Eden
A Novel
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the head writer of the original In Treatment, an exquisite novel of the maturation of a girl, a family, and an entire community
Eden is no paradise: it is the stifling, rural community in which upscale urban escapees, Alona and Mark, drift apart and divorce under the resentful scrutiny of Roni, Mark's needy adolescent daughter. Against a rich panorama of Eden's oldtimers and newcomers, Mark, an emotionally detached architect, begins an involvement with his ex-wife's best friend, Dafna, who is desperately trying to conceive through the torments of technology, while sixteen-year-old Roni pursues the attention of older men by readily dispensing sexual favors. Over the course of one month, Roni's self-dramatizing turns to tragedy, her parents are jolted out of their absorbing concerns, and a new family structure begins to form out of an unlikely set of characters.
Through a portrait of family entanglements, disappearing countryside, and disappointed expectations, Yael Hedaya, a determinedly plainspoken novelist, has brilliantly mapped the social and emotional ecology of midlife and achieved miracles of insight and understanding.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The challenges of domestic life and the fears of terrorist violence haunt the seven inhabitants of an Israeli farming collective in this accomplished, acutely observed novel from the former head writer of the original Israeli series that HBO's In Treatment was based on. Hedaya draws fine psychological portraits of her characters, all caught in the throes of self-doubt, self-absorption, and vague yearnings as their farm goes from idyllic 1950s Eden to an upscale community reeling from the many domestic problems of its inhabitants. While Hedaya endows her characters with individuality, she is less assured when reflecting on the general malaise and pervasive sadness of Israeli society. One protagonist, the 16-year-old Roni, alternates between grandiose romanticism and faux angst, and Hedaya's other players suffer similar melancholic conflicts stemming from loss of innocence or diminished hopes. Though political events are kept offstage, when trouble arises, suspicion falls on the Arab handyman who serves the community. Despite its soap opera like foundation, the novel succeeds in avoiding clich s, creating universal characters existing in an intimately connected social milieu.
