Eve Green: a Dream, a Nightmare in the Welsh Highlands

I admit it- I took this book into my hands and I just couldn't stop reading, I was enraptured. The terrible heat of the tropics licking at my skin, clothes clinging to me, I just kept on reading till I came to the last page and heaved a sigh. It took me a little less than a day. Eve Green by Susan Fetcher is a beautiful book, simply because she creates such a magnificent back drop. She's a writer who really sticks to the rule of showing- the color of a flower, the roar of the wind- without merely telling us it is so, like so. The story itself is terrifying. It reminded me of both Ian McEwan's Child In Time and Atonement, as if both stories somehow overlapped somewhere. Spoken in a lyrical and almost childishly enchanting tone by a woman who looks back upon her life and recalls fragments of memories that gradually weave into a sad and mysterious story, it is no wonder that this book won its author the Whitbread First Novel Award in 2004.