Last year I read two books by Susan Fletcher and promptly ordered two more for this year. Her debut book was Eve Green, so I was a little apprehensive that it might not live up to my prior experience, but I need not have worried. It is not my favorite of the three, but it is a very solid novel and of such a different nature than the other two that it stands on its own merits beautifully.

Eve is six years old when her mother dies and she is taken to Wales to live with her Grandmother and Grandfather. She knows nothing of her father and nothing of her mother’s past, and part of this story is her unearthing of that relationship and how she came to be. There is quite a bit of mystery concerning her father and a friend from her mother’s past, Billy Macklin, and there is the mystery of what has happened to Rosie, a twelve year old who is missing.

The book swings between several time periods, primarily the present of of twenty-nine year old Eve and the past of eight-year old Eve, the year of Rosie’s disappearance and the part Eve has played in those events. Fletcher builds the tension and characters wonderfully and the voice of Eve, the child, is genuine and believable. She is insightful about the human heart and states truths so simply that it takes a moment before you realize how astute her observations are.

My grandfather told me, having been widowed, that nothing is joyful again. Happiness returns, he said--laughing comes back to you, and the world is still good, and you smile again at things. But joy, real joy, leaves. Everything lacks from then on, he said. Mrs. Hughes learnt that well enough.

Is that why we give flowers? To express admiration? Sometimes.But there are other reasons. A symbol of love, or of commiseration. A way of saying thank you. A mark of respect. Proof we like someone, and want them to smile. And we put flowers on graves to say, “Look, we still think of you. You’ve left a space behind.”

I’m looking forward to my next Susan Fletcher. I have my lovely friend, Candi, to thank for introducing me to an author who is quickly becoming a go-to for me.
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On the plus side, the writing is good, poetic and evocative in places without being dull. Some of the characters stand out too, and I could almost imagine them.

However... I simply couldn't relate to the main, viewpoint character. I wasn't bothered by the sometimes confusing time switches between Eve aged 29 and 8, but I didn't feel that I ever got to know her. And I found the story ultimately rather dissatisfying; many hints early in the book suggest drama, perhaps twists - and yet the ending chapters were entirely predictable based on the early hints. And there are too many unresolved threads, leaving everything hanging.

Don't necessarily take my word for it; this book has won prizes, and is highly reviewed elsewhere. But it didn't really do anything for me.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2022/07/eve-green-by-susan-fletcher.html ( )

Very good. Worth seeing if Fletcher's follow up i any good ( )

This is a superbly crafted novel: a thing of beauty in which every word is polished. It is the sort of writing designed to inform and draw the reader in, rather than the sort that's just there to be showy. It's a gentle read, one that develops slowly, but there are still moments of excellent drama. My favourite part was the fight in the dinner hall, and most specifically the line "I managed to scoop up some cheese pie and push it into her hair" - I think it was the sheer superfluousness of it that was the most satisfying! Other authors might be happy with a couple of blows to the face and some smashed crockery on the floor, but this author goes the extra mile! I was mentally cheering along with every other survivor of bullying on the planet. There were points along the way where I found the narrator's and other people's decisions odd, but it was good to find that on turning the last page I could understand how everything that come about and why people had acted as they did. ( )

Evangeline is barely eight when her single mother dies, forcing a move from Birmingham to her grandparents’ farm in southwest Wales. She quickly forms an alliance with Daniel, her grandfather’s farmhand, sixteen years her senior, who will eventually become her romantic partner. The locals scorn the 16-year age difference between these two, but the greater creep factor resides in 24-year-old Daniel’s having hung out with the 8-year-old Eve and watched her grow over the years—very Woody-Allenish, and not in a good way. (Daniel’s relationship to Eve is revealed early on in the book, which generally reads as a kind of jumbled retrospective: on the brink of her thirtieth birthday and heavily pregnant, Eve recalls the key events to this point in her life.)

As she grows up on the farm, Eve pieces together the story of her dark-haired mother’s life and love. Eve learns about her Irish scoundrel father who passed on to her the flaming red hair that Mr. Phipps, the surly shopkeeper, sneers at. She also recounts the story of golden-haired Rosie Hughes, with her perfect skin and smile, a well-to-do girl just a little older than Eve, who disappeared one spring or summer. (An aside: Fletcher generally handles details of time poorly throughout this novel. The reader is often uncertain if Eve is eight, eleven, fifteen, or some other age. The protagonist’s observations provide no reliable clues upon which to make inferences either. Eve shows signs of sexual possessiveness shortly after her arrival in Wales, for example, when she is supposed to be only eight.) Eve’s story proper will conclude with a false accusation, an encounter with the likely perpetrator/abductor, and a raging fire.

Eve Green is a first novel, and it shows: it's narrated in the first person; it's a coming-of-age tale; it contains a cast of pretty flat, stereotypical characters (Red hair is shorthand for impetuousness and hot-temper, and crotchety old people can be counted on to address a naughty girl as “young lady” before banishing her to her bedroom for a fortnight); there's a dull-and-done-before storyline; the novel includes banal musings, apparently meant to be profound, about the nature of love and the importance of names; and, there are lots of overwritten descriptive sections—i.e., frequent passages of four or five sentences when a single pared-down one would do. Worst of all: the author shows minimal insight into and little ability to convincingly portray the mind and perceptions of a bereaved eight-year-old child.

This novel was in serious need of an overseer who could ruthlessly curb its author’s default tendency towards the twee. A good editor would,for example, have promptly put Eve’ s commentary on “influenza”--among others--on the chopping block: “it [influenza] should have been a girl’s name—a sultry, hot-eyed girl from some where tropical, with flowers in her hair and swaying hips.” Likewise her overblown musings on her mother’s written signature: “Bronwen. Dark and pure. The o is as flawless as a star, as open as a window. I look at it and [ . . . ] I want to crawl into that letter, right into the warm wanting heart of my mother before it stopped beating . . . " (Oh dear. I wanted to crawl somewhere else. It made me wince.)

I am very surprised that this rural soap opera, with all the clichéd features that give “women’s fiction”a bad name, should have been honoured with a Whitbread first-book award. What exactly were the judges thinking? The author occasionally shows promise by presenting a compelling scene: for example, the one in which the cows contract trench foot after heavy rains and are moved to an abandoned field. However, these are few and far between. The writing is mostly glib and wrongly toned: in short, amateur. It doesn’t serve the story or help you believe it; it distracts and detracts.

Some may enjoy this book as easy, escapist fiction. However, if you need reasonably good writing to be transported, you will only find yourself stuck in a really bad book. I will never open another novel by Ms. Fletcher.

Rating: 1.5 rounded up to 2 . . . because, yes, I am sorry to say that I have actually read even worse. ( )