Little Edens: Stories

by Barbara Klein Moss

"Each of Moss's surprising, beautifully constructed, and soulful stories brilliantly illuminates the paradox of paradise."― Booklist These eight magical stories address the Edenic spaces that people create in their lives and the serpents that subtly inhabit them. In "Rug Weaver" (selected for Best American Short Stories 2001 ) an Iranian rug dealer makes a paradise of his prison cell by weaving an elaborate rug in his mind. Grieving parents in the title story transfigure a luxury subdivision in southern California into a vision of heaven. And in the novella "The Palm Tree of Dilys Cathcart" an unlikely love story unfolds between an Orthodox Jewish butcher and a lonely English piano teacher, who discovers a hunger for intimacy and ritual as she helps the butcher transcribe the mysterious songs he hears in his head. These and other stories constitute an elegant and richly evocative collection about the complexities of worldly and spiritual desires. Reading group guide included.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Barbara Klein Moss graduated from Syracuse University and received her MFA from the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She lives in Annapolis, Maryland.

Reviews

[Gerry Durisin]

Trying in 2020 to pare down the piles of unread books in my house, I stumbled on this one, having no idea when or why I acquired it. I don't generally enjoy short stories, so it seems odd that I'd have bought it, or even entered a giveaway for it, but here it is. Most of the stories were surprisingly good; the single exception was the last and longest one (of course!). My favorite was The Rug Weaver, in which an Irani man, imprisoned for his political views, passes his time and maintains his sanity by weaving a magnificent rug in his mind. Also quite good (until the abrupt ending) was Little Edens, in which a couple relocate to California; this was an atmospheric story that got me thinking about how I'd fare if we moved to a completely unfamiliar area. For the MMD challenge, Little Eden works as a book outside my (genre) comfort zone; for AWLB, it will serve as the book with a fruit on its cover; and for the Goodreads Around the World challenge, it represents Iran.

[Kerry]

Barbara Klein Moss’s Little Edens is a collection of short stories. They are all connected by a common theme, that of people forming their own private, personal Gardens of Eden. Imagery and concepts from Genesis occur over and over again and it was fascinating to be on the lookout for how they would appear in each incarnation.

Some stories caught my interest better than others. Some of my favorites included:

The Rug Weaver, an old Jewish man meditates on a magnificent rug he wove in his mind while imprisoned by revolutionaries in Iran. This figmentary rug was a literal recreation of Eden and a meditation on the act of Creation and the nature of the Divine. Now, living out the end of his life in California with his son and American daughter in law he is uncomfortably aware of how innocent his daughter in law is, particularly how naked she is compared to the veiled, covered women of his homeland and how ignorant she is to the darker parts of life. Like the Serpent he wove into his garden, the old man contemplates how he could enlighten her and while the story leaves off with her innocence undisturbed, the reader is left with a sense of a coiled snake contemplating a woman, not with malice but awareness of how much he knows that she doesn’t.

The theme of the Interpreters is a return to the pristine and unspoiled. A modern couple work and eventually live in a restored colonial village. He is a harsh, unyielding man whose only love is crafting intricate furniture. She is cast as the temptress who would lure him from both God and creation, a sort of Lilith figure who eventually plots her own voluntary expulsion from the Garden back into the world.

December Birthday is a story about the daughter of two Holocaust survivors held in benevolent captivity by parents who fear change and who lovingly resist her desire to move out into the world and lose her innocence.

And in the Palm Tree of Dilys Cathcart, an Orthodox Jewish man comes to an English piano teacher, seeking her help in transcribing divinely inspired music based on the different attributes of God. With each session, they are drawn together – he by sharing his revelations and the tribulations he is facing with a wife afflicted with MS and she by a longing for him and his world.

I will admit that there were times, I was a little frustrated by how abruptly the stories ended. Not all of the tales had what I would call resolution but I am not sure if that was a failing of the story or just the nature of the short story medium. But overall, each of these stories were well worth my time in and of themselves. I enjoyed them and I found the theme to be a fascinating one, rich with imagery and symbolism and food for thought.

[Judith]

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