The Edge of Eden
Live Blog Radio interview with Helen Benedict:www.blogtalkradio.com/ColumbiaJournalism/2009/11/03/Helen-Benedict
Description of Edge of Eden
The Edge Of Eden is a mesmerizing, tragicomic novel about an English family living in the Seychelles, a remote group of islands in the Indian Ocean. The story weaves between wartime London and tropical decadence in this vividly painted chronicle of power, lust and witchcraft.Penelope and Rupert Weston both grew up during World War Two and spent most of their childhoods in lonely exile from family and home. After they met in 1950, they married in a post-war panic, and settled into a staid life in London, eager for safety and stability. But when they move to Seychelles ten years later with their two children, they find themselves amongst inscrutable Creoles, powerful witchdoctors and decadent British ex-pats, all of whom turn everything from their cozy, middle-class London life upside-down. Their eldest daughter, Zara, seven and headstrong, becomes uncannily adept at the local folk magic. Their youngest, three-year-old Chloe, grows increasingly vulnerable. Their nanny, Marguerite Savy, who is full of secrets and hidden wisdom, becomes central to their lives. And Joelle Lagrenade, Rupert’s secretary, turns out to be as lethal as she is beautiful.
Soon Penelope and her family finds themselves immersed in a world both seductive and dangerous, where the powerless struggle to survive through magic and trickery. And all around them swirl the brilliant colors and addictive beauty of the islands, behind which lurks a disturbing history of slavery and colonialism.
Reviews:
“Benedict, an author of both fiction and nonfiction (Sailor’s Wife; Virgin or Vamp), offers distinctive cross-cultural insights as well as a cadre of satiric and fascinating characters, and the result is a story that is both touching and humorous. Highly recommended."-- Library Journal
“An armchair traveler’s delight, Benedict’s novel is an amusingly poignant look at the British abroad in the spirit of Evelyn Waugh.”
--Publishers Weekly
"Helen Benedict offers us a searing, salacious and often hilarious portrait of British life abroad while at the same time providing an intimate portrayal of a family unraveling. Her detailed description of the natural world in the Seychelles is only matched by her understanding of its darker, more mysterious side. Paradise is clearly not what it seems. Reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh in its biting satire and Somerset Maugham in its compelling depiction of the last gasps of colonialism, Helen Benedict has written a book that both moved and surprised me until the very last word."
—Mary Morris, author of Revenge
"Not since Lord of the Flies has a novelist written with such perceptiveness about the potential for harm that lurks within the innocence of childhood. The child protagonist of this novel, Zara, is both electrifying and chilling, but due to Benedict’s considerable gifts, ultimately sympathetic. That Benedict could accomplish this in an ambitious novel about colonialism and the effects of war makes this feat all the more dazzling. Her portrait of the generation of British parents that came of age during World War II is smart, original and unflinching."
--Paula Sharp, author of Crows over a Wheatfield
"The Edge of Eden uses the lush, fabulous setting of the Seychelles to give us a tale of a marriage in collapse—and an encounter between a small child’s magical thinking and a culture with complicated traditions of magic. It’s a wonderful novel and a true page-turner, a vivid story in which jealousy, innocence, and lust each make their own mischief."
--Joan Silber, Author of The Size of the World and Ideas of Heaven.
Excerpt:
There was another reason Penelope didn’t want to venture away from the house, though: she wasn’t feeling well…. It must be all that glutinous curry, she thought, or the coconut oil in which Sylvie insisted upon frying the vegetables. Or perhaps she had picked up some sort of germ…. What she didn’t know was that along with her morning coffee and evening soups, she had been ingesting crushed ant, claw of ghost crab, gecko tail and burnt offerings of her own hair and fingernails, all pounded with a pestle into the finest of powders and finished off with one poisonous red seed.I wonder if it’s working? Zara thought, peeking at her mother from around a corner of the verandah. I wonder if the demon worm is dead yet?
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