Eve Green

"Eve Green" is the sort of book that when I finished it last night I wanted to go back to page one and start reading it again.  Susan Fletcher, the author, won the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award.  I can certainly see why.  It is the sort of book that just glides along (does fiction glide?).  My only "criticism" (a term I use loosely here) is the author's use of flashbacks.  It took me a few chapters to catch on that we were going back and forth in time. But once I caught on, the novel read very smoothly and quickly. In the present she is about 29 and looking back and telling us the story of when she was 8.   After her mother's death she is sent to Wales to live with her grandparents.  The story is revealed like the layers of an onion being peeled away.  The way it is told, you are given the basic facts ahead of time, but when you are "living" the event, it still comes as a surprise.  The novel reminds me a little of Ian McEwan's novel, "Atonement".   When you are young and naive, and you implicate someone in a crime, without knowing all the facts--by embellishing, how long do you carry the guilt with you?  For a first time novelist I think her writing is really exceptional, and I look forward to more of her work!