Eve: Her Story

by Penelope Farmer

A modern Eve tells her own story about life in the Garden of Eden as the loving but obstinate Adam, the knowing Lilith, the manlike serpent, the disdaineful Archangels, and the ambivalent Jehovah each try to exploit her innocence.

Genres: Fiction

188 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Penelope Jane Farmer is an English fiction writer well known for children's fantasy novels. Her best-known novel is Charlotte Sometimes (1969), a boarding-school story that features a multiple time slip.

Reviews

[Nessa Flax]

I'm stunned that the (only 2) ratings for this book are so low. If you're expecting a conventional take on Adam & Eve, you'll be disappointed ~ but if you suspect there's more to the story than Genesis tells, you'll be delighted. This story told from Eve's first-person point of view was fascinating, engaging and included an unexpected light touch of humor. With the addition of Lilith to the tale, it is clear that Farmer did her homework ~ not surprising, since she compiled/edited the book "Beginnings: Creation Myths." I highly recommend this book.

[Andrew]

It must have been my recent reading of Paradise Lost that stirred my dim and distant memories of this book. I had bought it in a sale, at W H Smiths I think, and since it was a hardback copy it can't have been that long after publication in 1985. Unsurprisingly, I remembered virtually nothing of that reading! I knew Adam and Eve had to be in there, and I remembered Lilith, but not all that went on between them. The serpent also had to be there, but I'd forgotten that in Eden he's more humanoid, with arms and legs, and walked on two legs, and I'd forgotten his many talents; pruning the trees, making the knife to prune them with, smelting the metal to make the blade, mining the ore to smelt into the metal! How his hands and feet were lopped off by the four Archangels, and the remains of his arms and legs bound to his body, to fuse there permanently, and being cast out of Eden along with all it's other inhabitants. Sammael I'd completely forgotten, with his arguments and chess games with the serpent, and the part he played after the Fall. If you know the various creation myths, you can probably see how, in a similar way to the serpent creating artefacts from the ores and minerals he mined, Penelope Farmer has taken parts of some of those myths and blended them into this intriguing little novel!

[Beccy]

True rating; 4 stars

Finally! I started reading this book sneaking chapters sat in a charity shop 13 years ago, until I lost the book and couldn't remember what the title was.

After such a long time, it was immensely satisfying to actually finish the book, and it was an interesting read.

[Stephen Bigger]

The book and review is of Penelope Farmer's Eve, Her Story not the title given in the link which is a glitch. Eve is a dramatisation of ancient traditions about Eve and Lilith, stories which I know. I thought it interesting and clever.

[Carolyn]

Not what I was hoping it would be. I wanted more of a Women's studies type I guess. Still this theory of fiction was an interesting view.

[Saran Rapping]

I read this book thirty years ago and i still think of it and laugh. Why such low ratings? It’s really charming and feels true. Which is high praise for a reimagining of a bible story