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Book Review of The Garden

The Garden
The Garden
Author: Elsie V. Aidinoff
Genre: Children's Books
Book Type: Paperback
reviewed on + 8 more book reviews


A must-read for fans of retellings.

This is not your Sunday school version of Adam and Eve and the Creation. When I read this, I felt creeped out to reading such a "blasphemous" retelling of the story of Eden. Aidinoff's depiction of God as a childish, selfish, bratty being was jarring. But the story is fleshed out, risky, and I loved how the book played out -- petulant God and all. In the afterword, Aidinoff says the reason she wrote the story was because she felt there were so many holes in the Genesis Creation story that she wanted a way to explain them. And in spite of her saying she didn't set out to write a story with feminist and religious leanings, for her to have written Eve as a strong and smart woman (oftentimes much smarter than Adam), and to write about God and the Serpent and the first two humans . . . it kind of happened anyway.