What do you think?
Rate this book
Adam
ADAM By DAVID BOLT 1961 First American Edition DAVID BOLT PUBLISHER - (LOCATION) / THE JOHN DAY COMPANY, NY 1961 First American Edition stated Religion, Rare BINDING/ Hardback with dust jacket GREEN WITH OFF WHITE SPINE
- GenresChristianityFiction
143 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 17, 2024
This work re-frames the Adam and Eve story in Genesis. Gone is the spare, elegant, mysterious narrative we are given in the Biblical text. In its place, a richly imagined world of lush and densely layered sensory experience. The early chapters in particular are so vibrant and imagistic that I sometimes struggled to read them as narrative at all.
Perspectives shift through the text; chiefly we live the early life of Adam, though we also spend time in Eve's shoes (so to speak), and with the dragon, the author's skillfully rendered image of the Biblical serpent. Little about the plot is surprising, of course, so the author is free to focus on engaging details, little exercises in fleshing out the skeleton of the original text--What was in Eve's mind as she reached for the fruit? How might Adam reflect on his life before Eve after her creation?
If there is any real problem with the book, it is probably the author's play with language as Adam goes about naming the things in the world. The somewhat random and not always entirely accurate interspersal of Hebrew in the text, along with some questionably imagined invented language (used to explain how Adam ends up calling the dragon/serpent "Igwana", for example) was a touch distracting for this reader.
While by no means flawless, I would call "Adam" a work of serious literary merit, worthy of attention from students of the Bible, whether as scripture or literature, and from anyone with a hunger for imaginative prose.
Perspectives shift through the text; chiefly we live the early life of Adam, though we also spend time in Eve's shoes (so to speak), and with the dragon, the author's skillfully rendered image of the Biblical serpent. Little about the plot is surprising, of course, so the author is free to focus on engaging details, little exercises in fleshing out the skeleton of the original text--What was in Eve's mind as she reached for the fruit? How might Adam reflect on his life before Eve after her creation?
If there is any real problem with the book, it is probably the author's play with language as Adam goes about naming the things in the world. The somewhat random and not always entirely accurate interspersal of Hebrew in the text, along with some questionably imagined invented language (used to explain how Adam ends up calling the dragon/serpent "Igwana", for example) was a touch distracting for this reader.
While by no means flawless, I would call "Adam" a work of serious literary merit, worthy of attention from students of the Bible, whether as scripture or literature, and from anyone with a hunger for imaginative prose.
April 16, 2024
Wow..just wow..I am breathless ,blown away.This book is seared into my consciousness, as only the rare books do in my opinion.One of the best books I have ever read.It gave me more of a feeling or as much as we can have in this life it at least a small glimpse of what it must have been like for Adam and Eve in the garden .A paradise lost that mankind has knowingly or unknowingly been trying to return to ever since .A paradise we do not deserve.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews