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ABOUT THE BOOK
This novel tells the story of Evangeline Green, aged 29, looking back on her life and how she coped with the grief of losing loved ones. At the age of eight she was forced to move and live with her grandparents in rural Wales following the sudden, and rather unexpected, death of her mother in their Birmingham flat. The now adult, and soon-to-be mother, Evie relives her first year or so of her life in Wales. She sees the events of that time not only through the eyes of an adult, but also through those of a mother.
Having left the city, eight-year-old Evie has to adapt to a small Welsh community. She understandably has a hard time settling in and is desperate to find out more about the father she never knew. She knows that she is being lied to regarding her parentage, or that the truth is at least being withheld from her, and so she endeavours to discover what it is. After the discovery of a shoebox where various memorabilia was kept, Evie progressively pieces together the six-month whirlwind romance that her parents lived. Thus she discovers how her father, a travelling Irishman named Keiren, left her mother to go to Birmingham following the news of Evie’s conception. The young girl also befriends ‘Mad’ Billy Macklin, who knew her mother, in an attempt to find out more about her background.
From the onset, it is made clear to the reader that the first year of Evie’s life in Wales was marred by some terrible events, but it is only as the story unravels that we find out all that really happened. The first event to perturb the seemingly tranquil village life is the disappearance of local twelve-year-old beauty Rosemary Hughes. A shadow is cast on the village and rumours spread like wildfire. Added to this somewhat oppressive atmosphere, Evie has to deal with resentment directed at her which she cannot understand. Her fiercely independent character, her curly red hair, and her parentage make her an outcast in the village. The only real friendships she makes are with Gerry, a young boy from her class, Billy Macklin, and most of all Daniel, the farmhand, sixteen years her senior. Theirs is a relationship that is so close that as the years pass by, friendship turns into love and Evie at last finds peace with her soul mate. As Eve revisits her past something clicks open in her mind and her own reckless role in the hunt for Rosie’s abductor is revealed…
A story of love, secrecy and the search for identity, Eve Green is beautifully written. Susan Fletcher expresses perfectly the emotions of both a child living in the heat of the moment and an adult reflecting on the past, and mistakes that were made. It is highly atmospheric and the descriptions of the Welsh countryside are stunning.
Eve Green deals with love in all its forms: the purity of a parent’s selfless devotion; the teenage crush; the heady, perilous lust of youth; unrequited affection; and the gentle familiarity of lasting marriage. The novel also presents love in its more fractious incarnations, with hints at murderous paedophilia, incest and domestic abuse.
The effect is a story with a complex but never confusing narrative, flitting between present and past and stages in-between, and at turns sorrowful, optimistic, bitter and amusing.
All in all this is a truly beautiful and hypnotic first novel about the innocence and terror of childhood, as well as being both an engaging puzzle and an enchanting work of literature.
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