the old shepherd's hut on the ridge. My castle. My mossy, windy outpost. I'd charge up there on clear days hoping to spy a distant, hazy Cardigan Bay. I'd lie in wait behind the stones for hikers or birdwatchers or deer, or a glimpse of Billy Macklin before he became my friend. And I had breezy picnics in that tussock grass, secret teenage cigarettes, long daydreams, and I hid there in rainstorms or when I just didn't want to be found."

"Eve Green" reminds me, in some ways, of Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird." (Also of Richard Llewllyn's extraordinary "How Green Was My Valley"). Scout Finch, like Eve Green, is eight and bereft of her mother. Both novels are set in rural areas. They are both rich and colorful in description of locale and locals, and they explore the native customs and mores of the period. Reclusive characters Bo Radley and Billy Macklin are not dissimilar in nature. There are other commonalties, but the one which stands out the most is that these are both outstanding novels. Although, personally, I don't think there are many works of fiction written in English in the last 100 years to match "To Kill A Mockingbird." Given my feelings on that - "Eve Green" is an outstanding work and I recommend it highly! ENJOY!
JANA
January 22, 2006

recommended read!

Reviewed by Steve Himmer for Small Spiral Notebook

Susan Fletcher's Whitbread-winning debut Eve Green is a story assembled from secrets, those life has kept from the narrator and those she in turn keeps from the reader. The eponymous Eve is seven when she suddenly loses her mother and is whisked away to her grandparents in rural Wales, to live in the house where her mother grew up. With her observant eye and honest, endearing voice, Eve recalls Cassandra from Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, but with a rich twist. Cassandra sought to order the world by writing, whereas Eve relies on reading what has already been written--in particular, on scraps of paper in a shoebox of her mother's. Those textual fragments provide the only record of the father who vanished before Eve was born, and about whom neither her grandparents nor anyone else in their village will speak.

The novel is narrated by a twenty-nine year old Eve as she awaits the birth of her first child. Recalling the earlier years of her life, she weaves an account of recovering the lives of her parents together with the disappearance of a girl her age from the village and the ensuing panic and suspicions. She also reveals a deep attachment to the Welsh valley and crumbling farmhouse that became her home in childhood and in which she still lives after her grandparents have passed away. This sense of place and belonging is one of the novel's great strengths, counterbalancing Eve's sense of rootlessness, as when she reports that the best view of the valley

comes from the old shepherd's hut on the ridge. My castle. My mossy, windy outpost. I'd charge up there on clear days hoping to spy a distant, hazy Cardigan Bay. I'd lie in wait behind the stones for hikers or birdwatchers or deer, or a glimpse of Billy Macklin before he became my friend. And I had breezy picnics in that tussock grass, secret teenage cigarettes, long daydreams, and I hid there in rainstorms or when I just didn't want to be found.

Vivid passages like these come so often in the novel, and so gracefully, that it is easy to overlook how skillfully Fletcher winds the threads of her story together. Characters and locations are introduced with such subtly that when they take on greater importance later, it feels both surprising and natural at once. Those threads are also tied to the landscape, and the lives of the characters are echoed by the quiet details and slow changes of the place in which they live.

Even as the reader revels in these connections, Eve herself remains unaware, seeing both both the natural and social worlds she lives in almost entirely as a collection of details much like her shoebox of scraps. Of the days following her mother's death and her own relocation she notes,

tap water tastes cleaner in Wales; wet earth has a real, incredible smell to it; clouds are bigger; birds come closer. Flowers seem much brighter out here. I don't know why, but they do.

Eve sees her own body, too, as a jumble of individual parts, owing perhaps to the red hair and freckles she has inherited from her father, and how those distinctive features remind the whole village--Eve's grandparents, too--of the criminal he turns out to have been. This sense of assembling herself as she assembles (and we) assembles her story creates an understated suspense and provides the novel with both intrigue and momentum.

For the most part, Eve Green succeeds at striking a melancholy but hopeful balance between what a young Eve slowly discovers, and what the older, narrating Eve already knows. There is an organic, engaging tension in piecing together the details of her history at the very moment she does the same. Other sources of tension, however, feel a bit forced--in particular, the story of the disappeared girl and the sometimes cloying awareness with which the narrator withholds all she knows of that event. While that disappearance provides a local, more tangible loss through which to reflect on Eve's absent parents, it never becomes quite as convincing as the other strands of the novel. It seems to bear little impact on Eve aside from offering a convenient object of transference, and while this may be a result of the distance between the disappearance itself and the narration, such a violent, tragic event seems to demand more significance than it has been allowed, leaving the suspense it engenders somewhat hollow. The reader is never able to forget that the abducted, tangential character exists only to allow the narrator to discuss herself, and that awareness is cruelly unsettling.

Still, to the credit of the novel and its author, that issue only emerges as problematic because the other elements cohere so naturally, and it should by no means overshadow the larger achievement of a fine debut.

December 07, 2005

Eve Green A Welsh Treat

Evangeline Green is a thoroughly unbelievable 8 year old whose creator, the young British writer Susan Fletcher, has made the centerpiece of this eponymous memory book.

She's got the kind of feistiness we loved in Harriet the Spy, but those red curls make me think of the unfortunate John Hughes picture "CURLY SUE." I was sorry for her when she lost her mother, and couldn't help but be reminded of Sylvia Plath turning on the gas taps while her two children slept on, in that cold English February of 1963. This was long before Susan Fletcher's birth of course, but she has a poetic habit of mind that comes from long familiarity with English verse.

The story line Eve precipitates is a good one, even though she does seem too young to do half the things Fletcher has her do. It's a book about motherhood, impending and refusing, the things that a mother must do, and the things she hopes she never has to face. Billy, the bizarre friend she meets in the little Welsh village, is the first one who helps Eve lift up out of the depression and trauma caused by her Mom's sudden exit from her life. He's sort of a freak, but Cae Tresanit is the sort of village that wouldn't have its charm had it fewer freaks and twee people. It's a cozy village, is Cae Tresanit, an anagram in fact for "Tea Canister."

If you, like I, enjoyed the 30s novels of Rosamund Lehmann, with their intense, poetic concentration on broken families and children struggling to understand the lessons of the past, then you will join me in applauding Susan Fletcher. She will do better next time, I'm sure.
June 02, 2005

"Love is as varied and unpredictable as the rain is"

A mother, who has suddenly died of heart failure, an eight-year-old spirited girl, a father that remains illusive, an aggressive redheaded Irish burglar, and a missing teenager, are all the ingredients of this marvelous coming of age story set amongst the hills and dales of rural Wales. Eve Green is a haunting tale that is part mystery, part love story, part inter-generational saga, and also part memorandum to loved ones that are now lost.

After the sudden death of her mother in Birmingham, eight-year-old Evangeline finds herself transported to her grandparents' tiny Welsh village of Cae Tresanit - with its quaint farmhouses, shady lanes, peat bogs, and dank old gold mines. Eve gradually becomes to love the natural beauty and farm life of old Wales. She's a brave, strong-willed, and flame-haired girl, who embarks upon a journey to discover where she really comes from. But as she gets older, she gradually becomes embroiled in her own mysterious family history and the inexplicable disappearance of Rosie a young village girl, who liked to wear short skirts and roller-skate through the village.

Finding an old shoebox with a collection of her mother's mementoes, Eve manages to piece together the story of her mother's affair with the man that became Eve's father. The only clue that Eve has to his identity is that his first name begins with K. Meanwhile, Eve befriends mad old hermit-like local boy Billy Macklin. Billy a mystical and forlorn figure has been physically and mentally scarred when a bucking horse disfigured his face. But it is through the enigmatic Billy, that Eve is able to discover the truth about her mother, the mysterious man called K, and why local village shopkeeper Mr. Phipps despises her so.

From the outset Eve is different from the other children in the village. She's often haughty and rebellious, and picks fights with the other schoolgirls. Eve's grandmother - who hides the truth about Eve's past - is frightened of losing her grip on her granddaughter, just like she did with Eve's mother. As Eve garners more misty-eyed secrets, she becomes more reliant on Billy, and realizes "if there is a little box of secrets she couldn't quite prize open, Billy is the one with the key." Billy knows all about love, and Eve sees the signs of a saddened heart - solitude, quietness, a lethargy that sat alongside a desire to protect all that reminded him of Eve's mother.

Author Susan Fletcher cleverly hints at various dramatic incidents that unfold throughout Eve's life. But it isn't until the last chapters that these incidents are pieced together and the reader finally gets a picture of what really happens to Eve and how these events are related. As the proceedings become clearer, they irrevocably change the village, forcing Eve to face the ghosts of the past and look towards the future. Eve "holds up the past to the wind, uncloses her hand and just let's it go."

Memory and love are a powerful force in Eve Green. And of love - it patters into you, or it washes you clean of your senses. It can drip or become a downpour. It is also strange and manipulative. There's no doubt that Eve Green is a beautiful novel, but the real treasure lies - not just in Eve's emotional journey of self-discovery - but also in the picture that Fletcher paints of rural farm life and the ordinary lives of the people of Cae Tresanit. Powerful, poetic and visionary, Eve Green is what serious literary fiction is all about. Mike Leonard February 04.

February 27, 2005

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